Charles Todd - A False Mirror

On the street in front of the Cornelius house, Rutledge was met by an out-of-breath constable who nearly collided with him before he could slow his pace.

“Mr. Rutledge, sir!” He leaned one hand against the wing of the motorcar, fighting to get the words out. “Mr. Bennett says-come at once!”

Rutledge turned the crank and stepped behind the wheel. “What’s happened?”

The constable shook his head. “I’m not to say, sir-only, come at once.” He hauled himself into the passenger seat and pointed toward the Mole.

The sea had yielded its secret, then.

But as Rutledge reached the Mole and realized that no crowd was gathered there, the constable gestured east and added, “Dr. Granville’s surgery.”

“They’ve found Hamilton,” Rutledge said to Hamish. “Alive or dead?”

He wasn’t aware that he’d spoken the words aloud.

The constable stirred uneasily. “I don’t know, sir. Truly.”

It was a grim-faced Bennett who met him at the surgery. Leaving the constable to take up his station on the front walk, he ushered Rutledge down the passage to the door that led to the doctor’s consulting room.

Granville was seated in a chair usually reserved for patients, looking drained and ill. There was a whiskey glass in one hand, but it was shaking with such force that the man couldn’t even bring it to his lips.

Bennett, on Rutledge’s heels, said, “Look behind the desk.”

Rutledge went to the massive desk and leaned over it.

He had been prepared to see Hamilton lying there dead. But it wasn’t Hamilton on the floor, just out of sight from the doorway. It was a woman, facedown, the hair on the back of her head matted with blood, her legs crumpled under her.

He knew her at once. Mrs. Granville.

Rutledge glanced at Bennett, then knelt to touch the side of her throat. The flesh was cool, and there was no pulse.

He straightened up and stepped away. Looking down at the body, he could picture her coming into the room and crossing to the desk, perhaps to leave a note for her husband. If there had been someone behind her, she hadn’t feared him. Or perhaps if the room was dark, she hadn’t even realized anyone was there. And as she reached the side of the desk, whoever it was had struck her hard enough to kill her. He noted that she was wearing a nightdress with a matching blue silk robe over it, her bare feet encased in incongruously plain woolly slippers. She hadn’t expected to find a murderer here. A woman with no defenses, and no need to die, surely. A doctor’s wife, used to tending patients, unprepared for violence.

He felt a wash of pity. She would not have cared to be seen by so many men while in her nightdress.

Hamish said, “She couldna’ be mistaken for the doctor. Even in the dark.”

She was a slight woman compared with Granville, and not nearly as tall.

Hamilton? Or perhaps she had thought it was he, standing there in the dark, asking her to help him. And she had stepped behind the desk to turn up the lamp on the far side. That would have sealed her fate.

Was it Stephen Mallory who had killed her because she had caught him trying to carry Hamilton out into the night? What was it the doctor had told him earlier? The garden door had been ajar. But where was her husband, and why was she here in the surgery alone in the dead of night?

Unless she had answered a summons at the door because Dr. Granville wasn’t at home. Yet the surgery doors were seldom locked-Rutledge had discovered that for himself, and anyone else could have done the same.

Rutledge turned back to the room and said, “Dr. Granville informed me that he’d already searched the surgery for Hamilton.”

“So he had. But I expect he never thought to look behind the desk. It wasn’t likely that Hamilton would be crouching back there, was it? Not with his injuries.”

Rutledge turned to Granville. “Doctor?”

He roused himself with an effort. “No. I never-he couldn’t have been behind there. My first thought was he’d come to his senses and dragged himself out of bed to find something for his pain. And so I’d gone through every room, expecting him to be lying in one of them, unconscious. He’s a large man-I didn’t think to look-there. Not over there. The cabinets behind the desk contain files. The bottom drawer I keep locked because it has certain drugs in it that I don’t like to leave in the dispensary. Why should he hide over there? From me?” He got to his feet. “But then I saw that the garden door was ajar, and it occurred to me that he’d tried to reach his house.”

“Why should your wife be in the surgery alone in the middle of the night? Surely you missed her at breakfast.”

Granville wiped his hand across his mouth. “I wasn’t here for breakfast. I had-” He broke off and ran from the room. They could hear him vomiting outside the garden door. After a moment he came back in, his face still pale, his hands fumbling with a handkerchief.

“I couldn’t bear to touch her. I could see she was dead. I just sat here, and then somehow Bennett was here, and I made him look.” He swallowed hard. “I’d been out with a case of congestive heart failure. William Joyner, that was. When I got back, I came directly to the surgery to look in on Hamilton. He was gone and I came for you. I didn’t go to my house-I didn’t want to disturb my-my wife. I saw no reason to worry her.” With sudden ferocity, he twisted the handkerchief in his hands. “I’ll kill Mallory for you. You needn’t wait for the hangman.”

They caught him as he lunged for the door, and Bennett swore as the doctor kicked out at his foot in his frantic effort to break free, cursing and fighting with the strength of fury.

It took them several minutes to settle him in the chair again, and this time Rutledge held the glass so that Granville could drink a little of the whiskey. Still, he managed to spill most of it down his shirt, and Bennett said testily, “It’s not doing much good. Let it go.”

Granville began to cry, his eyes red rimmed and unfocused. “I’m sorry,” he said over and over again. “I’m sorry.”

Rutledge wasn’t certain whether he was apologizing to them or to his dead wife for somehow failing her.

They could hear the outside door opening and closing.

The constable came to the consulting room door and said, “It’s the rector. Mr. Putnam. Shall I let him in, Inspector Rutledge? I’ve turned away all the others as Inspector Bennett instructed, but I thought-”

“Yes, yes, bring him here. Warn him beforehand, will you?”

Rutledge went to the door as he heard Putnam coming down the passage with the constable, the two men speaking in subdued voices.

“Mr. Putnam? I think Dr. Granville has need of you, sir. And, Constable, where is the nearest doctor? Send someone for him, if you please. Directly. Take my motorcar. It will be faster. And lock the surgery door before you go. We don’t want people walking in.”

Putnam stepped into the room and went across to the doctor, kneeling by his chair. “This is shocking, I haven’t quite-Will you not come with me to the house for a bit?” he asked gently. “I’ll make you a pot of tea and you can leave these gentlemen to their duties.”

Granville turned to face him, and at first Rutledge thought he was going to refuse to go with the rector. But then he stood up docilely and walked out of the room without looking back.

Bennett said as soon as he was out of sight, “Well, Rutledge, will you arrest that bastard now, or shall I?”

“Where’s the proof that Mallory attacked Mrs. Granville? It could have been Hamilton.”

Bennett stared at him in shocked silence, then found his tongue. “Hamilton?”

“Men with severe head wounds are sometimes muddled. If Mrs. Granville startled him in the dark, he might have thought she was whoever had attacked him in the first place.”