A False Mirror - Charles Todd [72]
The shining knight to the rescue of the damsel in distress. He wondered if that was how she really saw Hamilton, or if it was her own disappointment speaking. The fact that he hadn’t come to this house instead.
“Then you didn’t know him well. It would have been foolhardy.” It was said gently, without condemnation.
“You’re wrong. I can tell you that if Matthew Hamilton was alive and in his right mind, his only thought would have been Felicity. No matter what the cost. And if he didn’t go to Casa Miranda, to her, then he’s dead.”
The tears began to fall then, and she wiped them away angrily. “When I heard that Dr. Granville couldn’t find him, my heart turned to stone. I refuse to believe he’s dead, but in my heart I know he must be. Someone came back to stop him from telling what he knows. Knew.”
“Then why not kill him in his bed, there in the surgery. Why go to the trouble of removing him and taking the chance of being seen doing it?”
“For the very reason you’re here. You don’t know what has happened to him, and you’ll likely never know.” He handed her his handkerchief and she took it without thanking him, trying to staunch the humiliating flow. “I’m not in love with him, I never was. But I value—valued him—and I never believed I would lose him like this. I thought—I felt he would be there, a friend, for many years. And I was comforted by that belief.”
Rutledge sat there, his mouth dry, unable to think of words of consolation. She had put the case for Hamilton’s death very succinctly, and he knew that whatever she might say about Felicity and another woman’s husband, she thought of herself as under Hamilton’s protection too.
She went on relentlessly: “You don’t know what it’s like, living alone for the rest of your life, the man you were intending to marry dead on a battlefield you’ve never seen and will never visit. You don’t know how he died, or when he died, or even why he died. Whether he was screaming in pain, or unconscious, or bleeding badly and left on the wire. You picture it in your mind, night after night, and try to reach out to him, to put an end to not knowing. Trying to tell yourself what you’d have said to him if you could have held him at the end. But there’s nothing left. Only a polite letter from an officer, on the heels of the official notification. And after that silence and emptiness. As if he’d been swallowed up by the sea, and no one knew.” She choked off the rest.
“I understand…,” he began.
But Susan Esterley said harshly, “No, you can’t. You couldn’t possibly.”
Rutledge left soon afterward, and it wasn’t until he was on the street, by the motorcar, that Hamish said, “She’d lie for him if he asked her to.”
And Rutledge realized that she’d never answered his questions, except with a question of her own.
He swore as he remembered that he’d also planned to ask her about Miss Cole.
15
When Rutledge rang up London from the Duke of Monmouth Inn, it wasn’t to speak to Gibson at the Yard.
His instinct warned him off, reminding him of the cold reception the last time he’d spoken to the sergeant. And he’d also be obliged to report the fact that Hamilton was missing and that there had been a second attack, this one ending in murder. Just now he needed time to think before Chief Superintendent Bowles summoned him in a blazing fury.
The call was to his sister.
Frances was surprised to hear from him. “I thought you’d been sent to Coventry,” she said. “How is the weather along the south coast?”
“Wretched. But warmer. If the sun comes out, we’ll have a taste of spring.”
She laughed. “Then bring it back with you. London is as dreary as London can be.”
“I need information about someone who was in the Foreign Office. He’s retired now to England, but his last posting was to Malta. One Matthew Hamilton—”
He’d expected her to tell him that the name was familiar, but it would take several hours to track down whatever it was he wanted to learn. Instead she said, “But you must know him as well. He was