A False Mirror - Charles Todd [66]
Putnam stepped into the room and went across to the doctor, kneeling by his chair. “This is shocking, I haven’t quite—Will you not come with me to the house for a bit?” he asked gently. “I’ll make you a pot of tea and you can leave these gentlemen to their duties.”
Granville turned to face him, and at first Rutledge thought he was going to refuse to go with the rector. But then he stood up docilely and walked out of the room without looking back.
Bennett said as soon as he was out of sight, “Well, Rutledge, will you arrest that bastard now, or shall I?”
“Where’s the proof that Mallory attacked Mrs. Granville? It could have been Hamilton.”
Bennett stared at him in shocked silence, then found his tongue. “Hamilton?”
“Men with severe head wounds are sometimes muddled. If Mrs. Granville startled him in the dark, he might have thought she was whoever had attacked him in the first place.”
“You’re a fool if you believe that.”
Rutledge was out of patience. “Stop thinking with your foot and your pride. We have a dead woman on our hands, and a missing man. Mallory has two witnesses at that house, remember. And we have no idea when Hamilton went missing. At least not yet.”
“What was Mrs. Granville doing here at the surgery in the middle of the night, if she hadn’t let Mallory in?”
“I don’t know what brought her here. She could have seen a light and expected to find her husband in the surgery, not Mallory. She could have come to look in on Hamilton, and he woke up, dazed, confused, and afraid of the shadowy figure standing over his bed. When she turned away and went into Granville’s office, he could have followed her. She could even have been on the point of turning up the lamp by the desk to see if her husband was asleep in his chair.”
“Farradiddle. If it was Hamilton, what did he use for a weapon? There’s none lying about that I can see.”
It was useless. But Rutledge was irritated, and snapped, “A good barrister will bring up the possibility. We must be there before him.”
Bennett would hear none of it. “You’ve done nothing since you got here but make excuses for that murderer. I told you from the start you’d come to protect him, not arrest him. It’s plain as the nose on your face. Did he serve under you? Is that it?”
Rutledge started to reply but thought better of it. How was he to explain to Bennett that he was striving to be fair to Mallory because he had once hated the man. With a passion built of despair and aching resentment that strings pulled for one man had done nothing for so many others in greater need. Had done nothing, in fact, to save Hamish MacLeod and all those like him.
A tense silence between the two policemen lengthened.
Rutledge went to stand by the window, looking out at the rain forming puddles that became rivers through the back garden, any tracks of importance long since washed away. Bennett sat cushioning his foot as best he could on a stool in front of his chair. The smell of whiskey was still strong in the room, from where Granville had spilled it. And Mrs. Granville’s body was a forceful presence even though she was out of sight around the corner of the desk.
Restless with waiting, Rutledge used the next half hour to search the surgery for himself, with particular care given to the room where Hamilton had been lying. But there was no indication of a scuffle. The bedclothes, thrown back haphazardly, were the only sign of agitation on Hamilton’s part—or haste on Mallory’s. The Crown would be hard-pressed to say with any certainty what had happened. Adding to that, Hamilton’s clothing and possessions were missing as well.
There was a brush of what appeared to be blood, only a thin streak, on the edge of the door, as if Hamilton had grasped it to steady himself—or Mallory had had difficulty hoisting Hamilton over his shoulder in the small space. And how could he have carried a dead