A False Mirror - Charles Todd [104]
“How does Mallory feel about it?”
She smiled, her face coming to life for the first time in days. “He will probably be very happy to see the last of me. He was annoyed with me when I burned the potatoes, but that was only because I’d burned my finger as well and had gone to dip it in vinegar and soda. And he said, ‘Felicity, I have money, I would have provided you with everything in life that Matthew has, and treasured you for yourself. But you had told me all those years ago when we were in love that you could cook.’ And I was just as annoyed, and I said, ‘Of course I can cook, it’s only that I’ve had very little practice.’ I burst into tears and he said, ‘I’ll go fetch Nan.’ But I didn’t want to be shown up by her, she’d never let me forget it, and she’d find a way to tell Matthew as well. So I told him that if he did, I’d leave here when he slept and never come back again.”
From her expression Rutledge could see that she believed she had won the skirmish and she felt better after proving her self-reliance. But it was also clear to him that whatever feelings these two people had kept hidden away for the other, time and closeness had diminished them.
“It’s like being married,” she had put it, like an elopement gone wrong. Living in a garret on slim resources and without public acceptance, and trying to pretend that love was enough.
He felt pity for her, but there was no hope he could offer her. And to tell her that Matthew was very likely dead and their circumstances here at Casa Miranda had taken a dreadful turn, would be cruel. How would she cope, if in the end, she knew Mallory would be taken away to be tried and hanged for two murders?
She seemed to sense his change of mood and said sharply, “Are you keeping something from me, Inspector? Have you told Stephen more than you’ve told me?”
He’d lost sight of the fact that women often read minds or at the very least were sensitive to shifts in emotion.
“I was thinking,” he told her, “that Matthew Hamilton is a very lucky man.”
She blushed, her eyes filling with shining tears.
“When I have him safe again, I’ll never let him go. You can tell him that for me.”
And she was gone, leaving him with the key to the desk in his hand.
Rutledge waited, almost certain Felicity Hamilton would have second thoughts and come back to ask him to leave. When she didn’t, he crossed the room, unlocked the top drawer, and began his search.
There were accounts, letters to a man of business, receipts for payments made to firms shipping his household goods from Malta, and other papers relating to Hamilton’s affairs.
Under them there was a photograph of a cream stone house on a narrow street, its facade plain, but the intricacies of the lacing around the oriel windows were very old and created by a mason with expert hands. Rutledge stood there looking at it, and then turned it to the reverse side. It said, “My house in Malta, Casa Miranda, near a shaded square where I often take my tea. The cream cakes are better than any I’ve tasted anywhere else.” It was as if he had expected to send the photograph to someone and had described it for him or her. The sort of thing a friend might include in a letter to Melinda Crawford.
Rutledge shut that drawer and went to the next. He found more accounts for the Malta house and those from another one in Istanbul. There were letters to and from a man of business, and a name caught Rutledge’s eye as he was setting them back in the folder he’d opened. “I shall want George Reston’s assurance that all is well again, and afterward I shall move my business to the firm in Leadenhall Street, London.” There followed the direction of a firm that Rutledge recognized as old and well-established: McAudle, Harris, & Sons.
And why should George Reston have to give his assurance that all was well again?
Rutledge went back to the correspondence