A False Mirror ir-9

by Charles Todd

  Putnam stepped into the room and went across to the doctor, kneeling by his chair. “This is shocking, I haven’t quite-Will you not come with me to the house for a bit?” he asked gently. “I’ll make you a pot of tea and you can leave these gentlemen to their duties.”

  Granville turned to face him, and at first Rutledge thought he was going to refuse to go with the rector. But then he stood up docilely and walked out of the room without looking back.

  Bennett said as soon as he was out of sight, “Well, Rutledge, will you arrest that bastard now, or shall I?”

  “Where’s the proof that Mallory attacked Mrs. Granville? It could have been Hamilton.”

  Bennett stared at him in shocked silence, then found his tongue. “Hamilton?”

  “Men with severe head wounds are sometimes muddled. If Mrs. Granville startled him in the dark, he might have thought she was whoever had attacked him in the first place.”

  “You’re a fool if you believe that.”

  Rutledge was out of patience. “Stop thinking with your foot and your pride. We have a dead woman on our hands, and a missing man. Mallory has two witnesses at that house, remember. And we have no idea when Hamilton went missing. At least not yet.”

  “What was Mrs. Granville doing here at the surgery in the middle of the night, if she hadn’t let Mallory in?”

  “I don’t know what brought her here. She could have seen a light and expected to find her husband in the surgery, not Mallory. She could have come to look in on Hamilton, and he woke up, dazed, confused, and afraid of the shadowy figure standing over his bed. When she turned away and went into Granville’s office, he could have followed her. She could even have been on the point of turning up the lamp by the desk to see if her husband was asleep in his chair.”

  “Farradiddle. If it was Hamilton, what did he use for a weapon? There’s none lying about that I can see.”

  It was useless. But Rutledge was irritated, and snapped, “A good barrister will bring up the possibility. We must be there before him.”

  Bennett would hear none of it. “You’ve done nothing since you got here but make excuses for that murderer. I told you from the start you’d come to protect him, not arrest him. It’s plain as the nose on your face. Did he serve under you? Is that it?”

  Rutledge started to reply but thought better of it. How was he to explain to Bennett that he was striving to be fair to Mallory because he had once hated the man. With a passion built of despair and aching resentment that strings pulled for one man had done nothing for so many others in greater need. Had done nothing, in fact, to save Hamish MacLeod and all those like him.

  A tense silence between the two policemen lengthened.

  Rutledge went to stand by the window, looking out at the rain forming puddles that became rivers through the back garden, any tracks of importance long since washed away. Bennett sat cushioning his foot as best he could on a stool in front of his chair. The smell of whiskey was still strong in the room, from where Granville had spilled it. And Mrs. Granville’s body was a forceful presence even though she was out of sight around the corner of the desk.

  Restless with waiting, Rutledge used the next half hour to search the surgery for himself, with particular care given to the room where Hamilton had been lying. But there was no indication of a scuffle. The bedclothes, thrown back haphazardly, were the only sign of agitation on Hamilton’s part-or haste on Mallory’s. The Crown would be hard-pressed to say with any certainty what had happened. Adding to that, Hamilton’s clothing and possessions were missing as well.

  There was a brush of what appeared to be blood, only a thin streak, on the edge of the door, as if Hamilton had grasped it to steady himself-or Mallory had had difficulty hoisting Hamilton over his shoulder in the small space. And how could he have carried a dead weight out of the building and as far as the Mole?

  Hamish said, “A barrow from the shed.”

  “Then where is it now? And why didn’t Jeremy Cornelius see it? No, if it was Mallory, he came prepared to make Hamilton’s disappearance as inconspicuous as possible. And so far he’s succeeded.”

  But Hamish was not in the mood to agree. “What if the lad saw but one man, no’ two?”

  Hamilton himself, stooped in pain, his head covered to hide the bandaging. But what had possessed him to walk away from Casa Miranda? Unless he was too muddled to know what he was doing?

  Rutledge went back to the doctor’s office, but Bennett’s unvoiced condemnation beat against him, and he felt as if he would suffocate if he stayed there. He had already looked in the closet where medicines and supplies were kept, searched the waiting room, the other examining rooms, scanned the shelves behind the doctor’s desk, reached over it to pull open drawers and close them again, thumbed through shelves of files in another closet. Nothing appeared to be out of order. Nor had he found anything that might conceivably be the weapon that had killed Margaret Granville. All the same, for want of anything better to do, he returned to the waiting room.

  Dr. Granville’s medical bag stood forlornly where he must have set it down on his return from Joyner’s house. A reminder that medicine was powerless against death.

  Rutledge squatted beside it and opened the top. Inside there were boxes of pills and powders. He took out the nearest one. An emetic. The next he recognized as digitalis. A small notebook caught his eye, and he opened that to the page where a fountain pen had been clipped. Lines were scrawled there, dated today with the time given as four in the morning, describing treatment of one William Joyner whose heart was failing. Thumbing through earlier pages, he found that Granville kept careful records of patients he saw outside surgery hours. Joyner’s name came up a dozen times, with a list of symptoms and medicines prescribed, treatment instituted.

  He heard brisk footsteps in the passage. Setting the notebook back in the bag, Rutledge closed it and stood up. A youngish man with prematurely white hair stepped into the room. The constable following on his heels said only, “Dr. Hester, sir. From Middlebury.”

  “Thank you for coming.” Rutledge introduced himself, and added, “This way.” He led Hester to the office.

  Hester nodded to Bennett, who said, “It’s Dr. Granville’s wife, sir, she’s there behind the desk. I didn’t like to ask him to touch her.”

  “Perfectly right.”

  Hester set his bag on the desktop and knelt beside the body, working efficiently and carefully in the small space.

  “I daresay the cause of death will be skull fracture from the blow on the back of the head. She was probably unconscious before she hit the floor, and most likely dead shortly thereafter. Hard to tell until I’ve examined her in better lighting. She’s been dead for several hours-the body is cool but rigor hasn’t set in. As far as I can tell, she’s not been interfered with in any way. I should think the body lies as it fell, moving very little after that. As I’m sure Dr. Granville is already aware, she probably knew nothing from the time she was struck. I can’t say what instrument was used, but if there’s nothing out of place here-” He gestured to the room at large. “Most likely the weapon was taken away by whoever did this.”

  “A cane?” Bennett asked. “We saw that the doctor has an assortment of canes and crutches in a closet. For all we know, one is missing.”

  “It would depend on the shape of the cane’s head. I’d guess more round than angular. With sufficient force and room enough to bring one’s full weight into play, a single blow in the right area of the skull could kill.”

  Rutledge said, “Most of them have a knob at the end for a better grip.”

  “Yes, that’s the sort I keep on hand,” Hester agreed. “It couldn’t have done this. But that’s not to say it’s the only kind Granville has used.” He glanced at the body. “Poor woman.” It was the first time his professional manner slipped.

  Rutledge saw in his mind’s eye the rounded breast of the swan on Miss Esterley’s cane. “Then it wouldn’t have mattered whether the killer was a man or a woman, given
the right weapon.”

  “Probably not.” Hester got to his feet. “That’s all I can give you here. You might have a look at those tongs by the hearth. Though I don’t expect they were used. Unwieldy, I’d say.”

  Rutledge said, “I’ve examined them. No hair, no blood. Unless they were wiped clean.”

  Bennett looked around the room as Hester had done, hoping to see it through new eyes. The silver candlesticks. A pair of carved bookends in the shape of globes, Europe and Asia on one side, the Americas on the other. A paperweight in the form of a frog. A display of early airplane models in bottles, the tiny canvas bodies and thin wooden struts too delicate to survive use as a weapon, even if the glass didn’t shatter.

  Hester said, following his gaze, “Apparently one of Granville’s cousins flew the damned things in France. And before he was killed, he made models of various types of craft for his parents. I expect no one wanted them in the house as a reminder. Either of you know what a knobkerrie is? Used in Africa for killing. Like a prehistoric club, actually, with a round knob at the end. Very efficient at caving in skulls. I’ve seen them. My grandfather spent some time in South Africa and up the western coast. He earned more as a doctor than as a prospector, and came home as poor as he left. Tells you something, doesn’t it?”

  And who else had been in South Africa? Certainly not Mallory. He could see the thought flit across Bennett’s face. But Miss Esterley had grown up in Kenya.

  “It doesn’t serve to guess,” Rutledge said finally. “If it’s not here, we’re wasting time. A simple hammer, brought with the killer? Who can say?” But that argued premeditation. And pointed to Mallory.

  “Yes, possible.” Hester took a deep breath. “All right, if you’re finished here, help me get her to my motorcar. There’s a proper canvas carrier, Bennett, if your constable will fetch it in. I’ll have more to tell you when I know more.”

  When the body of Mrs. Granville had been removed, Rutledge went to the house where the rector was keeping the doctor company. Bennett stumped after him on his single crutch, trying to keep pace. The constable was once more set to guard the surgery, his young face already older in the watery noon light.

  There was a fresh pot of tea waiting for them, and a plate of biscuits that Putnam had found somewhere, set out on a pretty floral plate.

  Granville was sitting at the table, staring vacantly out at the rain, his mind clearly somewhere else. Bennett refused the offer of a chair and leaned against the wall with his teacup balanced in one hand. Rutledge found himself thinking that Mrs. Granville wouldn’t have cared for people making free with her fine china, and would have worried about the cup in Bennett’s fist.

  Rutledge took his tea and drank a little of it to please Putnam, but then set it down and walked through the house, looking about him but touching nothing. On the first floor he found the bedrooms, and in what appeared to be Mrs. Granville’s room the coverlet had been thrown back, as if she had expected to return to her bed.

  From the window of her room she could look down on the rear of the surgery and the back door to the garden.

  An interesting thought. Was that the way that Hamilton had left, either under his own power or over someone’s shoulder? The door set ajar might also have been a diversion. Or Mrs. Granville could have left it open.

  Nothing else was in disarray. But there was a light film of face powder spilled across the top of the dressing table although Mrs. Granville’s hairbrush was placed next to her comb with tidy precision. Rutledge wondered if she was farsighted and failed to notice the powder there. Which would mean she could undoubtedly see as far as the surgery door.

  Why had she risen from her bed and gone to the surgery?

  Hamish said, “She thought she heard the doctor return. But he didna’ come into the house. After a time, she went to find him.”

  “Because she feared Hamilton was worse and Granville might need her. Yes, it could be that.”

  He stood there in the middle of the room. It seemed cold, as if the living part of it had died with its owner.

  The wrong place at the wrong time.

  He went back down the stairs to find Bennett waiting for him in the hall.

  “Well? I’m not up to walking about to no purpose.”

  “Nothing.”

  Bennett returned to the kitchen, but Putnam waylaid Rutledge in the passage.

  “I came to the surgery this morning to speak to Hamilton, or at least sit with him for a time,” he said in a low voice. “I never expected this!”

  “None of us did. Least of all Granville. Damn it, I warned him to find someone to watch over Hamilton.”

  “And there might have been two dead, instead of one,” Putnam replied quietly. “What’s become of him? Hamilton. Granville told me he’s nowhere to be found. That’s hard to believe.”

  “God knows where he is. Where could he go under his own power? And if someone took him away, where is he now? Thrown into the sea from a headland, left to die where we haven’t thought to look, carried far from here, and the body hidden?” Rutledge’s own sense of failure was burning inside him, along with the fear that Mrs. Granville’s death lay at his door. “Either way, taken or escaped, he could well be dead by now.”

  “I’d rather believe Mrs. Hamilton spirited him out of here.”

  “Mrs. Hamilton would have had no need to kill that poor woman.”

  “Yes, that’s true. But someone else might have come, found Hamilton gone, and taken his frustration out on Mrs. Granville.”

  Rutledge looked at Putnam. “That’s a very perceptive suggestion. But I’ve been to the house, and I can’t convince myself he’s there.”

  Hamish reminded him, “Ye didna’ search the woman’s room.”

  It was true. But to force his way in would have brought Mallory up the stairs, and what then? His instincts told him that Mrs. Hamilton had probably considered such a solution at some point, then failed to act on it. She’d have needed a motorcar, or the dogcart, and with either one, she risked Mallory storming out to stop her.

  What did Felicity Hamilton really want? Or to put it another way, which of the two men tied to her emotionally did she love?

  He deliberately changed the direction of the conversation. “You suggested in the nave of your church that I might wish to speak to a Miss Cole. Where do I find her?”

  “I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid. I only know of her because Matthew Hamilton spoke of her that one time. He described her as the most honorable and the most stubborn person he’d ever known. An odd compliment to pay a lady, you’d have thought. It stayed with me, what he’d said. I had the feeling it was very important to him, somehow.”

  The most honorable woman…In what sense? And Felicity Hamilton hadn’t recognized the name.

  “There’s one other possibility,” Rutledge continued. “There’s a cottage just west of here where Reston’s brother Freddy lived for some time.”

  Putnam’s eyebrows flew up. “But that cottage was derelict. And if it went over with the landslip this morning, there will be nothing left but splintered wood.”

  “No one could have foreseen that, could they? And Freddy Reston drowned not far from where Hamilton was discovered on the strand.”

  Putnam clicked his tongue. “As a matter of fact, the finding was that he’d fallen asleep there drunk as a lord, and choked on his own vomit. It’s the family that prefers to tell everyone he drowned.”

  “Freddy Reston’s death could have given someone the idea of leaving Hamilton there by the tideline. And later it could also have occurred to someone that the cottage where Reston had lived stood empty. I’m not overly fond of coincidences.”

  “But surely you aren’t suggesting that George Reston-and what reason could he have? That ridiculous clay figure is hardly grounds for murdering a man.”

  “For all any of us know,” Rutledge told him, smiling ruefully, “Hamilton’s relationship with Reston could have gone far beyond the original disagreement.” He stoppe
d himself from saying anything about Reston’s past history of violence but did add, “George Reston is a man of temper. You’ve seen it, and so have I.”

  “Yes, alas, it’s true. Still, a good man underneath.”

  Was that what he truly felt? Or was it only a priest’s need to believe that no man could be wholly evil?

  As Rutledge started to walk on, Putnam said, “You aren’t going to be foolish enough to take a boat around to the slip in this weather, are you? You’ll be lucky to reach the slip without swamping, much less be able to clamber about what’s left of the cottage.”

  Rutledge stopped and said over his shoulder, “Yes, well, perhaps someone was lucky. The question is, who?”

  “Would you mind if I asked Dr. Granville to come with me to the rectory? I don’t care for the idea of leaving him here, with so many reminders of his wife everywhere he looks. He’ll be better able to cope with them later.”

  Remembering the threat Granville had made against Mallory, Rutledge said, “By all means. I’d ask Bennett as well, if I were you.”

  Putnam smiled. “Indeed,” he said, as if he had felt the tension between the two policemen.

  Bennett, waiting for them in the kitchen, agreed at once to the suggestion, with the caveat that he didn’t think Granville would leave his surgery.

  But the persuasive rector was able to convince Dr. Granville to stay in the rectory for a few days, “away from here. Until you can come to grips with all that’s happened.”

  Granville got to his feet, looking around as if he barely recognized his own kitchen. “It’s raining,” he said. “I’ll need my coat. And my bag.”

  He was less pale now as the nausea faded, but his features were slack with exhaustion, and he had asked twice to Rutledge’s knowledge what had become of his wife’s body, as if he’d failed to take in the answer the first time.