Charles Todd - A False Mirror

Rutledge followed Hamilton up the steps and said, as Putnam turned toward him, “He needs to pack a valise. Can you help him?”

Putnam cast him a swift look, then said, “Of course. Are you in pain, man? Here, take my arm. Shouldn’t we send for a doctor? It might be best.”

Mallory had come back, standing by the door, calling quietly up the stairs, “The water’s on the boil. Do you know what you’re doing?”

In another fifteen minutes, the three men were downstairs once more. Mallory had taken the tea tray into the sitting room. Hamilton’s valise was left outside the door.

Hamilton and Mallory faced each other in stiff silence.

Mallory was the first to speak. “If I’ve caused you worry, I’m sorry. It was all I could think of, to keep myself safe. She’s your wife, and I have respected that. She will tell you as much.”

Hamilton said, “Thank you.” He found a chair and sat in it. “I’d like to see her now, if I may.”

Putnam said, “I’ll bring her to you.”

But they had finished their tea before Felicity Hamilton came down to the sitting room. She had dressed herself carefully, her hair shining in the light and her dark blue skirt nearly the same shade as Miranda Cole’s sweater.

“Matthew?” she said tentatively. “Are you all right?”

“As well as can be expected. I’ve given you a fright, I’m sorry.”

“We thought you were dead,” she wailed and started toward him. Then she stopped, not knowing quite what to do.

There was an awkward moment, before Putnam said, “You’ll want some tea, my dear. Come and sit here, by the fire.”

She hesitated, and then crossed the room to take the chair he offered her. He brought her a cup, like a good host, and went to stand by the windows, a watcher and a witness.

Mallory, his back to the wall, said, “Keep this short, Rutledge. We’re none of us at our best.”

Rutledge said, without preamble, “Someone has been mischiefmaking. At a guess it began when whoever it was watched Mr. Hamilton here walk down to the Mole for his morning stroll. Inspector Bennett believed it was Mallory, because there appeared to be a very good reason for him to wish Hamilton out of the way. We needn’t go into that. But I’ve come gradually to the conclusion that Bennett is wrong. And that’s why he’s not here this morning. I’ve got the three principals sitting in this room. A witness in Mr. Putnam. I expect what is said here to stay here. Do you understand me? Hamilton, I’m offering you a list of names. Tell me which one had a reason to kill you.”

Matthew Hamilton, surprise in his voice, said, “I’ve told you. Stratton threatened me. But I never believed he’d carry it out. If he’d been on the strand that morning, I’d have turned away and left him there. I’m not a fool. But I wasn’t afraid of him attacking me.”

“Who is Stratton?” both Mrs. Hamilton and Mallory asked in almost the same breath.

“A colleague,” Hamilton answered. “Go on, Rutledge.”

“George Reston.”

Mr. Putnam moved to say something, then thought better of it.

“He’s an angry man, filled with bitterness long before I knew him. He dislikes me, and I’ve never quite understood why. I dealt with his business partner. I still do. I rather believe that Thurston Caldwell would like to see me dead. But he daren’t touch me. Too many people would point a finger in his direction. That’s why I’ve stayed with him.”

“But they haven’t pointed at him, at least not here in Hampton Regis.”

“Then I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

“Mallory, here.”

“No, I don’t see that any more than you do.”

“Miss Esterley.”

“In God’s name, why her? She’s been a friend.”

“Then we must look at your wife. Felicity Hamilton.”

She smothered a little cry of disbelief.

“That’s enough, man, I won’t listen to any more of this!” Hamilton was angry, his face flushing with it. “If you can’t be sensible about this, then it’s over.”

Mallory had started to his feet, then sank back into his chair, remembering that, with her husband in the room, he had no right to be Felicity’s champion.

Putnam anxiously watched Rutledge.

He waited until the protest had subsided, and then said, “We haven’t found the weapon that was used to strike you down, Hamilton. But I want you to look at what I’m about to bring in.”

He went to the motorcar, lifted the rug from the rear seat, and carried it into the house with him.

When he held one end and let the rug unfurl, something hard and long went clattering across the floor to the hearth, nearly touching the toes of Felicity Hamilton’s shoes before it was stopped by the wood basket. She cried out, and the three men, already on their feet, crowded forward to see it better, though it was nearly five feet long and made of teak with worn brass tips.

Hamilton swayed on his feet, and Putnam put out an arm to steady him. Mallory was as pale as his shirt.

A boat hook, old, battered, very likely passed down for generations through a fisherman’s family, lay there in the fire’s red glow.

Not quite an African execution club, as Dr. Hester had suggested, but near enough to kill a man with one blow.

Rutledge said, “You told me last night, Mr. Hamilton, that you’d heard someone over by the boats. It’s in your statement. This is what he was looking for. He found it, and before you could hear him come up behind you, he brought you down with one swing. After that he was free to use it any way he liked. Or she. A woman could wield this hook as well. Now tell me, if you will, who else among your acquaintance is a cold-blooded murderer?”

Felicity asked, drawing her feet under her, away from the long, heavy length of wood, “Is-was this the one that was used?”

“I doubt we could prove it.”

“Whose boat did this one come from?” Putnam asked.

“It was drawn up on the shingle, much as it always seems to be. We can trace the boat, of course. But the boat hook was borrowed, dipped in seawater, to wash away any blood, and simply put back again. Ten minutes, at most, I should think. The owner never missed it.”

“I don’t see why I wasn’t killed,” Hamilton said in wonder. “I must have a harder head than he thought.”

“If you were dead, your lungs wouldn’t fill with seawater as you drowned. The battering from the rocks would have masked these injuries well enough, there wouldn’t be any question about what happened.”

Mallory interjected, “And if there was a question, I was the scapegoat.”

“I’m afraid so.” Rutledge bent down, retrieved the boat hook, and rolled it in the motorcar’s rug again, setting it outside the door. “Someone will be wanting this back.”

Hamilton said wistfully, “I wish you could explain away Mrs. Granville’s death as easily.”

“Not yet. But you didn’t kill her, you know. She wasn’t strangled.”

“Then why-? Damn it, I confessed to it!”

“Yes, I owe you an apology for that. It’s what I told you. But your willingness to take the blame was honorable.”

“What are you going to do now?” Mallory asked. “There’s still Bennett to deal with.”

“I want the four of you where I can keep an eye on you. Mr. Putnam, you’re needed here, if you’ll agree to stay. Mallory, you and Mrs. Hamilton will go on as before, if you please. And, in a change of plans, Mr. Hamilton no doubt would like his bed. I propose that he take to it at once and stay there while I report to the world at large that he’s been found, he’s still not fully coherent, and we expect a specialist to arrive shortly from London to tell us more about the head injury.”

He thought they were going to refuse. But Hamilton said, “I for one will do as I’m asked. I’ve not got the strength to argue. Am I to groan when Bennett comes? I can tell you now that the pain in my ribs and that leg will make it authentic enough even for Dr. Granville to believe.”