A False Mirror - Charles Todd [87]
Mallory stopped. Then he said to Rutledge, “Your brief is still to find who has killed two people who didn’t deserve to die. But make it soon. I don’t think I can take much more of this.”
He started to step back through the door and then paused with one foot on the threshold. “We’ve got no supplies. Let the rector bring us what we need. I won’t shut him in with us. And he won’t tell Felicity—Mrs. Hamilton—about her husband’s death or Mrs. Granville’s. She doesn’t need to suffer any more than she has already.”
Rutledge said to the closing door, “Mallory—”
There was silence behind the wooden paneling. But Rutledge had the most vivid image of Mallory standing there in the dimness on the other side, head bowed, hands over his face.
Climbing painfully into the motorcar, Bennett said, “I tried. No one can say I didn’t try.”
Rutledge took a deep breath. “It was admirably done. I’d hoped he would accept your offer. It was generous.” But he found himself thinking that perhaps the visit of the Chief Constable had had a salutary effect on Bennett’s determination to hang Mallory out of hand. It might still be there, but the policeman had triumphed over the broken bones in his foot when it was most needed.
But Hamish wasn’t satisfied. He said, “Ye ken, he doesna’ wish to go down in flames with you or the Lieutenant.”
It was a chilling analogy. How many airplanes had they watched crash in flames over the Front? Even if the pilot got out, he seldom survived. But Bennett was determined to see that whatever the outcome for Rutledge or Mallory, he remained the local policeman in Hampton Regis.
The inspector was saying, “Did you believe him, then? That he’s pinned in that house by Mrs. Hamilton’s fears, and never set foot outside?”
“It could well be the truth. Certainly if Mrs. Hamilton woke in the night and realized that Mallory was nowhere to be found, her first thought must be that he’d used the cover of darkness to go down to Granville’s surgery.”
“There’s no telling with women,” Bennett said with a sigh. “She might have decided to cut her losses. Here’s Hamilton dying, and her reputation damaged. She might well decide that her future was safer with Mallory than as a widow whose name was under a cloud. Husband murdered, gossip swirling about her wherever she went.”
Rutledge tried to picture Mrs. Hamilton as a schemer. And found to his surprise that while he couldn’t put it beyond her to look to the future, all things considered, she might well be better off with her husband at the end of this ordeal. Just as Mallory had admitted. He also found it hard to believe that any feelings she might have had for Mallory would survive what the two of them were going through now.
But Bennett was right. There was no certainty with women. They saw their world in a very different light. They had to face condemnation of a different sort, the look in a man’s eyes as he recalled a hint of scandal, the glance that passed around a circle of other women as she walked into a room. A hostess’s hesitation in greeting her, an older woman’s reluctance to present her to impressionable daughters. A whisper behind a fan, a man’s hand slipping as they danced, as if testing her willingness.
And there was Nan Weekes, who would gladly add to rumors and speculation.
Rutledge dragged his thoughts back to Matthew Hamilton. Why had he been attacked in the first place? That was still the most urgent question. For once that had happened, Hamilton’s death must have become a foregone conclusion, to prevent him from telling the police what he remembered. If Granville had failed to save Hamilton’s life that first morning, Margaret Granville might still be alive. Or if he’d had the sense to put a guard on his patient, she might not have been killed. But it had all begun in the mist early