A False Mirror - Charles Todd [124]
“It was Mrs. Granville,” Rutledge finally told her. “She was found in the surgery, the only reasonable explanation being that she saw lights and went to investigate. We don’t know for a fact that Hamilton touched her.”
“So that’s why it was Dr. Hester, yesterday, and not Dr. Granville—” As the enormity of what she had just heard registered, she turned on Mallory with such anguish that he flinched. “What have we done to him, Stephen? Between us, what have we done!”
And she was gone, leaving Mallory sitting there like a man turned to stone.
Rutledge went upstairs later and tapped on the door. “Mrs. Hamilton?”
But she wouldn’t answer him. He tried again, and then said through the panels, “Do you want to leave with me, Mrs. Hamilton? I’ve spoken to Mallory. He tells me that you’re free to go, if you wish.”
He listened to the silence on the other side, concerned about her.
Hamish said, “She willna’ heed you. Open the door.”
Rutledge hesitated, unwilling to test the door. If it was locked, he couldn’t in good conscience knock it down. If it was unlocked, he would be violating her only sanctuary now in this house.
Hamish persisted, and finally he put his hand to the knob.
She was lying on the bed as she had been once before, her back to him, her hair falling in a tumble across the pillow. Asleep or pretending to be.
This time, there was a difference. Beside the bed, on its side and half empty, was the decanter of whiskey that Mallory had kept in the passage last night. Rutledge was certain he’d put it back where he found it this morning, along with the bedding and the chairs they’d used. But Mrs. Hamilton had found it. She had also emptied the box of powders Dr. Hester had left for her, taking them all at once with the whiskey.
Rutledge shouted for Mallory, and then was too busy to wait for him. She was breathing heavily, but he thought that could be only the whiskey and the fatigue of the long night as much as the sedative starting its deadly work. He picked her up in his arms and started for the stairs.
Mallory met him halfway and said only, “God in heaven.”
They got her to the kitchen and stretched her out on the worn table there, covering her with one of the blankets that had been in Nan’s room. Without ceremony, Rutledge thrust her fingers into the back of her throat, and as she retched, he pulled her head over the edge of the table.
She vomited only a little, and he tried again, this time more successfully.
“Strong tea, as strong as you can make it,” he told Mallory. “And then send the constable on duty for Dr. Granville.”
When nothing else worked, he got hot water from their breakfast tea and salt from the worktable down her throat, and the combination brought up the rest of the contents of her stomach.
She lay there, moaning in discomfort, but he held her head again and made her swallow the tea, though her throat was sore and she could hardly keep it down.
It was rough-and-ready treatment, without medical advice, but he had dealt with drunks, and what mattered was ridding her as fast as possible of what she’d swallowed.
There was no way to know if the powders would have killed her. Or if the whiskey mixed with them was a deadly brew. He had acted first and worried later.
By the time the rector and Dr. Granville had arrived, she was lying on the floor, wrapped in blankets with a bottle of hot water at her feet. Tears ran down her cheeks, and her hair on the pillow was dark with vomit and water and sweat. The kitchen was sour with the smell of sickness.
Dr. Granville, kneeling on the floor to examine her, said, “You seem to have got most of it in time. What was the sedative, do you know?”
“I don’t know.” Rutledge turned to Putnam. “What’s left is lying on the floor of her bedroom. Will you bring them down?”
Mallory said, “I’ll see to it,” and was gone before Rutledge could stop him.
Granville