A False Mirror - Charles Todd [25]
From the motorcar Bennett called, “It’s not her we want out of there, it’s him.” Rutledge ignored him.
“I—I can’t leave,” she answered. “I—in the morning, perhaps?”
“Mallory? Surely you’ll relent for Mrs. Hamilton’s sake?”
But there was only silence from the other side of the door. After a time, Rutledge returned to the motorcar and climbed into his seat. He could feel the tension of the last few minutes smothering him, until his head seemed to thunder with it.
“You should have pressed him,” Bennett told him in no uncertain terms. “While you had the chance. God knows what state those women will be in, come morning.”
Rutledge said, “Mallory is tired. He won’t be thinking very clearly. Anything that strikes him now as interference on our part will only make their situation worse. I can’t believe he’ll harm them tonight. Not after he’d got what he wanted. We’ll leave him to wonder about tomorrow and how he’s to explain himself.”
“That’s foolishness,” Bennett retorted. “You’re coddling a murderer.”
Hamish said, making clear his opinion of Bennett, “He’s no’ thinking sae verra’ clearly himsel’. He hasna’ considered that yon lieutenant would gladly see ye deid.”
“Why do you so firmly believe Mallory attacked Hamilton?” Rutledge asked the fuming inspector beside him as they drove out of the gates. He could see that a new face had replaced the watcher he’d glimpsed earlier in the shadows of a large tree. He presumed that while he was speaking to Mallory, distracting him, there had been a swift changing of the guard and the other constables had already walked back into Hampton Regis.
“Jealousy,” Bennett said baldly.
“Mallory was involved with Hamilton’s wife?” He considered the ramification of this. “Or only infatuated with her?”
Hamish, derisive in his mind, demanded, “Does it make any difference?”
“I can’t say,” Bennett added grudgingly, “how much involvement there has been. If gossip is to be believed, certainly on Mallory’s part there was the desire to step into Matthew Hamilton’s shoes. Or bed. How Mrs. Hamilton felt about it, no one seems to know.”
“What else do the gossips whisper?”
“There’s a difference in age between Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton. Twenty years, at a guess. Mallory on the other hand can’t be more than three or four years older than Mrs. Hamilton. The rest is plain as the nose on your face, isn’t it? She wouldn’t be the first woman to see a young sweetheart off to war, and then have second thoughts about waiting for him. Especially when her head’s turned by the attentions of someone of Hamilton’s standing. It explains why, when young Mallory is mustered out, he comes straight to Hampton Regis to live, not all that long after the Hamiltons take Casa Miranda. He’s got no family here, nor any connections that we know of. What else could have brought him?”
“Mallory returned to England in 1916.”
“Did he, now? Then where’s he been since then?” Bennett shook his head. “I don’t see how it matters either way. He’s in love with her, that’s clear enough, whenever it was he came to know her. Why else was he in such a hurry to see her, once he knew he was caught out?”
“Why, indeed?”
“Where there’s smoke, there’s bound to be fire.”
The road was quiet, the town dark, asleep.
“And so Hamilton was struck down, beaten, and left to drown. But no one saw the attack.”
“No one has stepped forward.”
“I’d like to look in on Matthew Hamilton,” Rutledge said.
“It’s well after midnight, man. You can’t go dragging the doctor out of his bed at this hour.”
“I doubt he’s in his bed.”
“Oh, very well.” Bennett gestured toward the first turning as they reached the Mole. “Down that street to the next corner. The house with the delicate iron fencing along the back garden.”
But the doctor’s house was dark, and although Rutledge went to tap lightly on the surgery door, no one came to answer his summons. He tested the handle, and it turned in his hand. Did no one in the country lock their doors?
He stood in the opening, listening intently. But the dark passage before him was silent, and he could feel