Charles Todd - A False Mirror

Stephen wheeled to the window, blind to the distant sea glimmering at the bottom of the lawns, and gulls wheeling above a fishing boat pulling for shore. What would Matthew do when he was in his right mind again? And if he couldn’t remember, what would he think? Whom would he believe? Bennett?

He turned back to Felicity, trying to stifle the fear rising in him. He said, with more force than he felt, “He’s bound to remember. He’s a stubborn old bird, he’ll come through this, Felicity, wait and see.”

“I must go back to the surgery. What will you do-”

She broke off as Nan came in with the tea tray. The woman’s eyes were busy, moving from her mistress’s face to Stephen Mallory’s as she tried to make sense of the strained relations between them. There was an avidness as well, and Stephen frowned. What he saw worried him, and his first thought was that Nan would go rushing off to the police, given the chance.

He got up hastily and took the tray from her, saying, “Thank you, Nan, that will be all for now.”

The maid reluctantly withdrew, and after she had gone, Stephen went silently to the door and pulled it open suddenly, expecting to find her there, listening. But she was not in the passage.

Felicity was trying to pour the tea with shaking hands and sloshed half of hers into the saucer.

Stephen gently took the teapot from her, dabbed at her saucer with his handkerchief, then gave her the clean cup, adding sugar and milk to it.

She drank it thirstily, as if it was a panacea for her problems.

“I can’t think. My mind’s a blur,” she said, setting her cup down at last. “I wish none of this had happened, I wish it was all a bad dream and there was no truth in any of it. I wish-”

There was a pounding at the front door.

They stared at each other.

“Bennett.” Stephen said the name with despair, then added rapidly, “Felicity, if you believe I’m telling you the truth, that’s all that matters.”

But she was at the sitting room door ahead of him. “Never mind, Nan, I’ll see to it,” she called. And then turning back to Stephen, she said, “There’s the revolver in Matthew’s desk. Top drawer. Quickly!”

Stephen turned to the desk under the windows at the side of the room, opened the drawer, and found the weapon lying there under a handful of papers.

“Come with me,” Felicity added, all but pulling at him. “Hurry, to the door!”

The pounding was louder, filling the house with noise.

“I’m not shooting a policeman.”

“No, come on, Stephen, hurry!”

Nan had stepped out of the kitchen passage, half hidden by the morning shadows in that corner of the hall, her inquisitiveness narrowing her eyes as she peered toward the door. Then she saw the weapon in Stephen’s hand and cried out.

Felicity said rapidly, “Hold the revolver against my back. Do as I say!”

But Stephen was already there, the weapon pointed at her even as he prayed it was empty. Driven by the strident pounding, he refused to think beyond this moment, beyond the need to protect Felicity from any appearance of collusion in the tangle he’d made of things.

She reached the front door and called out, “Who is it?” Her voice quivered, but she had herself under control. Mallory marveled at her.

“Inspector Bennett. Open the door, Mrs. Hamilton.”

“I can’t,” she cried. “I can’t. Please go away before he shoots me!”

Stephen flinched, unprepared for her dramatic pronouncement. He kept his finger away from the trigger, bile filling his throat with a fear that had nothing to do with Felicity or the inspector. Put the barrel into his mouth and end the torment, that’s all he had to do… But not here, not in front of her.

There was silence on the other side of the door. Then, “Is Stephen Mallory with you, Mrs. Hamilton?”

“Yes, he’s right behind me.”

“Is he armed, Mrs. Hamilton?”

“Yes-yes, he has my husband’s revolver. Please don’t open that door!”

She could hear Bennett speaking rapidly to one of the men with him, then heard them speculating among themselves. Stephen seemed turned to stone behind her.

“My maid is here too. Please go away. Please.” The anxiety in her voice was genuine, her need to be rid of them pressing her into real fear.

“Very well, Mrs. Hamilton,” another voice said. “But we’ll be back. And I’d advise Mr. Mallory that it would be in his own best interest to give himself up quietly. There’s no need to subject you to more horror.”

“I understand.”

She thought she could hear them moving away to the drive, still talking among themselves. Bennett would be furious at being thwarted a second time, he wasn’t a man to take frustration in his stride and try to deal with it sensibly. She could feel her heart thudding in her chest, realizing only then that she’d made matters worse for herself and for Mallory.

Behind her Stephen was exclaiming hoarsely, “What have you done? In heaven’s name, Felicity, do you want to see me hang?”

They locked Nan into one of the rooms in the servants’ quarters, where a butler had kept a cot, then went up the stairs into the sitting room again.

Stephen, drained, sat down heavily in the chair by the window. Realizing he still held the revolver, he gingerly set it on the desk and leaned back again.

“Stephen,” Felicity was saying gently, “Stephen, no, listen to me. They aren’t going to treat you fairly. Bennett is vindictive at best. He’ll have you up on a charge of attempted murder, and if Matthew dies-”

She broke off, her face horrified. “I can’t go back to Matthew. I can’t go back to sit with him.”

“You should have thought of that before you got me into this muddle.”

“But Nan had seen you. I couldn’t pretend you weren’t here. She’d have told them everything she knows and made up the rest. You don’t know her. All I could think of was that Nan must surely have heard you say you still loved me. It’s all they needed to be told, Bennett was already saying at the surgery that you and I-” She stopped. “What have I done?”

“I don’t see any way out of this.” He glanced toward the revolver. “It would solve everything if I just went into the garden and ended it, and let them think what they like.”

Felicity was out of her chair, picking up the revolver and shoving it into the desk drawer again, turning the key and then putting it in her pocket.

“No, don’t ever say that again. We’ll find a way. Matthew’s man of business-we can ask to speak to him, and tell him the truth.”

“He’s never liked you, Felicity. You know that as well as I do.”

It was true. Mr. Caldwell had had his hands on Matthew’s fortune for years, managing it while Hamilton was out of the country. He blamed Felicity for the fact that Hamilton had retired early and demanded an accounting. She’d always wondered if he had made free with the funds from time to time, when his own accounts were in arrears. If that was true, he’d covered his tracks by the time Matthew resumed management of his money.

He would like nothing better than to watch Matthew Hamilton’s wife begging him to defend her former lover. And then refuse her pleas.

“Where else can we turn?” She considered the rector and the vestry members, rejecting them one by one. They would hardly defy the police on her account.

For the first time she realized how foolish she’d been to antagonize the people Matthew had tried to cultivate in his new circumstances. Unaccustomed to the narrowness of village life, she’d been quickly bored by the people here, and with them, and had told herself that soon enough Matthew would be as well. That this would become their country house for the summer months, not their year-round residence. In which case they needn’t concern themselves with Hampton Regis’s dull pretense at Society.