Charles Todd - A False Mirror

“Which bedroom is over the dining room?” Rutledge asked her.

“The guest room, second door beyond the stairs. On your right.”

“I’ll go and have a look,” he said, but Mallory stopped him.

“We shouldn’t separate. That was the bargain.”

“I went down alone before.”

“That was different, damn it. It was suspicious, but not threatening.”

They were on their feet, standing together in the dim light. Mallory turned to Felicity. “If you must stay here, shut that door. I can’t see with your light in my eyes.”

She did as he asked, and the passage was dark again. Rutledge nearly jumped out of his skin as her hand brushed the back of his shoulder, so certain it was Hamish that he nearly cried out. But she was just moving nearer, he could smell the scent she wore as she clutched at Mallory’s arm, the paleness of her shawl picking her out as his eyes adjusted again to the lack of light.

“You won’t shoot him, promise me you won’t. If it’s Matthew, we don’t want to hurt him,” she was whispering importunately.

“Shhh.” Mallory leaned forward, as if to help his ears penetrate the shadows that lay between them and the top of the stairs.

But nothing came up the stairs, neither a figment of their imaginations nor a shambling wounded man half out of his mind.

Rutledge thought, standing there, It’s easy to believe in monsters in the dark. Young Jeremy was not alone.

And Hamish, whose ears had always been the sharpest, said, “He isna’ coming.”

Rutledge replied silently, “You can’t be sure. The stairs are carpeted.”

“He’s no’ coming. It’s a game.”

And although they stood there for another quarter of an hour, pinned where they were by the tension of not knowing, Hamish proved to be right.

In the end, the three of them ventured down the stairs as the first gray threads of light broke over the horizon and the head of the staircase loomed ghostly in front of them. It didn’t take them long to find what they had heard. A long black length of tree limb had been driven through the panes of the dining room window, protruding like a battered and obscene spear above the shattered bits of glass scattered on the polished floor below it.

Rutledge went outside then, but beneath the window the thick matting of leaves blown against the foundations masked any sign of footprints.

He could see the tree where the limb had come from. Three had broken off, one of them driven deep into the soil, another leaning crookedly against the foundations, and the third thrust through the window.

But what he couldn’t determine, in spite of carefully searching for any sign that might confirm it, was whether that one branch had had the help of a human agency to ram it through the glass. He could have done it, tall as he was, and actually reached up to pull it out as Mallory shoved it toward him and then went for something to patch the hole.

He remembered what Hamish had said, that someone was toying with them. That someone had known the house was a trap and played with their nerves.

He hadn’t spoken to his watchers. And they might well tell him a different tale.

Felicity insisted that she would make breakfast for him before he left the house. Rutledge wasn’t certain whether it was because she wanted to keep him there until daylight had swept away the shadows of the night, or because she was afraid to be alone with Mallory any longer than was necessary.

And so the three of them sat in the dining room, chilled as it was after a night of wind pouring through broken glass. Mallory had patched it with a length of wood he’d found somewhere, but when the wind blew from the sea, it whistled incessantly. A reminder of their fears.

She had cooked rashers of bacon and boiled eggs to go with them, made toast without burning it, and found a pot of jam that tasted of summer. Rutledge had made the tea, reminded of a kitchen in Westmorland, the warmest room of the house and the busiest.

Hamish retorted that Rutledge had been a stranger there as well as here.

“Nan didn’t make that,” she said, setting the jam on the table between the two men. “It was a gift from Miss Esterley. She thought we might enjoy it. Matthew was saving it for some reason. I don’t quite know why. At least that’s what Nan told me when I asked what had become of it. I wrote a note to thank Miss Esterley, all the same.”

“How many days a week did your maid come here?”

“Three days. On Tuesday she went to Mrs. Granville, and on Thursday and Saturday she went to the Restons. She told me only last month that if I could do without her one of my afternoons, she’d go to the rectory. The elderly woman who has been housekeeper to Mr. Putnam is considering moving away to live with her daughter.”

“Miss Esterley has her own maid, I think?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Was Nan much of a gossip?”

“She never gossiped with me. Whether she gossiped about me I don’t know. Must we talk about her? It makes me ill, just thinking about her. How do you work as a policeman, Mr. Rutledge? I couldn’t bring myself to do what you do.”

“Someone must keep order,” he answered lightly. “It’s what makes life possible for everyone else.”

“I hadn’t thought about it in that light. Matthew said once that he could measure a country’s future by the honesty of its police force.” Her face clouded. “Where is he, Mr. Rutledge, and why is he doing such things to us?”

“We don’t know that he is.”

“We’ve assumed that he is. I was so frightened last night. I hardly slept.”

“And it’s to do again tonight,” Mallory reminded her. “Unless he’s found today.”

“I wish I knew what had happened to him when he went walking that day. I’ve wished so many times I’d begged him to stay home with me. But there was no way of knowing, was there, that it would be different that morning. Do you think he’s ever going to be-in good health again?” she ended, trying to find the word she wanted and failing.

“Dr. Granville felt he would recover physically. Bones knit and bruises fade. We can only hope that his mind will heal too,” Rutledge answered.

“But why would he kill Nan? It makes no sense,” Felicity said.

Mallory put in, “It makes as much sense as killing-” He broke off, appalled at what he’d nearly said.

Felicity Hamilton was sharp, in her own way. She stared at him, then asked, “Who? Who else is dead?”

Mallory tried to recover. “It makes as much sense as killing me,” he ended.

“No, that’s not what you were going to say. Mr. Rutledge? Has everyone been lying to me? Who else is dead?” When he was slow to answer, she said accusingly, “I knew you were all keeping something from me. I knew there was something more to Matthew vanishing like that. What has he done?”

“It was Mrs. Granville,” Rutledge finally told her. “She was found in the surgery, the only reasonable explanation being that she saw lights and went to investigate. We don’t know for a fact that Hamilton touched her.”

“So that’s why it was Dr. Hester, yesterday, and not Dr. Granville-” As the enormity of what she had just heard registered, she turned on Mallory with such anguish that he flinched. “What have we done to him, Stephen? Between us, what have we done!”

And she was gone, leaving Mallory sitting there like a man turned to stone.

Rutledge went upstairs later and tapped on the door. “Mrs. Hamilton?”

But she wouldn’t answer him. He tried again, and then said through the panels, “Do you want to leave with me, Mrs. Hamilton? I’ve spoken to Mallory. He tells me that you’re free to go, if you wish.”

He listened to the silence on the other side, concerned about her.