A False Mirror - Charles Todd [132]
26
Rutledge found himself standing there gaping.
She smiled wryly, a great sadness behind it. “I can imagine what’s going through your mind. But he wasn’t here last night. I didn’t lie to you. He was brought to my door early this morning by a very concerned lorry driver. He’d found Matthew along the road near a farm just west of Hampton Regis. I don’t know what Matthew expected to do, but he was still on his feet through sheer willpower, and the lorry driver told me he was hardly sensible for a quarter of an hour or more. It was several miles before he could even tell the man where he wanted to go.”
“Surely the driver must have been suspicious.”
“Apparently Matthew told him that he’d been robbed and beaten, and wanted to go home. Here. To my house. The driver was all for sending at once for the police, but I persuaded him to let me find the doctor first. And instead, I telephoned you.”
“Quite right.”
She reached out her hand. “If I may have your arm?”
Hastily he offered it to her, and she led him to the staircase. As they started to climb, she said, “Promise you won’t upset him. I’m going against his express wishes to tell no one he’s here. He will blame me for what you do.”
“I understand.” But he found himself wondering if she was afraid of Hamilton now, afraid that two women had died at his hands, and she might be placing herself in jeopardy. Even as she struggled to protect him.
Hamilton was lying in bed in what appeared to be a guest room, his skin gray against the stark white of bleached and pressed sheets.
Miranda Cole had opened the door quietly so as not to disturb him, but it was obvious that nothing short of cataclysm would rouse him from his exhausted sleep.
Rutledge stood there on the threshold, studying him for a moment.
His beard had grown dark shadows across his face, and his eyes seemed to have sunk deep into their sockets. The bruises had faded, a little, but the green and yellow replacing the livid red and dark purple made him seem closer to death than he had in Dr. Granville’s surgery when they were still bloody. As if he were already a corpse and no one had thought to tell him.
Signaling Miss Cole with a touch on her arm to stay where she was, he crossed to the bed and called Hamilton’s name in a sharp, clear voice.
It penetrated the heavy slumber. An arm, flung out to ward off a blow, was followed by Hamilton rearing up in bed, his face wild, prepared to defend himself.
Rutledge said rapidly, “You’re safe, man, no one will harm you here. You’re with friends.”
Some of the wildness fled but Hamilton frowned at him. “I don’t know you,” he said, the words a rumble in his chest.
“I’m someone Miss Cole sent for. To help you, if that’s possible. She’s there in the doorway, ask her yourself.”
Hamilton peered toward the door. “Miranda? What are you doing here?”
“It’s my house,” she told him in an ordinary voice, but Rutledge could see how her hands clutched the edges of her shawl. “Matthew, this is Ian Rutledge. I can’t do this alone, I had to find someone I trusted. Please let him help us.”
Hamilton lay back on his pillows, his eyes closed. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this, Miranda. But I didn’t know where else to turn.”
Rutledge said, “Do you remember how you got here, Hamilton?”
After a moment he said, “I remember lying down by the road, cold and tired. But then a vehicle was coming, and I got to my feet, trying to walk away from the road. I think he stopped. The lorry driver. The next thing I remember was being warm enough to think, and my leg hurting as we bounced over ruts.”
“Where had you been before lying down by the road?”
Hamilton gave a short bark of laughter. “In someone’s henhouse. I ate the eggs raw, I was that hungry. There was a cow as well, and I milked her when I felt stronger. But I couldn’t stay there. They’d gone to market and were bound to find me if I fell asleep in the hay.”
Hamish said softly, “The fox in the henhouse.”
That complaint had been included in a report by one of the men talking to householders