Charles Todd - A False Mirror

Rutledge turned from the view, feeling the damp biting through him, though the sun was making a yeoman’s effort to warm his shoulders.

“The killer may think it is finished. He doesn’t know me.”

There was a shop near the police station, and Rutledge walked toward it, thinking about a hot cup of tea. He had drunk only half of it when one of Bennett’s men came to fetch him.

There had been a telephone call for him from Exeter. Someone from the hotel had brought the message to the police station.

Rutledge decided, as he paid his account at the teashop, to return the Exeter telephone call from the Duke of Monmouth. He could count on more privacy there.

Constable Jordan, not to be put off, said, “Inspector Bennett would like to know, sir, if this is to do with Mr. Hamilton.”

“Tell Inspector Bennett that I’ve found a woman who knew Hamilton as a young man. She may have remembered something useful. When I spoke to her last, she wasn’t very encouraging. But she’s had a little time to think about it.”

“Yes, sir. Something in his past, then. Inspector Bennett asks you keep him informed, sir.”

Bennett had been curt about Felicity Hamilton’s attempt at suicide, describing it as nervous theatrics. “I’d send Mrs. Bennett along if it weren’t for putting another pawn in Mallory’s hands. It’s better for that whole house of cards to come tumbling down. And it will, mark my words. If not today, by tomorrow.” There had been satisfaction in his certainty, as if this had been his plan from the start.

Rutledge nodded and walked briskly on. Halfway to the Duke of Monmouth, he encountered Dr. Granville coming toward him.

“I was just coming to find you, Rutledge. Miss Esterley has agreed to consider staying the night. It was the best I could do. But I was able to arrange a thermos of broth for Mrs. Hamilton, and I’m taking it up when it’s ready. Unless you’re going back yourself? The Duke of Monmouth kitchen is preparing it now.”

“I’ll see to it. Thanks.”

“If you need me, I’ll be at the undertaker’s. After that, you’ll find me at the rectory. No later than one or half past, I should think.” He walked on, his shoulders braced for the ordeal ahead.

Rutledge looked after him, not envying him. On impulse, he called after Granville, “Would you rather wait until I can spell Mr. Putnam?”

Granville turned. “I don’t know that his company would make it any easier. But I’ll need to confer with him about the ser vice. Let him stay with Mrs. Hamilton as long as she needs him.”

Rutledge reached the inn and shut himself into the telephone closet. He put through the call to Exeter and found himself speaking to an Inspector Cubbins.

“I’m calling on behalf of a Miss Miranda Cole,” Cubbins told him, curiosity thick in his Devon voice. “She has asked me to tell you she regrets her stubbornness yesterday. If you could find it in yourself to forgive her, she’ll speak with you again this afternoon.”

It was not the message Rutledge had expected from her. As the silence lengthened, Cubbins asked, “Is this by any stretch of my imagination something to do with what’s going on there in Hampton Regis? If it is, I’d like to hear about it. I’m told one of my constables took you to the Cole house in the evening when I was off duty.”

“’Ware!” Hamish warned.

Rutledge, brought up short, said, “I called on her, yes, to see if she could give me any information about Matthew Hamilton’s early years in England. She knew him then but hasn’t seen or as far as I know heard from him since that time. I thought, a formality. Who brought you the message? Is there anything wrong?”

“Should there be?”

“All was well when I left her.”

“Then it’s well now. Her maid, Miss Dedham, came in not half an hour ago. She refused to wait, just delivered a note from her mistress and went back to the house. But she seemed perfectly composed.” There was a pause. “How did you come to hear about Miss Cole?”

“A woman in Kent told me Miss Cole had moved in the same circles as Hamilton and his family. It was a shorter drive to Exeter.”

“So it is.” Rutledge could hear fingers tapping on the man’s desk. “You’ll come and fetch me if there’s more than a formality involved, won’t you? I’d like to think we look after our own.”

He took a chance. “If you’ve nothing better to do, meet me there.”

“We don’t have murderers running about undetected, but I’ve got a pleasing sufficiency on my plate at the moment. No, I leave it to your good judgment, Rutledge. You know where to find me.”

And he rang off.

Rutledge went to the dining room for Mrs. Hamilton’s broth and discovered that luncheon would be served in fifteen minutes. He used the time to dress for his coming meeting with Miss Cole and then ate his meal in his usual corner.

He dropped the thermos of broth at the door of Casa Miranda.

Mallory, accepting it, said, “She probably won’t touch it, now that I have.”

“She isn’t expecting you to poison her.”

“You’d think she was, refusing to let me come near her.”

“Leave her alone, Mallory, and set your own house in order.”

With that he turned on his heel and strode back to the motorcar.

“Where will you be, if we need you?” Mallory called to him.

“Not far away.”

“I saw you on the headland over there. Did you find anything?”

“Only the marks of your tires,” Rutledge retorted as he let out the clutch. “So much for secrecy and discretion.”

At the end of the drive, he turned to the west, soon leaving Hampton Regis behind.

It must have been market day somewhere, Rutledge decided, driving through the second herd of cows moving placidly along the road ahead of him. He caught up with another cart shortly afterward, laden with chickens in wicker baskets. They squawked in alarm as the motorcar passed by.

But he made steady time in spite of the traffic, and it was only a little after afternoon tea that he found himself pulling into the drive at the house where Miranda Cole lived with her aunt.

Dedham answered his knocks, her face drawn as if she hadn’t slept well. “She’s expecting you. Don’t upset her any more than you already have.”

“I never intended to upset your mistress.”

She opened the door to the sitting room, ushered him in, and shut it almost on his heels with a snap that told him her opinion of him.

Miss Cole was sitting in the sunlight that poured through the window beside her. He thought at first that she’d been crying, and then realized that her eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep.

It had been a long night in this house as well as the one named for this woman in Hampton Regis.

“Sit down, Inspector. I have had my tea. You’ll find the pot is still warm, if you care for a cup.”

“Thank you, no.”

“Then please tell me, from the beginning, what you know about Matthew Hamilton and everything that happened to him in the last week.”

Rutledge began with Mallory’s decision after leaving hospital to live outside Hampton Regis, and his inability to stop himself from seeing Felicity, one way or another.

“Is she pretty, the woman Matthew married? Felicity.” She seemed to taste the name, as if it could present her with an image of his wife.

“I would call her pretty. She has a vivacity that must be attractive in happier circumstances. And a certain vulnerability.”

He went through the morning that Matthew Hamilton had walked along the water, and how he had been found. Watching her-for she couldn’t see him and he kept his gaze steady, reading each expression that flitted across what she must have supposed to be a still face-he thought, She wasn’t blind from birth. Her eyes follow me when I move. There must be some sense of light and dark, or perhaps a range of shadows.