Charles Todd - A False Mirror

“You know he couldn’t. You know he wasn’t a match for Stephen Mallory, not in his condition. If Mallory was the one who attacked him Monday morning, Hamilton would surely wait until he was well enough to challenge the man.”

When Miss Esterley turned back to him, there were tears in her eyes. “The man I care about would have risked everything for her sake.”

The shining knight to the rescue of the damsel in distress. He wondered if that was how she really saw Hamilton, or if it was her own disappointment speaking. The fact that he hadn’t come to this house instead.

“Then you didn’t know him well. It would have been foolhardy.” It was said gently, without condemnation.

“You’re wrong. I can tell you that if Matthew Hamilton was alive and in his right mind, his only thought would have been Felicity. No matter what the cost. And if he didn’t go to Casa Miranda, to her, then he’s dead.”

The tears began to fall then, and she wiped them away angrily. “When I heard that Dr. Granville couldn’t find him, my heart turned to stone. I refuse to believe he’s dead, but in my heart I know he must be. Someone came back to stop him from telling what he knows. Knew.”

“Then why not kill him in his bed, there in the surgery. Why go to the trouble of removing him and taking the chance of being seen doing it?”

“For the very reason you’re here. You don’t know what has happened to him, and you’ll likely never know.” He handed her his handkerchief and she took it without thanking him, trying to staunch the humiliating flow. “I’m not in love with him, I never was. But I value-valued him-and I never believed I would lose him like this. I thought-I felt he would be there, a friend, for many years. And I was comforted by that belief.”

Rutledge sat there, his mouth dry, unable to think of words of consolation. She had put the case for Hamilton’s death very succinctly, and he knew that whatever she might say about Felicity and another woman’s husband, she thought of herself as under Hamilton’s protection too.

She went on relentlessly: “You don’t know what it’s like, living alone for the rest of your life, the man you were intending to marry dead on a battlefield you’ve never seen and will never visit. You don’t know how he died, or when he died, or even why he died. Whether he was screaming in pain, or unconscious, or bleeding badly and left on the wire. You picture it in your mind, night after night, and try to reach out to him, to put an end to not knowing. Trying to tell yourself what you’d have said to him if you could have held him at the end. But there’s nothing left. Only a polite letter from an officer, on the heels of the official notification. And after that silence and emptiness. As if he’d been swallowed up by the sea, and no one knew.” She choked off the rest.

“I understand…,” he began.

But Susan Esterley said harshly, “No, you can’t. You couldn’t possibly.”

Rutledge left soon afterward, and it wasn’t until he was on the street, by the motorcar, that Hamish said, “She’d lie for him if he asked her to.”

And Rutledge realized that she’d never answered his questions, except with a question of her own.

He swore as he remembered that he’d also planned to ask her about Miss Cole.

When Rutledge rang up London from the Duke of Monmouth Inn, it wasn’t to speak to Gibson at the Yard.

His instinct warned him off, reminding him of the cold reception the last time he’d spoken to the sergeant. And he’d also be obliged to report the fact that Hamilton was missing and that there had been a second attack, this one ending in murder. Just now he needed time to think before Chief Superintendent Bowles summoned him in a blazing fury.

The call was to his sister.

Frances was surprised to hear from him. “I thought you’d been sent to Coventry,” she said. “How is the weather along the south coast?”

“Wretched. But warmer. If the sun comes out, we’ll have a taste of spring.”

She laughed. “Then bring it back with you. London is as dreary as London can be.”

“I need information about someone who was in the Foreign Office. He’s retired now to England, but his last posting was to Malta. One Matthew Hamilton-”

He’d expected her to tell him that the name was familiar, but it would take several hours to track down whatever it was he wanted to learn. Instead she said, “But you must know him as well. He was at that party at Melinda Crawford’s house. The one where you broke out in measles and had to be carried home. Mother was quite upset with you for making her miss a brilliant dinner.”

“I don’t remember much of that weekend.” He’d been twelve and wretchedly sick. A long time ago…eighteen years?

“You played croquet with him. And won.”

It was his turn to laugh. “That was Matthew Hamilton?”

“Of course it was.”

“Good God. I thought him quite ancient. I expect he’s only forty-eight, now.”

“And still an attractive man, I must say. I saw photographs of him when he was at Versailles, they were in the newspapers for all of a week. He looked quite distinguished in that company of ancient men. Even as a girl I envied the women who played tennis with him. But I had my revenge, you know. He took me in to dinner, either because he felt sorry for me, abandoned and alone, or more likely, Melinda put him up to it. I was elated. My dinner companions were generally callow boys with spots, who either refused to speak to me or bored me to tears with their cricket exploits. I quite forgave you the measles.” There was a pause. “Ian. Why are you asking about him? Please don’t tell me he’s dead.”

“No. A person of interest in the inquiry that brought me here,” he said, evading the question. “His wife is many years younger and can’t tell me very much about his past.”

“Has he killed someone?” Her voice was tight. “I refuse to believe he could do such a thing.”

“The fact is, he’s gone missing.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Then Frances said, “All right, you’d rather not tell me more. So I won’t pry. What do you want to know? Why he should have disappeared?”

“More to the point, has there been gossip about him, most especially about his career?”

“He wasn’t very popular after expressing an opinion about the Peace Conference at Versailles. He’d been on the ambassador’s staff in Turkey before the war, and as I remember, in Germany even earlier than that. The general view was that he should have been consulted but his position wasn’t in accord with the intent of the French at the talks. Rather like that man Lawrence and his Arab connections, Matthew Hamilton had friends in Turkey and in Germany who were pushing for a different outcome. I daresay he was in the right, but no one cared to hear it. And so he chose to retire and return to England.”

“Not under a cloud?”

“Not precisely a cloud. But some very important people were not pleased with him, and he knew very well what that would mean to his career. Or perhaps he was disillusioned. Or they threatened him with Paraguay. There are ways of getting even without actually sending him home in disgrace. I don’t think he’d have cared for a South American posting, after Europe. And his interests lay there, of course.”

“What interests?”

“He liked to poke about in the old ruins. A way to pass the time, at a guess, and if one lives somewhere long enough, it’s natural to start to wonder what’s outside one’s window, so to speak. Remember Barton Wallace, who got caught up in those strange poles in Canada, and wrote about what the Indians were carving on them?”

Barton Wallace had been a friend of his father’s, sent to Vancouver to handle the Wallace family’s Pacific trade for their firm. While there, he’d written a treatise on Indian totems, and it proved immensely popular.