A False Mirror - Charles Todd [88]
What secret was so important that an innocent woman’s life had to be taken to protect it?
Rutledge delivered Inspector Bennett to the police station and then turned the motorcar in the direction of the surgery.
But after an hour of walking through the rooms, putting himself into Hamilton’s shoes and then into Mrs. Granville’s, he was no closer to an answer.
It was while he was opening closets and searching through shelves that he did make one new discovery.
While the bedclothes in the room where Hamilton had lain were thrown back, as far as he, Rutledge, could determine, none of them had been taken away. Hamilton’s clothing and all his personal belongings were missing, yes—whether put on his body or tied in a bundle. But now he noticed that blankets had been removed from the cupboard in the passage where they were stored for ready use. The evidence was so slim it wasn’t surprising that he hadn’t noticed it before. Like the sheets below them, the remaining half dozen blankets were folded perfectly and set squarely on their shelf. But the top one was skewed very slightly, as if by a hand disturbing them in the dark. Mrs. Granville would have left these as she had everything else, in perfect order. The doctor’s wife carrying out every instruction with care and attention to detail.
Not proof, of course, and such as it was, it would have to be confirmed by Dr. Granville. But possibly an indication that Hamilton was still out of his head and needed to be hauled away like a sack of goods.
There had been sea mist and a rain…. To keep Hamilton dry was inconsequential surely, if the intent was to kill him anyway. No, trundled in a barrow or carried over the shoulder, it was prudent to shield him from sight.
What still struck Rutledge was the mind behind every move that the killer had made so far.
Meticulous planning and execution.
Nothing left to chance but Mrs. Granville’s sudden appearance. And even that deterrent had been overcome.
Was Mallory capable of such planning? In the trenches he’d followed orders and carried them out with a soldier’s skill, but without passion or flair to spur on his men. Foresight was deeply imbedded in most officers who had survived through to 1916 and the Somme. They learned. They profited from the costly mistakes of others.
If positions had been reversed, Hamilton, the Foreign Ser vice career officer, might have plotted Mallory’s death and seen it through with such precise skill. He’d dealt with the Turks and the Germans, where every word and gesture had been watched and scrutinized for its nuances. It was a hard school and he’d survived in it.
Who had turned just such cunning against the man? And why?
18
Rutledge went back to the inn for a late luncheon, eating quickly without speaking to anyone. He could feel the other diners regarding him surreptitiously, their ears cocked for his voice.
Bennett, nursing his foot, had all but dropped out of his usual haunts, growling in his cave like a wounded bear. And one didn’t call on the policeman’s wife, not socially, without a damned good excuse.
He on the other hand was a fish in a glass globe, Rutledge told himself wryly, living here at the Duke of Monmouth. The one man who could tell the inhabitants of Hampton Regis what had happened at the surgery this morning had to take his meal somewhere, and such a small town ran either to tearooms suitable for women or a pub or two where workmen could pick up their midday meal or stop by for a sandwich and a pint at the end of the day. He had seen the latter tucked into back streets, with perhaps a small dining room on the far side of the bar, and names like Fisherman’s Rest or The Plough and Share. Plain food, but filling and faster ser vice than the hotel. Nearer the Mole was The Drowned Man, with a lurid sign of a corpse wrapped in seaweed lying on the pub doorstep on one side and being handed a pint of what appeared to be bitter, on the other.
It wouldn’t have mattered today if the roast beef was lightly burned, the potatoes