A False Mirror - Charles Todd [74]
Or, he thought, a well-placed bribe had done its work.
And the objects in the Hamilton drawing room hardly looked like replicas. Sometimes quality spoke to the eye, even when one didn’t have the training or knowledge to back it up. A rare skill, a touch of elegance or excellence, that surely Hamilton had recognized too.
“There’s luck as well,” Hamish reminded him. But it didn’t signify. There were too many pieces.
Frances was adding, “Add to that the fact that Matthew Hamilton seldom came home to England on leave. It isn’t surprising that people jumped to the conclusion he had an ulterior motive for his travels.”
“Was there a reason for staying away? Friends abroad, that sort of thing?”
He could picture her holding the receiver as one shoulder lifted in an expressive shrug.
“Ian, I don’t know. I don’t expect anyone does, except Matthew himself. I was only ten, my dear, I didn’t know what secrets a young man would have.”
“Would Melinda know? Did she stay in close touch with him?”
“You must ask her that.”
There was another pause, and then she said, “Darling, is anything wrong? You sound—I don’t know—rather down.” She waited for him to answer, and then added, “You can’t hide it. Not from me.”
Which he should have thought of before he telephoned her, he told himself with a sigh.
“One of the people involved in the business that brought me here had served under me in France. For a short time. It brings back memories I’d rather not have raised.”
“Yes, I understand that might be difficult. But you’re going to be all right, aren’t you?”
He made himself laugh, for her sake. “If I’m not, Bowles will have my liver.”
She didn’t press.
But he found himself thinking that it was easier to talk to Stephen Mallory about the war than to his own sister. It was something he hadn’t expected, this isolation. At first he’d believed it was his own need, his own desperation, that locked the war in silence. A vain hope for time and peace in which to heal. Now he realized that somehow those who had served in France and elsewhere knew a world that couldn’t be shared. How could he tell his sister—or even his father, if the elder Rutledge was still alive—what had been done on bloody ground far from home? It would be criminal to fill their minds with scenes that no one should have to remember. No one.
Frances was on the point of signing off when he thought of something he hadn’t brought up.
“Do you know a Miss Cole who might have been a friend or relative of Hamilton’s? Her name has come up here in connection with his, but no one seems to be able to tell me where to find her.”
“Cole? Do you have a first name?”
“Sadly, no.”
“It’s not an uncommon name. A proverbial needle in the proverbial haystack. Surely Sergeant Gibson or someone at the Yard can locate her for you.”
“They’ve got their hands full just now. And I don’t have enough information about her yet to warrant taking up the Yard’s time.”
“They ought to be pleased with themselves at the moment. They’ve taken someone into custody for those wretched killings in Green Park. The newspapers are calling it masterly police work.”
“Who? Did they say who it was?” he asked urgently.
“I don’t think a name has been released yet.”
Gentle God.
He could feel Hamish in the back of his mind, thundering like the guns in France. The walls of the telephone closet seemed to press in on him.
Was it Fields they’d taken into custody? Had Inspector Phipps come to suspect the same man, in his own roundabout fashion? Or had Constable Waddington, to shield himself from charges that he was courting while on duty, ignored Rutledge’s instructions and reported Fields to the Yard?
He felt a strong sense of personal responsibility for dragging Fields into the search and told himself that Phipps had been thorough.