A False Mirror - Charles Todd [85]
Bennett, peering out of the car, moved his crutch to the front seat. Mallory said sharply, “Tell him to keep his distance.”
Bennett stopped, his face flaring with anger. But he had the sense to know that patience would gain him more in the end. Without a word, he simply set the crutch across his lap, the shoulder end out the far side window.
“Step out here for five minutes. I give you my word this is no trap. There isn’t a sniper waiting with a rifle, there isn’t a covey of policemen under cover in the garden. But Bennett is the local man, it’s his problem as well as yours, and the sooner we sort it out, the better.”
“He willna’ come,” Hamish said.
But in the end, Mallory, after a long look at Rutledge, stepped outside and behind him drew the door nearly shut. “Mrs. Hamilton is in the kitchen,” he said grimly. “Looking at the larder.” There was a wealth of information in the statement. Food was running low and his own attempts at cooking were a failure. What’s more, Nan Weekes was still uncooperative.
Rutledge wondered what the maid would have to say when she was told that Hamilton was dead.
At a nod from Rutledge, Bennett heaved himself out of the motorcar, put his crutch under his arm, and hobbled forward.
For an instant the three men seemed to stand there like flies in amber, their positions determined by the strained relationships that separated them and made them antagonists, holding them in a pattern that had no beginning and no end.
Mallory broke the stiff silence. “Get on with it.”
Rutledge said, “While I was here in the grounds earlier this morning, a house—or rather a cottage—out on the Devon road went over the cliff and into the sea in a subsidence.”
“What does this have to do with Hamilton?”
“I mistakenly thought the activity I saw along the Mole meant that Bennett here had found him. Back to the cottage. It was uninhabited, thank God, derelict in fact, and no one was hurt. But I went around by sea to have a look at what was left. It had to be done, in the event Hamilton had been inside and we could recover his body.”
Mallory had been listening impassively, his face schooled to show no expression. Now he said, braced lines about his eyes, “Cut it short, man, was he there? Is he dead?”
“There was no hope of digging through the silt without grave risk to the searchers. But I found one of the man’s bandages caught on a broken chair. Dr. Granville has confirmed that it’s very likely the one covering Hamilton’s head and face.”
Mallory seemed to catch his breath on a word. And then he said, “You can’t prove how it got there. Or why. And without a body, you can’t be sure Hamilton is dead.”
“The evidence is very strong now that he is.”
“But how the hell—unless you were lying to me about his injuries—could he have walked out of the surgery, much less down the Devon road. How far is the cottage from here?”
“A goodly distance. A mile or so.”
“Reston’s cottage, was it? That’s the only one—” He stopped, well aware that he might have said too much. Then he added, “Look, I live here, I’ve driven that road. There’s a working farm just up the way, I’ve stopped there for eggs.”
Bennett, watching him with intensity, said nothing.
Rutledge replied, “We’ll be questioning the farmer and his family. Now that we have the evidence from the cottage.”
“Well, I shouldn’t have cared to walk out on a landslip. But I’m not surprised that you did it. What I find inexplicable is the fact that you can’t put your hands on Hamilton. My God, he was my only hope.” His face suddenly changed. “The problem now is who took him away, and that, my friend, should be proof I wasn’t the one who attacked him in the first place!”
Bennett said, “By my way of thinking, if Hamilton had come to his senses in the middle of the night, he’d have dragged himself this far to find out what’s amiss with his wife. And in all likelihood, he’d have shot you where you slept.”
Mallory winced. But he retorted, “If he’s lucid enough to walk this far, he’d have been lucid enough to remember I hadn’t touched him. Why the hell wasn’t someone