Charles Todd - A False Mirror

People would say she ought to have known-

Tears ran down her face. She loved him more than she’d ever told him. And if he died, and didn’t know, it was her fault.

She refused to consider Bennett’s claim that Stephen had attacked him. It was too bizarre, too unbelievable. And yet she had almost believed it, in the first shock of hearing Inspector Bennett’s bold accusation. It had torn at her heart and the icy truth of guilt had swept her.

You can’t love two men. Not in the same way. For God’s sake, it’s not possible!

The gates to the drive loomed ahead, small things, decorative, hardly intended to keep intruders out or love inside. She had no recollection of how she had got this far, or how long it had taken her. Her feet had guided her home. That was all that mattered. Had anyone spoken to her? She’d been deaf and blind, absorbed in her own misery.

Home.

The graceful tiled plate on the gatepost mocked her. Casa Miranda. The name of a house where Matthew had lived in one of his postings. He’d liked it, he’d told her, and had carried it with him ever after. She had wanted to name the house on the hill Windsong, but he’d laughed and said that was commonplace and she’d soon grow to like Miranda better. It meant Vantage Point, he said, but it still sounded foreign to her, like a woman’s name. Wasn’t there a Miranda in one of Shakespeare’s plays?

She all but ran up the drive, her gaze on the door, and then stopped short.

Why had she come back to the house? Why hadn’t she gone to search for Stephen?

She didn’t know the answer to that. Except that she’d run home like a hurt child to hide her face in her mother’s skirts.

Or-yes, she did know why she hadn’t searched-she hadn’t wanted to look into his face and read shame and guilt and love there.

For an instant she debated going back to the doctor’s surgery, but her feet were once more carrying her toward the front door, not down the way she had come. After what she’d heard, she couldn’t bear to face any of them. She was sure Granville’s wife had never liked her. This would only give Mrs. Granville more fodder for gossip. What Bennett had said would be all over Hampton Regis before the day was out. If no one believed it before, everyone would believe it now.

Opening her door, she realized it was Nan’s day to clean-she’d forgotten that Nan was here when the constable had knocked. Well, she’d just have to send the maid home, she couldn’t bear having someone there, in the house, moving about. She needed to think.

Stepping from the bright morning into the dimly lit foyer, she once again stopped dead in her tracks.

“Matthew?” she said to the ghost of him sitting at the bottom of the staircase. A sudden fear swept her. Had he died without her there to hold his hand? Had she left him to die and he’d come to chide her?

But it wasn’t Matthew’s ghost, it was Stephen, very much alive.

She watched his face crumple as he read the shock in her face. “How is he?” he asked, his voice husky. “For God’s sake, tell me he’s still alive?”

“He’s alive,” she heard herself saying. “But he’s so-I’ve never seen anyone that badly hurt.”

“Thank God. Bennett told me they’d found a body-I thought-”

Felicity shut the door and leaned against it, her legs refusing to hold her up. “What are you doing here? The police-Bennett’s foot may be broken, did you know that?”

“I’m sorry. He tried to stop me, it was his own doing. I had to come here, I had to tell you that I didn’t harm Matthew. I didn’t touch him, Felicity! I would never have touched him. Tell me you believe me?”

He got to his feet, standing there with such pain in his eyes that she couldn’t bear to see it.

“Felicity-”

He put out his hand, begging.

“Please, Felicity. I didn’t hurt him!”

She took a deep shuddering breath. “I don’t know what to think anymore. If you were innocent, why didn’t you let Bennett question you? Why did you run him down?”

“I didn’t run him down. He was clinging to the door of the car, and wouldn’t let go. When he couldn’t hold on any longer, he dropped the wrong way. I couldn’t have stopped if I’d had angels holding the motorcar back. All I could think of was that I had to see you, had to tell you that I didn’t touch Matthew.”

“Then who did?” she asked wearily.

“I don’t know. I’m going to find out, I promise you that.”

“Oh, Stephen-” Her voice broke.

He stepped forward, intending to comfort her, and then turned away. “For God’s sake, don’t cry.”

“Don’t cry?” she repeated through her tears. “Matthew’s probably dying, and I’m here, instead of there, and I love you both, and I don’t want anything to happen to either of you. Why can’t we just be happy, and not think of anything else but that?”

“Because I love you,” he told her bluntly. “And God help me, I can’t stop.”

Rutledge, following his quarry through the busy London streets, kept a good distance between himself and the man who had been leaning against the lamppost.

Old Bowels would have his head on a platter if he was wrong. Hamish was busy reminding him of that. But instinct told him he wasn’t wrong. The man’s interest had been too intense. Too personal.

His quarry moved briskly, but without the illusion of hurrying. They were into Kensington now, shops and flats on one side, the palace grounds on the other. At length the man turned down a side street, walked four houses from the corner, turned up the steps, and let himself in the door.

Rutledge stayed where he was. It was an old trick, walking into a building and waiting to see who was behind you. And if someone was there, he was often gullible enough to keep on going, right past the window where you watched. And you simply stepped out when he was past and went quietly in the opposite direction.

But after half an hour, no one had come out the front door, and Rutledge was swearing with certainty that his quarry had gone out the back and disappeared.

He had resigned himself to losing the man altogether, just as his quarry stepped out of the door again, looked both ways, and then came toward Rutledge.

“Whist!” Hamish warned in his ear.

There was nothing for it but to disappear into the door at his shoulder, and Rutledge found himself in a tobacconist’s, the aroma of cigars strong in the confines of the small, paneled shop.

“May I help you, sir?”

He turned to find an elderly clerk behind the counter, staring at him.

If he confessed to being a policeman, Rutledge thought, it would be all over the neighborhood before tea.

And then his quarry came around the corner and opened the door to the shop.

Rutledge quickly said to the clerk, “I’m looking for a Mrs. Channing-”

It was the first name that came into his head.

“Channing? I don’t believe I know any Channings hereabouts. Mr. Fields, is it a name you’re familiar with?”

And Rutledge, turning, found himself confronting the observer at the lamppost.

His face was scarred, giving it a bitter twist, the slate blue eyes wary, the mouth tight.

“Channings? No, I can’t think of any. Sorry.”

Rutledge had no option. He thanked the man and the clerk and went out the shop door into the street. He made a pretense of standing there, looking first one way and then the other, as if uncertain what to do next. Hamish, in the back of his mind, said, “Ye canna’ loiter.”

Rutledge snapped, “You needn’t tell me.” He turned back the way he’d come and moved on, wondering where the constable whose patch this was might have taken himself.

He found a pub one street away, and went inside.