Charles Todd - A False Mirror

“Yes, I’m about to address that, Mr. Hamilton. We’ll do something for your pain, I promise.”

Felicity said, “But, Matthew, where have you been?”

Rutledge stopped him from answering. “On the Exeter road, Mrs. Hamilton, where a lorry driver took pity on him. Are we agreed, then?”

While Putnam struggled with breakfast, Mallory helped Rutledge put Matthew Hamilton to bed, with pillows and bedding placed to ease his discomfort. Felicity hovered over him, still uncertain how to behave toward him.

Her fright had gone deep. And she was finding that her relationship with both the men she had loved was on shaky ground.

She was relieved when Rutledge sent her to eat her meal in the sitting room.

She was afraid, in one corner of her mind, that Matthew Hamilton was relieved as well.

Rutledge took the teak hook back to the boat it had come from. The mist had lifted inland, but along the water it still swathed the Mole in a heavy gray blanket that left a residue of moisture on his hat and shoulders. He wasn’t sure who might have seen him with the boat hook, but any uproar from the owner over the loss of it would have attracted more gossip. Or so he tried to convince himself. Either way it was a gamble. Someone in Hampton Regis would know very well why he had been interested in boat gear.

Afterward, he went to the rectory to find Dr. Granville, telling him that Hamilton had been found, and that he was in pain.

“I’ve got just the thing for him. Do you want me to examine him? Where in God’s name did you find him?”

“A lorry driver discovered him along the road west. God knows how he made it as far as he did.”

“And what about my wife? What has he told you about her death?”

“I have a confession,” Rutledge said. “For what it’s worth. He’s still rather unclear about details.”

“Is he at the police station?”

“He’s not well enough for that. He’s in the house, and we’ve got a specialist coming down from London to have a look at him. Something we ought to have done in the first twenty-four hours.”

“Yes, hindsight is a glorious thing. I’ve got something in my case that you can give him. It won’t do any harm, but it should keep him quiet until your man arrives. Anyone I know in the field? Baldwin for one. Or Hutchinson?”

“We’ll know soon enough, when he’s here.”

Granville left Rutledge standing in the entry and went up to his room. When he came back he was holding a packet of powders very like the ones Dr. Hester had left for Felicity Hamilton two days ago.

Rutledge thanked him and went in search of Bennett.

“Well done,” Bennett told him, when Rutledge made a brief report. “I’ll be there in a quarter of an hour. I’d like to let the Chief Constable know he’s under lock and key. What’s become of the lorry driver?”

“With any luck he’s on his way back from St. Ives.”

“Good man. We’ll need a statement from him.”

“Understand, Bennett, early days yet to know where we are with Hamilton.”

“He’s said nothing of importance, then?”

“I was able to learn two facts I can be reasonably sure of. He didn’t see anyone by the water when he was walking, but he heard footsteps some distance away, closer to the boats. Whether this was a potential witness or the killer himself, we still have to determine.”

“We’ll send people around to talk to the men who keep their boats there.”

“It’s as well to ask if anything in the boats was missing or misplaced. Fact number two-Hamilton overheard a garbled version of events while he was in Granville’s surgery. Whether it was from one of us speaking too freely in his presence, or whether it was a voice outside his door talking to Mrs. Granville, I can’t tell you. He’s not very clear about it. But he felt for his own safety, he had to leave.”

“When was this?”

“When the sedation was wearing off and he was more awake than we knew.”

“Yes, well, head injuries can be quite severe. Small wonder he couldn’t make sense of anything. But then he could have recognized the voice as the person who’d half killed him, and that put the wind up.”

“I want to speak to Dr. Hester as soon as possible. We still have no murder weapon for Mrs. Granville.”

“Here-did Hamilton have his keys with him, when you found him in Exeter?”

“He did. I’ve got them now.”

With that Rutledge was already walking out the door. From the station he went to call on Miss Trining. Afterward he went to Miss Esterley’s house.

“You didn’t see fit to sit up with Felicity Hamilton last night,” he said as soon as he was shown into her sitting room.

She said, “I couldn’t face it. I’m no match for anyone breaking into the house. Worse than useless, come to that. Mr. Putnam was a better choice.”

“I think, perhaps, a woman’s company would have been more comforting. But it doesn’t matter, now. We’ve brought in Matthew Hamilton.”

“My God, where was he?”

“A lorry driver found him along the road to the west of here.” He gave her the same account he’d given Miss Trining and Dr. Granville.

She listened with increasing anxiety. “You’re telling me that he’ll live? That in time he’ll be whole again?”

“There’s some hope of that, yes.”

“But what about Mrs. Granville? Are you saying she was still alive when Matthew walked out of the surgery?”

“He’s not clear about that. Not yet. In time, with good medical care, we’ll know a little more. On the other hand, he may not remember anything, in spite of all we can do.”

She smiled wryly. “Having refused to help Felicity last night, I shan’t be very welcome coming to call on Matthew now. But I’d like very much to see for myself that he’s all right.”

“There won’t be any visitors for a while. He may even have to be taken to London for care.”

“At least he’s being given it. I was so annoyed with Dr. Granville, you know. Miss Trining had suggested a specialist, and I agreed with her. But he told her that as long as there was swelling in the brain, rest was what Matthew most needed.”

“I’m sure it was true. Now that he’s awake, time will be on his side.” He rose to leave.

Miss Esterley said, “Truly, I wasn’t a coward, last night. You have to understand. I wasn’t supposed to walk again. Ever. The doctors told me how lucky I was that the damage to my knee could be repaired, but even so they held out little hope I could use it properly. It required all the faith I possessed to go through the long, grueling weeks of treatment and exercises and manipulation. They’d learned, you see, from wounded soldiers. But they weren’t entirely sure it would work for me. In the end, it did. I keep my cane as a reminder of how close I’d come to being dependent on the care of others for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to take the risk, you see.”

Hamish said, “She doesna’ blame him.”

“No,” Rutledge answered silently. “Not openly. But it’s there, underneath. If he’d been less kind, perhaps her true feelings would have risen to the surface.”

Aloud, he said, “I should have thought the debt you owed Hamilton would have been well repaid by helping his wife-or as we thought then, his widow. Whatever the cost.”

She blushed, the warm color rising in her face. “That’s cruel. And that wasn’t the choice, was it?”

“I think you were afraid of what Matthew Hamilton might have become.”

“No, Mr. Rutledge. I saw that two innocent women had already been murdered,” she told him firmly. “And I was afraid I might be the third. Mr. Putnam didn’t face that risk. What comfort would it have been to me this morning, lying somewhere dead, to have you admit you’d been wrong to ask me?”