A False Mirror - Charles Todd [64]
The boy was suddenly still. “You think so?”
“It could be,” Rutledge answered. “But I wasn’t there, and I didn’t see him.”
Jeremy appeared to be replaying the scene in his mind. “But I don’t think it was,” he finally said. “He stumbled as he walked. As if he couldn’t see.”
“Was it two men, do you think? One with another over his shoulders? Carrying him because his friend couldn’t walk far?”
The boy seemed to relax. “Yes, I hadn’t thought of that.” He smiled. “That was a nice thing to do, although I shouldn’t like to be carried with my head hanging down. It would hurt after a while, wouldn’t it?”
“Perhaps they didn’t have far to go.” Over the boy’s head, his eyes met Mrs. Cornelius’s.
And then Jeremy said, out of the blue, “I saw Mr. Harmon bring his son home that way one night. After he’d stayed late at The Merry Tinker. He was walking beside his father, and then didn’t seem to be able to find his legs. They went in different directions. And his father put him across his shoulder for the rest of the way.”
“Did Mr. Harmon have a head?”
“No. I couldn’t see it for Lawrence.”
“Well, there you are. You’ve been a very great help, Jeremy. Your mother must be proud of you.” Rutledge rose to leave.
“Yes, very proud,” Mrs. Cornelius replied.
But Jeremy was still thinking about other matters, and he said as Rutledge reached the sitting room door, “It wasn’t quite the same, you know, as Mr. Harmon. Somehow. I didn’t like it.”
On the street in front of the Cornelius house, Rutledge was met by an out-of-breath constable who nearly collided with him before he could slow his pace.
“Mr. Rutledge, sir!” He leaned one hand against the wing of the motorcar, fighting to get the words out. “Mr. Bennett says—come at once!”
Rutledge turned the crank and stepped behind the wheel. “What’s happened?”
The constable shook his head. “I’m not to say, sir—only, come at once.” He hauled himself into the passenger seat and pointed toward the Mole.
The sea had yielded its secret, then.
But as Rutledge reached the Mole and realized that no crowd was gathered there, the constable gestured east and added, “Dr. Granville’s surgery.”
“They’ve found Hamilton,” Rutledge said to Hamish. “Alive or dead?”
He wasn’t aware that he’d spoken the words aloud.
The constable stirred uneasily. “I don’t know, sir. Truly.”
It was a grim-faced Bennett who met him at the surgery. Leaving the constable to take up his station on the front walk, he ushered Rutledge down the passage to the door that led to the doctor’s consulting room.
Granville was seated in a chair usually reserved for patients, looking drained and ill. There was a whiskey glass in one hand, but it was shaking with such force that the man couldn’t even bring it to his lips.
Bennett, on Rutledge’s heels, said, “Look behind the desk.”
Rutledge went to the massive desk and leaned over it.
He had been prepared to see Hamilton lying there dead. But it wasn’t Hamilton on the floor, just out of sight from the doorway. It was a woman, facedown, the hair on the back of her head matted with blood, her legs crumpled under her.
He knew her at once. Mrs. Granville.
Rutledge glanced at Bennett, then knelt to touch the side of her throat. The flesh was cool, and there was no pulse.
He straightened up and stepped away. Looking down at the body, he could picture her coming into the room and crossing to the desk, perhaps to leave a note for her husband. If there had been someone behind her, she hadn’t feared him. Or perhaps if the room was dark, she hadn’t even realized anyone was there. And as she reached the side of the desk, whoever it was had struck her hard enough to kill her. He noted that she was wearing a nightdress with a matching blue silk robe over it, her bare feet encased in incongruously plain woolly slippers. She hadn’t expected to find a murderer here. A woman with no defenses, and no need to die, surely. A doctor’s wife, used to tending patients,