Charles Todd - A False Mirror

He examined Nan Weekes, and said, “Very likely smothered as she slept. Taken by surprise, she didn’t have much chance to fight her murderer off. A knee already on her chest, a determination to see it through. That’s what it took.”

He lifted the maid’s hands one at a time. “See, she grazed her knuckles against the wall there. But her nails are clean. He’d have been wearing a coat, long sleeves, something that protected him.”

“A man or a woman, do you think?”

“It would depend on the killer’s state of mind, I should think. A timid man might fail where a resolute woman succeeded. Hatred breeds strength, oftentimes.”

Hester looked around the room, bare and yet somehow holding on to the anger and fear trapped with the woman confined here. “She couldn’t have run, even if she had been awake; there was nowhere to go. But he didn’t give her a chance to escape. He must have been very quiet, coming through that door. Dark as it was, she never saw his face, even if the pillow had slipped.” He turned over the pillow on the floor. “It’s one of the feather pillows from an upstairs bedroom, I should think. Servants don’t often sleep that comfortably. Fairly new too, and therefore better able to do the job.”

“I’m told that bedding was brought down from one of the guest rooms.”

“Yes, that fits. Well, that’s all I can tell you. Sorry.”

“Mrs. Hamilton is in the house, and in distress. Will you leave something to help her through this?”

“I’ll see her, if you like. As for Miss Weekes, shall I take her back with me?”

“If you would.”

“Yes. I’m getting quite a collection of Dr. Granville’s patients.” Dark wit from one professional to another. “But I daresay he won’t feel up to returning to his surgery for a few days yet. Not until after his wife’s funeral.” He closed up his case. “Whose hand is behind this, do you know? It’s not a very safe thing, to have whoever it is loose on Hampton Regis. But he failed with Hamilton, so I’m told. First try at any rate. I wonder what this poor woman did to make herself a target?”

“As far as we know, nothing. Mistaken identity?”

Hester turned to look at Rutledge. He was quick, his mind already leaping ahead. “Really? If you’re telling me that first Mrs. Granville and then Miss Weekes were killed because someone thought they were Felicity Hamilton, then I’d see to it that that policeman spent the night outside her door, not under that tree by the road.”

Bennett joined them then, with word that the constable had seen no one come or go from the house during the night. Hester gave him an abbreviated account of his preliminary examination. Then he prepared to move the body.

Looking down at the woman, Bennett said to Rutledge, “My money is still on Mallory. Hamilton’s dead, a scapegoat. Problem is, how are we going to prove any of it? You were saying before we have a clever bastard on our hands. But even clever bastards make mistakes. Let’s hope nobody else dies before he makes one.”

Putnam spent some time with Mallory, and then went back a second time to knock on Felicity Hamilton’s door. When she answered, his heart went out to her.

“My dear child!” he said and held her as she cried on his shoulder.

It seemed to ease her a little, although he could see that she was frightened and feeling the onslaught of responsibility for all that had taken place since her husband had been carried into Granville’s surgery.

He sat with her, brought her tea and a sandwich he’d managed to put together in the kitchen, careful to avoid the room where Nan Weekes had died.

But he had gone in to the maid before her body was removed, giving her the comfort of the church, wishing that she had heeded his encouragement to cooperate and had died without such resentment on her conscience. He tried to keep himself from dwelling on the question of which of the household would be blamed for her death. Mallory most likely, although it was even possible that Felicity might have been tempted to rid them of such an angry presence. He hoped Rutledge wouldn’t look in that direction. He himself felt none of the animosity toward Mallory that others had expressed, seeing only a wounded soul. But he grieved for the maid, in his own way.

After Felicity Hamilton had eaten, Putnam offered to come and chaperone her, now that Nan was dead.

But she shook her head. “I must see it through,” she told him. “I was the cause of so much of the trouble here. I must somehow make restitution.”

“You shouldn’t concern yourself with that. Leave it to Mr. Rutledge, my dear.”

“Where is Matthew, Mr. Putnam? No one will talk to me about him. And I know what the police must be thinking. If it wasn’t Stephen who killed her, then it was Matthew, trying to find Stephen and stumbling on Nan instead. But she wouldn’t have given him away, you know, even if he’d decided to slaughter half of Hampton Regis.”

“Is that what you believe must have happened? That he managed to make his way here?”

She rubbed her temples, as if her head throbbed. “Either I’m married to a murderer or locked in this house with one. And I don’t want to think about that. Stephen was as tired as I was of Nan’s tantrums, he could have killed her out of sheer despair. But not in cold blood, not in her sleep. Matthew could have decided that it was Stephen who was on the strand with him and wanted revenge. But why harm Nan? She liked Matthew, and he was wonderful with her, keeping her jolly when I couldn’t. She didn’t like me very much. And now either way I’ve got her killed.” Felicity turned to look out the window. “If Matthew came searching for his revolver and couldn’t find it because I’d given it to Stephen, Nan could have told him. She knew.”

Putnam didn’t put what was on his mind into words. That Nan, in that back passage, would have raised the alarm if someone had crept in. And it might have been all the warning Stephen Mallory and that revolver of his needed.

He was ashamed of the thought as soon as it had formed.

But almost at the same time that Putnam was considering the possibility, Bennett brought it up to Mallory.

“All right, let’s assume for the sake of argument that this is Mr. Hamilton’s work. In for a penny and all that. If he’s going to be hanged for Mrs. Granville, what’s one more corpse? And if he wanted you badly enough, he might feel that the maid was a fair exchange for the opportunity. Only, he discovered you had his revolver. Oh, don’t be a fool, Mallory, it must have been his, you weren’t in possession of one when you ran me down.”

“I can’t see why Hamilton had to hurt her,” Mallory said, rubbing his face with his hands, as if to scrub away his fatigue. “At least if he’s in his right mind. If he’d come to the bed and put a hand over her mouth, she’d have listened to him and done whatever he asked. Mrs. Hamilton tells me she thought he walked on water.”

Rutledge, the devil’s advocate, said, “In the dark, how could he know it was Nan? Or even that she was here? Besides, if he’d touched her, she’d have screamed bloody murder before he could convince her who he was. Her first thought would have been that you were in the room with her, Mallory. What I want to know is, if Hamilton is alive, if he didn’t go into the sea with that cottage, where was he concealed, all day yesterday when we were searching everywhere for him?”

“In the Granvillle house?” Bennett asked, hazarding a guess. “We never actually searched it, only the surgery. And after Granville went to the rectory, it stood empty. Or there’s the church. Putnam is half daft, he wouldn’t have noticed Hamilton if he’d hidden himself beneath one of those wretched choir stalls. Besides, he was occupied all the day with Dr. Granville. I doubt he set foot in the church.”