A False Mirror - Charles Todd [86]
“There’s a constable under the tree outside the wall. He’s been here from the start. An—er—precaution.”
“I don’t intend to shoot anyone,” Mallory told them irritably. “As long as no one tries to take the house by storm. Is that all you have to tell me?”
“There’s another problem involving Hamilton’s disappearance we haven’t discussed. It appears that someone in the surgery in the dark either mistook Mrs. Granville for Hamilton or was seen by her while searching for him. She came to investigate, and whoever it was killed her.”
“Gentle God!” Mallory exclaimed. “You can’t lay that at my door.”
“You have no witnesses to prove you were here all night. Not if Mrs. Hamilton was locked in her room and Nan Weekes was closed up belowstairs.”
“No.” The word was explosive. “You’re telling me that I must compromise her reputation to prove I didn’t do this murder. And besides, if you’ll think about it, while I was out trolling half of Hampton Regis last night, what was to stop her from setting that blasted maid free and running to your constable out there for protection? Tell me that! Did he see me leave? Did she try to leave? You put him there, by God, he’s your man. And I’m not up to shinnying down cliff faces into a stormy sea, much less clawing my way back.”
“In her room, she couldn’t hear you go.”
“She’s not a fool, either, Rutledge. If she’d had any inkling I was not in the house, she’d have screamed the place down. Probably for fear I’d gone back to the surgery to finish what I started. She may be my prisoner, but I’m hers as well. Did either of you stop to think about that? She’s kept me from going near her husband by seeing to it that I can’t walk out this door. And if I do, I’ve lost the only chance I have of seeing myself through this tangle to the other side.”
Bennett, opening his mouth to speak, shut it again. And then, clearly against his better judgment, he said, “We’ve got off on the wrong foot, you and I, Mr. Mallory.” He gestured with his crutch. “I’m paying for that as well as you. It would be simpler all round if we left this nasty business in Inspector Rutledge’s capable hands. It’s what he was sent here to do. Let him get to the bottom of these deaths. Before there’s another. And in the long run, it will be easier on you and on Hampton Regis, not to speak of Mrs. Hamilton. She’s suffered enough on her husband’s account. She needs to consider how she wants to go about mourning him and marking his memory.”
It was a reasonable speech, delivered in a reasonable voice. Only Bennett’s eyes belied his calm, professional assessment of events: the local policeman pushed to admit that he’d been wrong at the start and offering a clear way out of a very difficult dilemma.
A desperate man might have believed it. A tired man might want to believe it. And Mallory was both. But he was also a man who’d spent time at the Front and was used to weighing up his chances. He might well see the hangman’s noose at the end of his present road, but he’d crossed No Man’s Land in the teeth of enemy fire, and he had felt death very close to him. It had left its mark in his courage.
He turned toward Bennett. “Yes, we did get off to a bad start, and I’m sorry for what happened to your foot, I’ll tell you that frankly.” His voice was also calm and reasonable, stating what he might actually believe and making it sound sincere, just as Bennett had tried to do. “But the damage is done as far as Mrs. Hamilton is concerned. I can’t offer amends to her reputation even if I shoot myself. Hanging me would only make matters worse for her because it will all be dragged through the courtroom and the newspapers,