Charles Todd - A False Mirror

It was a poignant farewell. And there were equally poetic entries over the years, as the writer sat in a cafe and sipped coffee or finished a last glass of wine before going to bed. The rest was a meticulous account of a busy life and a devotion to duty that spoke of loneliness as well as dedication. Names, dates, times, places, matters up for discussion, resolution arrived at for every meeting and official function. Brief but incisive comments on people everywhere, from donkey men on Santorini to political appointees in the courts of the Kaiser and the viziers of Turkey. Cameos, perceptive and devastatingly honest, of visiting dignitaries and other diplomats serving their countries. And amusing sketches of the Englishmen he encountered or who had served with him in this or that capital. During the war years, there was a list of names, framed in black ink, of friends who had fallen.

Rutledge closed the last volume and put it back on the top shelf where he had found it.

A man could reconstruct his entire professional life from such a detailed account of twenty-odd years abroad. As an aide-memoire the diaries were priceless.

Whether Matthew Hamilton had intended to use them in such a way, Rutledge had no idea. But there was enough privy information in them to ruin more than one career. Or to provide a rich vein of blackmail material for an unscrupulous reader. And Hamilton had not spared himself on the pages, either.

Robert Stratton had every reason to fear the existence of the diaries. Whether he had ever confronted Hamilton about them, on the strand here in Hampton Regis or in the narrow, dirty streets of Istanbul, or bribed ill-paid customs officials to find and confiscate them at port cities, it was certain that the Foreign Office knew nothing of Stratton’s presence in Hampton Regis today.

The door opened, and Rutledge looked up, expecting to see Mrs. Hamilton on the threshold. But it was Mallory who stepped into the room. “You should go. I’ve been patient long enough.”

“I was just coming to find you. What do you know about Hamilton’s financial dealings?”

“Precious little.” He closed the door. “Should I be interested in them? Is there something that will hurt Felicity?”

“Not that I can see. But there was some trouble early on, when Hamilton returned to England. Does Mrs. Hamilton know the details of how his money was managed when he was abroad?”

“I’ve heard her remark, since I’ve been here, that his financial advisers don’t care for her. She suspects there was some trouble over resuming control of his money, and although it’s settled now, the man couldn’t be counted on to do her any favors. She seems to think the man blames her for enticing Hamilton back to England and cutting short his career. In all likelihood, he may believe that if Hamilton hadn’t married, he’d have gone abroad again.”

“But Hamilton didn’t know Felicity before he came back here, did he?”

“Of course not. It was my misfortune that he met her at a dinner party in London, while I was still in hospital. But that wouldn’t matter to a man like Caldwell, caught with his hand in the till-it was easier to point the finger of blame at a new wife.”

“Were there discrepancies in the accounts, do you think?”

“Hamilton’s not one to be gulled. I expect there was a swift rearrangement of funds to cover any difference in sums. Otherwise, the police would have been brought in. Are you telling me that Hamilton’s banker has been stalking him?”

“I’m only saying that there may be another motive besides an affair with his wife.”

“I never-”

Rutledge cut him short. “I’m not accusing you. I’m telling you that it’s very likely that a good case could be made on your behalf, bringing up the issue of embezzled money versus your past relationship with Mrs. Hamilton.”

Mallory took a deep breath. “All right. Thank you. But it isn’t Hamilton’s man of business here in Casa Miranda with her. Bennett won’t give a curse in hell for him. And where is Hamilton, come to that? I’ve had a rough day of it, keeping what I know from her. Is he dead? Rutledge, damn it, tell me!”

“I don’t know any more now than I did this morning.”

“God help us. I thought Scotland Yard could walk us through this maze and bring us safely out the other side.”

“Scotland Yard,” Rutledge told him with an edge to his voice, “is only as good as the information given it. And so far, that’s been precious little.”

Rutledge was very tired when he reached the inn. Hamish, hammering at him, was a dull ache that wouldn’t leave him, a reminder that he had failed Mrs. Granville as well as Matthew Hamilton.

He stretched out on his bed in the dark and, hands behind his head, stared up at the ceiling. There was one more thing he had to do this night, and he wasn’t sure where to begin.

Would Miss Cole be expecting a policeman at her door? Not unless she’d learned of events in Hampton Regis. And that was unlikely-the newspapers still hadn’t got wind of the assault on Hamilton or the murder of the doctor’s wife. It would be left to him to break bad news.

Or would she feel only a sadness for an old acquaintance? Rutledge hadn’t seen any mention in Hamilton’s diaries of Miss Cole or even of a married woman who might be her in later years. He hadn’t read them line for line, of course, but enough to have a very good feeling for what they contained. Indeed, Hamilton had seldom written about England, except for the occasional reference to a personal letter from a friend. Rutledge had come across Melinda Crawford’s name here and there, most often in connection with something Hamilton had seen or done or found that he knew she would enjoy hearing about in a letter. Whether Hamilton had actually written to her Rutledge didn’t know. He’d have to ask Melinda Crawford that. Hamilton might simply not have had time to keep up a lively correspondence, much as he might have wished to. Yet he’d spoken of Miss Cole to the rector.

After twenty years.

On the other hand, there was the photograph of the house on a quiet street in Malta, identified and ready to send. But clearly never put in its envelope. As if second thoughts had entered into the urge to keep a friendship alive, and in the end Hamilton had broken himself of the habit of following through on these small courtesies that would have left doors in England ajar.

And then he had come home and fallen desperately in love with a young woman. To recapture his lost youth? Or because in her eyes his years abroad were merely a romantic past, and she had no experience on which to judge the dangers and hardships and emptiness of a world where politics and protocol and too many secrets circumscribed everyday life.

Rutledge closed his eyes, trying to define what the relationship between Miss Cole and Matthew Hamilton had been. Instead he saw Jean’s face against his eyelids, and then Mallory, his uniform filthy, his face blistered from an early-morning gas attack, sitting with his back to the trench wall and weeping for his dead. But Hamish hadn’t wept, he had moved quietly among his remaining men, touching a shoulder here, saying a word there, bending over a soldier who was shaking and offering him a cigarette to steady him, binding up a wound that didn’t merit the journey back to an aid station. Then he had turned away and rested the splayed fingers of one hand against the earthen wall of the trench, his head coming down to touch them as he slept where he stood. For a mercy the guns were silent and for a few precious minutes the peace lasted.

Rutledge had watched from a distance. There had been nothing he could do, nothing he could say. And so he had turned his gaze back to the wire and the last lingering feathers of color in the clouds, a pink already shading to lavender and gray as night came on.