Charles Todd - A False Mirror

“You’re a fool if you believe that.”

Rutledge was out of patience. “Stop thinking with your foot and your pride. We have a dead woman on our hands, and a missing man. Mallory has two witnesses at that house, remember. And we have no idea when Hamilton went missing. At least not yet.”

“What was Mrs. Granville doing here at the surgery in the middle of the night, if she hadn’t let Mallory in?”

“I don’t know what brought her here. She could have seen a light and expected to find her husband in the surgery, not Mallory. She could have come to look in on Hamilton, and he woke up, dazed, confused, and afraid of the shadowy figure standing over his bed. When she turned away and went into Granville’s office, he could have followed her. She could even have been on the point of turning up the lamp by the desk to see if her husband was asleep in his chair.”

“Farradiddle. If it was Hamilton, what did he use for a weapon? There’s none lying about that I can see.”

It was useless. But Rutledge was irritated, and snapped, “A good barrister will bring up the possibility. We must be there before him.”

Bennett would hear none of it. “You’ve done nothing since you got here but make excuses for that murderer. I told you from the start you’d come to protect him, not arrest him. It’s plain as the nose on your face. Did he serve under you? Is that it?”

Rutledge started to reply but thought better of it. How was he to explain to Bennett that he was striving to be fair to Mallory because he had once hated the man. With a passion built of despair and aching resentment that strings pulled for one man had done nothing for so many others in greater need. Had done nothing, in fact, to save Hamish MacLeod and all those like him.

A tense silence between the two policemen lengthened.

Rutledge went to stand by the window, looking out at the rain forming puddles that became rivers through the back garden, any tracks of importance long since washed away. Bennett sat cushioning his foot as best he could on a stool in front of his chair. The smell of whiskey was still strong in the room, from where Granville had spilled it. And Mrs. Granville’s body was a forceful presence even though she was out of sight around the corner of the desk.

Restless with waiting, Rutledge used the next half hour to search the surgery for himself, with particular care given to the room where Hamilton had been lying. But there was no indication of a scuffle. The bedclothes, thrown back haphazardly, were the only sign of agitation on Hamilton’s part-or haste on Mallory’s. The Crown would be hard-pressed to say with any certainty what had happened. Adding to that, Hamilton’s clothing and possessions were missing as well.

There was a brush of what appeared to be blood, only a thin streak, on the edge of the door, as if Hamilton had grasped it to steady himself-or Mallory had had difficulty hoisting Hamilton over his shoulder in the small space. And how could he have carried a dead weight out of the building and as far as the Mole?

Hamish said, “A barrow from the shed.”

“Then where is it now? And why didn’t Jeremy Cornelius see it? No, if it was Mallory, he came prepared to make Hamilton’s disappearance as inconspicuous as possible. And so far he’s succeeded.”

But Hamish was not in the mood to agree. “What if the lad saw but one man, no’ two?”

Hamilton himself, stooped in pain, his head covered to hide the bandaging. But what had possessed him to walk away from Casa Miranda? Unless he was too muddled to know what he was doing?

Rutledge went back to the doctor’s office, but Bennett’s unvoiced condemnation beat against him, and he felt as if he would suffocate if he stayed there. He had already looked in the closet where medicines and supplies were kept, searched the waiting room, the other examining rooms, scanned the shelves behind the doctor’s desk, reached over it to pull open drawers and close them again, thumbed through shelves of files in another closet. Nothing appeared to be out of order. Nor had he found anything that might conceivably be the weapon that had killed Margaret Granville. All the same, for want of anything better to do, he returned to the waiting room.

Dr. Granville’s medical bag stood forlornly where he must have set it down on his return from Joyner’s house. A reminder that medicine was powerless against death.

Rutledge squatted beside it and opened the top. Inside there were boxes of pills and powders. He took out the nearest one. An emetic. The next he recognized as digitalis. A small notebook caught his eye, and he opened that to the page where a fountain pen had been clipped. Lines were scrawled there, dated today with the time given as four in the morning, describing treatment of one William Joyner whose heart was failing. Thumbing through earlier pages, he found that Granville kept careful records of patients he saw outside surgery hours. Joyner’s name came up a dozen times, with a list of symptoms and medicines prescribed, treatment instituted.

He heard brisk footsteps in the passage. Setting the notebook back in the bag, Rutledge closed it and stood up. A youngish man with prematurely white hair stepped into the room. The constable following on his heels said only, “Dr. Hester, sir. From Middlebury.”

“Thank you for coming.” Rutledge introduced himself, and added, “This way.” He led Hester to the office.

Hester nodded to Bennett, who said, “It’s Dr. Granville’s wife, sir, she’s there behind the desk. I didn’t like to ask him to touch her.”

“Perfectly right.”

Hester set his bag on the desktop and knelt beside the body, working efficiently and carefully in the small space.

“I daresay the cause of death will be skull fracture from the blow on the back of the head. She was probably unconscious before she hit the floor, and most likely dead shortly thereafter. Hard to tell until I’ve examined her in better lighting. She’s been dead for several hours-the body is cool but rigor hasn’t set in. As far as I can tell, she’s not been interfered with in any way. I should think the body lies as it fell, moving very little after that. As I’m sure Dr. Granville is already aware, she probably knew nothing from the time she was struck. I can’t say what instrument was used, but if there’s nothing out of place here-” He gestured to the room at large. “Most likely the weapon was taken away by whoever did this.”

“A cane?” Bennett asked. “We saw that the doctor has an assortment of canes and crutches in a closet. For all we know, one is missing.”

“It would depend on the shape of the cane’s head. I’d guess more round than angular. With sufficient force and room enough to bring one’s full weight into play, a single blow in the right area of the skull could kill.”

Rutledge said, “Most of them have a knob at the end for a better grip.”

“Yes, that’s the sort I keep on hand,” Hester agreed. “It couldn’t have done this. But that’s not to say it’s the only kind Granville has used.” He glanced at the body. “Poor woman.” It was the first time his professional manner slipped.

Rutledge saw in his mind’s eye the rounded breast of the swan on Miss Esterley’s cane. “Then it wouldn’t have mattered whether the killer was a man or a woman, given the right weapon.”

“Probably not.” Hester got to his feet. “That’s all I can give you here. You might have a look at those tongs by the hearth. Though I don’t expect they were used. Unwieldy, I’d say.”

Rutledge said, “I’ve examined them. No hair, no blood. Unless they were wiped clean.”

Bennett looked around the room as Hester had done, hoping to see it through new eyes. The silver candlesticks. A pair of carved bookends in the shape of globes, Europe and Asia on one side, the Americas on the other. A paperweight in the form of a frog. A display of early airplane models in bottles, the tiny canvas bodies and thin wooden struts too delicate to survive use as a weapon, even if the glass didn’t shatter.