A False Mirror - Charles Todd [65]
He felt a wash of pity. She would not have cared to be seen by so many men while in her nightdress.
Hamish said, “She couldna’ be mistaken for the doctor. Even in the dark.”
She was a slight woman compared with Granville, and not nearly as tall.
Hamilton? Or perhaps she had thought it was he, standing there in the dark, asking her to help him. And she had stepped behind the desk to turn up the lamp on the far side. That would have sealed her fate.
Was it Stephen Mallory who had killed her because she had caught him trying to carry Hamilton out into the night? What was it the doctor had told him earlier? The garden door had been ajar. But where was her husband, and why was she here in the surgery alone in the dead of night?
Unless she had answered a summons at the door because Dr. Granville wasn’t at home. Yet the surgery doors were seldom locked—Rutledge had discovered that for himself, and anyone else could have done the same.
Rutledge turned back to the room and said, “Dr. Granville informed me that he’d already searched the surgery for Hamilton.”
“So he had. But I expect he never thought to look behind the desk. It wasn’t likely that Hamilton would be crouching back there, was it? Not with his injuries.”
Rutledge turned to Granville. “Doctor?”
He roused himself with an effort. “No. I never—he couldn’t have been behind there. My first thought was he’d come to his senses and dragged himself out of bed to find something for his pain. And so I’d gone through every room, expecting him to be lying in one of them, unconscious. He’s a large man—I didn’t think to look—there. Not over there. The cabinets behind the desk contain files. The bottom drawer I keep locked because it has certain drugs in it that I don’t like to leave in the dispensary. Why should he hide over there? From me?” He got to his feet. “But then I saw that the garden door was ajar, and it occurred to me that he’d tried to reach his house.”
“Why should your wife be in the surgery alone in the middle of the night? Surely you missed her at breakfast.”
Granville wiped his hand across his mouth. “I wasn’t here for breakfast. I had—” He broke off and ran from the room. They could hear him vomiting outside the garden door. After a moment he came back in, his face still pale, his hands fumbling with a handkerchief.
“I couldn’t bear to touch her. I could see she was dead. I just sat here, and then somehow Bennett was here, and I made him look.” He swallowed hard. “I’d been out with a case of congestive heart failure. William Joyner, that was. When I got back, I came directly to the surgery to look in on Hamilton. He was gone and I came for you. I didn’t go to my house—I didn’t want to disturb my—my wife. I saw no reason to worry her.” With sudden ferocity, he twisted the handkerchief in his hands. “I’ll kill Mallory for you. You needn’t wait for the hangman.”
14
They caught him as he lunged for the door, and Bennett swore as the doctor kicked out at his foot in his frantic effort to break free, cursing and fighting with the strength of fury.
It took them several minutes to settle him in the chair again, and this time Rutledge held the glass so that Granville could drink a little of the whiskey. Still, he managed to spill most of it down his shirt, and Bennett said testily, “It’s not doing much good. Let it go.”
Granville began to cry, his eyes red rimmed and unfocused. “I’m sorry,” he said over and over again. “I’m sorry.”
Rutledge wasn’t certain whether he was apologizing to them or to his dead wife for somehow failing her.
They could hear the outside door opening and closing.
The constable came to the consulting room door and said, “It’s the rector. Mr. Putnam. Shall I let him in, Inspector Rutledge? I’ve turned away all the others as Inspector Bennett instructed, but I thought—”
“Yes, yes, bring him here. Warn him beforehand, will you?”
Rutledge went to the door as he heard Putnam coming down the passage with the constable, the two men speaking in subdued voices.
“Mr. Putnam? I think Dr. Granville has need of