A False Mirror - Charles Todd [31]
Mallory’s pacing stopped. “The trenches were foolishness. A stalemate within a stalemate. I’m just taking a leaf from the war’s book. Right now, it’s the only weapon I have.”
And then Rutledge asked the question that had been in the back of his mind all the way from London. “Why did you turn to me? Why didn’t you ask the bishop, your uncle, to help you?” It was flung at Mallory almost viciously, welling up out of Rutledge’s own anguish.
“He’s dead.” After a moment Mallory went on, the words wrenched from him. “I had promised myself I’d never have to see you again. Do you think I wanted this? Any of it? If there had been any other way?”
Rutledge stood up as well and took a deep breath, attempting to break off the unforgiving savaging of each other. Throughout the exchange, Hamish had been ominously silent, a dark presence like thunder in the distance. Like guns in the distance…Rutledge made an effort. “Let me speak to Mrs. Hamilton, before I go.”
“She’s in her room. Matthew’s room.” There was a bitter twist to his voice at the words. “At the head of the stairs, turn right toward the sea. It’s the last door but one.”
Rutledge climbed the stairs at a steady pace, neither hurrying nor taking his time. When he reached the passage at the top, he turned right, found the next but one door and tapped lightly.
There was no answer. He opened the door gently and looked inside.
The bedclothes were a tangle, spilling half off the bed. In the midst of them was a tousled fair head, buried in a sea of dark rose coverlet that matched flowers in the draperies and the fabric of one chair by the hearth. Her face was to the wall and out of his line of sight. He’d have to go round the bed to see it.
“Mrs. Hamilton?” he called quietly.
But she was deeply asleep. Or pretending to be. He couldn’t be certain. He wasn’t close enough to the bed to see how she breathed.
Hamish said, “If she sleeps sae soundly, there’s naething on her conscience.”
But women sleep deeply after love. What role had Felicity Hamilton played in the events of the last twenty-four hours?
After a moment, he closed the door and went back the way he’d come.
Mallory was waiting for him, and without a word led him to the kitchen precincts.
The maid, Nan, was wide awake and choleric. A thin woman with weather-reddened skin and pale hair that showed streaks of graying, she sat rigidly in her chair in a small pantry off the servants hall, her eyes alive with fury.
“Who’s that, then?” she snapped at Mallory as he brought Rutledge in. He ignored her.
But Rutledge answered her, identifying himself simply as a police inspector.
“You haven’t kept her locked up like this all this time, have you?” Rutledge asked, turning back to Mallory. There was no food or water in the room, no sign even of a chamber pot.
“Good God, no. But she was banging on the door of the servants’ hall at six this morning and I couldn’t have that. I think she broke that other chair against it.” He gestured to the chair flung against the wall, the splat shattered.
“And who wouldn’t be making a racket, kept here by the likes of you?” she demanded. “I’ve a cousin at home. A policeman. He’ll be wanting your blood if you lay a hand on me!”
“I haven’t touched you,” Mallory retorted, “except to shut you up down here so that we could have a little peace.”
Nan was on the point of answering him, when Rutledge asked quickly, “Has he harmed you in any way?”
“He’d not dare to. But who can say what he’s done to Mrs. Hamilton?”
There was something avid in her face that told him she wished for it. As if there was little love between herself and her mistress, and whatever Felicity Hamilton suffered, she had earned. So much for Nan as chaperone. Mallory was right, she’d blacken his character with a vengeance. And Mrs. Hamilton’s as well, relishing the chance.
Rutledge wondered how she felt about Mr. Hamilton, whether her loyalties lay there—or with neither of her employers.
She hadn’t asked about Matthew Hamilton. How he fared, whether he was alive or dead. Did she even know why