Charles Todd - A False Mirror

Mallory stopped. Then he said to Rutledge, “Your brief is still to find who has killed two people who didn’t deserve to die. But make it soon. I don’t think I can take much more of this.”

He started to step back through the door and then paused with one foot on the threshold. “We’ve got no supplies. Let the rector bring us what we need. I won’t shut him in with us. And he won’t tell Felicity-Mrs. Hamilton-about her husband’s death or Mrs. Granville’s. She doesn’t need to suffer any more than she has already.”

Rutledge said to the closing door, “Mallory-”

There was silence behind the wooden paneling. But Rutledge had the most vivid image of Mallory standing there in the dimness on the other side, head bowed, hands over his face.

Climbing painfully into the motorcar, Bennett said, “I tried. No one can say I didn’t try.”

Rutledge took a deep breath. “It was admirably done. I’d hoped he would accept your offer. It was generous.” But he found himself thinking that perhaps the visit of the Chief Constable had had a salutary effect on Bennett’s determination to hang Mallory out of hand. It might still be there, but the policeman had triumphed over the broken bones in his foot when it was most needed.

But Hamish wasn’t satisfied. He said, “Ye ken, he doesna’ wish to go down in flames with you or the Lieutenant.”

It was a chilling analogy. How many airplanes had they watched crash in flames over the Front? Even if the pilot got out, he seldom survived. But Bennett was determined to see that whatever the outcome for Rutledge or Mallory, he remained the local policeman in Hampton Regis.

The inspector was saying, “Did you believe him, then? That he’s pinned in that house by Mrs. Hamilton’s fears, and never set foot outside?”

“It could well be the truth. Certainly if Mrs. Hamilton woke in the night and realized that Mallory was nowhere to be found, her first thought must be that he’d used the cover of darkness to go down to Granville’s surgery.”

“There’s no telling with women,” Bennett said with a sigh. “She might have decided to cut her losses. Here’s Hamilton dying, and her reputation damaged. She might well decide that her future was safer with Mallory than as a widow whose name was under a cloud. Husband murdered, gossip swirling about her wherever she went.”

Rutledge tried to picture Mrs. Hamilton as a schemer. And found to his surprise that while he couldn’t put it beyond her to look to the future, all things considered, she might well be better off with her husband at the end of this ordeal. Just as Mallory had admitted. He also found it hard to believe that any feelings she might have had for Mallory would survive what the two of them were going through now.

But Bennett was right. There was no certainty with women. They saw their world in a very different light. They had to face condemnation of a different sort, the look in a man’s eyes as he recalled a hint of scandal, the glance that passed around a circle of other women as she walked into a room. A hostess’s hesitation in greeting her, an older woman’s reluctance to present her to impressionable daughters. A whisper behind a fan, a man’s hand slipping as they danced, as if testing her willingness.

And there was Nan Weekes, who would gladly add to rumors and speculation.

Rutledge dragged his thoughts back to Matthew Hamilton. Why had he been attacked in the first place? That was still the most urgent question. For once that had happened, Hamilton’s death must have become a foregone conclusion, to prevent him from telling the police what he remembered. If Granville had failed to save Hamilton’s life that first morning, Margaret Granville might still be alive. Or if he’d had the sense to put a guard on his patient, she might not have been killed. But it had all begun in the mist early on Monday morning. An opportunity seized? Or a victim stalked?

What secret was so important that an innocent woman’s life had to be taken to protect it?

Rutledge delivered Inspector Bennett to the police station and then turned the motorcar in the direction of the surgery.

But after an hour of walking through the rooms, putting himself into Hamilton’s shoes and then into Mrs. Granville’s, he was no closer to an answer.

It was while he was opening closets and searching through shelves that he did make one new discovery.

While the bedclothes in the room where Hamilton had lain were thrown back, as far as he, Rutledge, could determine, none of them had been taken away. Hamilton’s clothing and all his personal belongings were missing, yes-whether put on his body or tied in a bundle. But now he noticed that blankets had been removed from the cupboard in the passage where they were stored for ready use. The evidence was so slim it wasn’t surprising that he hadn’t noticed it before. Like the sheets below them, the remaining half dozen blankets were folded perfectly and set squarely on their shelf. But the top one was skewed very slightly, as if by a hand disturbing them in the dark. Mrs. Granville would have left these as she had everything else, in perfect order. The doctor’s wife carrying out every instruction with care and attention to detail.

Not proof, of course, and such as it was, it would have to be confirmed by Dr. Granville. But possibly an indication that Hamilton was still out of his head and needed to be hauled away like a sack of goods.

There had been sea mist and a rain… To keep Hamilton dry was inconsequential surely, if the intent was to kill him anyway. No, trundled in a barrow or carried over the shoulder, it was prudent to shield him from sight.

What still struck Rutledge was the mind behind every move that the killer had made so far.

Meticulous planning and execution.

Nothing left to chance but Mrs. Granville’s sudden appearance. And even that deterrent had been overcome.

Was Mallory capable of such planning? In the trenches he’d followed orders and carried them out with a soldier’s skill, but without passion or flair to spur on his men. Foresight was deeply imbedded in most officers who had survived through to 1916 and the Somme. They learned. They profited from the costly mistakes of others.

If positions had been reversed, Hamilton, the Foreign Ser vice career officer, might have plotted Mallory’s death and seen it through with such precise skill. He’d dealt with the Turks and the Germans, where every word and gesture had been watched and scrutinized for its nuances. It was a hard school and he’d survived in it.

Who had turned just such cunning against the man? And why?

Rutledge went back to the inn for a late luncheon, eating quickly without speaking to anyone. He could feel the other diners regarding him surreptitiously, their ears cocked for his voice.

Bennett, nursing his foot, had all but dropped out of his usual haunts, growling in his cave like a wounded bear. And one didn’t call on the policeman’s wife, not socially, without a damned good excuse.

He on the other hand was a fish in a glass globe, Rutledge told himself wryly, living here at the Duke of Monmouth. The one man who could tell the inhabitants of Hampton Regis what had happened at the surgery this morning had to take his meal somewhere, and such a small town ran either to tearooms suitable for women or a pub or two where workmen could pick up their midday meal or stop by for a sandwich and a pint at the end of the day. He had seen the latter tucked into back streets, with perhaps a small dining room on the far side of the bar, and names like Fisherman’s Rest or The Plough and Share. Plain food, but filling and faster ser vice than the hotel. Nearer the Mole was The Drowned Man, with a lurid sign of a corpse wrapped in seaweed lying on the pub doorstep on one side and being handed a pint of what appeared to be bitter, on the other.