A False Mirror - Charles Todd [91]
Hamilton had been married, but she seemed to view that differently.
After a moment she shook her head. “Somehow I’m not ready to believe Matthew is dead. I—it just seems so ruthless, to kill a helpless man, much less an innocent woman.”
“When we’ve learned why Hamilton was attacked in the first place, we’ll be able to answer that. The urgent question just now is why anyone would have wanted to take Matthew Hamilton away. The simplest solution is that he’s dead now, before he can speak to the police.”
He had told Mallory that Matthew had come to his senses briefly. Had that been an error in judgment?
“Well, it won’t help Felicity in her predicament, of course. It won’t help that man Mallory to prove he isn’t guilty of assault. And even if Mr. Mallory struck Matthew down, it was still far short of murder in the eyes of the law. He should have given himself up.”
Hamish was pointing out that she had shown less sympathy for Felicity’s loss than she had for Dr. Granville’s.
Rutledge said, “What do you know about Mallory? Could someone have killed Hamilton to revenge himself on Mallory? To make sure he was tried for murder and hanged?”
“I don’t think I’ve met Mr. Mallory more than once or twice. I know very little about him, except for the whispers I’ve heard.” She considered for a moment how to answer him. “I’m sure Inspector Bennett would love nothing better than to see the man in custody—the woman who does my washing gossips about the trial he’s been to his wife over that injury to his foot—but you aren’t suggesting he’d prefer to watch Mallory hang? That’s rather far-fetched.”
Rutledge smiled grimly. “And so we’re back to the beginning, and why Hamilton was so severely beaten.”
Miss Esterley regarded him with interest. “You are a devious man, aren’t you?” she asked.
“If it wasn’t Mallory who attacked him, then who found him walking that morning and quarreled with him? Who was disappointed in something he said? Who was afraid of something he might do? Who lashed out in such blind fury that before either of them quite realized what had happened, Hamilton was lying there bleeding and unconscious?”
She shivered, her gaze lifting to the windows, as if she could see beyond the walls and into the past. “You make it so—vivid. Personal.”
“A beating is personal.”
Miss Esterley answered slowly. “I don’t know of anyone who was afraid of Matthew. After all, he’d only just come to live here, he hardly knew us, and most certainly couldn’t know our family skeletons. As for disappointment, at a dinner party not a fortnight ago, I overheard Miss Trining tell him that she was very disappointed that he hadn’t chosen to stand for Parliament. I’d never known him to express any interest in that direction—in fact, he seemed to be rather glad to be out of the public eye. And I most certainly can’t picture Miss Trining taking a cane to him for refusing to consider a political future. But then Miss Trining sees duty in a different light from the rest of us. And as for someone being angry with him, we’ve come full circle again to Mr. Mallory.”
“Was Miss Trining ambitious for herself? Or for Hampton Regis as the home of a sitting MP?”
“I don’t believe it had anything to do with ambition on her part. It’s more an abhorrence of wasted potential.”
Hamish stirred, and Rutledge picked up the thought.
Wasted potential…
If Miss Trining had discovered Hamilton’s penchant for dealing with grave robbers, she might have felt more than disappointment