A False Mirror - Charles Todd [93]
“I summoned the Chief Constable,” she said, sitting in the tall-backed chair in a parlor that was as grand as a drawing room, brocade and polished wood and floors that shimmered beneath the feet of elegant furnishings older than the house itself, possibly the dowry of an ancestress. “I felt it my duty to express my belief that events had got out of control. Inspector Bennett is all well and good, but his abilities are limited. And I doubt you have the experience to guide him.”
In the place of honor over the mantel hung a portrait of a Victorian gentleman, soberly dressed in black and standing in a pose reminiscent of paintings of the late Prince Albert designed to grace shops bearing the seal By Appointment….
Hamish had no difficulty with the family likeness. “The MacQueens bred true as well,” he commented.
“I appreciate your strong sense of duty, Miss Trining. It becomes your role in Hampton Regis.” The words rolled off Rutledge’s tongue effortlessly. He had dealt with busybodies before.
“What is going on?” she demanded. “I particularly asked the Chief Constable to come here and tell me who is dead. It can’t be Matthew Hamilton, I refuse to believe it. But if it isn’t, why is the surgery shut tight and guarded by Constable Coxe?”
“Miss Weekes’s cousin, I believe?”
“Yes.”
Not the young constable who had fetched Dr. Hester from Middlebury, but an older man with grim eyes. Rutledge had taken a hard look at him, thinking to himself that if anything happened to Nan Weekes, Coxe would be difficult to manage. Assuming the pair were as close as she had tried to make him believe they were.
“The truth is, Miss Trining, that Mr. Hamilton is no longer in the surgery. At some point in the night, he either was helped to leave it or was carried away.”
“By whom, pray?” Her anger was apparent. “Was it that foolish wife of his? It was my clear understanding that he shouldn’t be moved—I’d even suggested that he be brought here where he could be more comfortable, and Dr. Granville was set against it.”
“It was done without Dr. Granville’s knowledge or consent.”
“How like her. Then I was quite right to have brought this matter to the Chief Constable’s attention. Specialists should have been brought in at once for consultation. Indeed, I’d pointed that out to Dr. Granville myself. I must tell you, the man is arrogant about his skill at times. But then he doesn’t come from a refined background. He was adopted by the Granvilles, you know. A promising boy who showed an early aptitude for medicine and repaid his new family poorly for their kindness. Why else should he be looking after farmers and shopgirls here in Hampton Regis when his foster father is in Harley Street?”
Wasted potential.
“Unkindness?” he asked, with just the right level of curiosity to elicit information from her rather than the sharp edge of her tongue.
“I’m told there was a young woman whom he met shortly after he set up practice. Her father was a nabob, made his money in South Africa, you know, friend of Rhodes and so on. When he discovered that his daughter’s suitor was merely fostered and not a Granville by blood, he rather publicly put an end to the affair. Accused him of playing with her affections, in fact. The foster father, accepting the nabob’s version of the situation, refused to have any more to do with our Dr. Granville. Guilty or not, it finished him in London society, and of course he had to leave.”
“That doesn’t appear to me to reflect poorly on Dr. Granville. Rather, on his foster father.”
“Mr. Rutledge, it is ingratitude we are speaking of,” she told him in her severest tone. “Ingratitude for putting his benefactor in such an untenable social position. A man of his upbringing should have risen above the class in which he was born. And he failed to do that. The medical profession must be seen to be above reproach. That is why doctors are accepted in Society.”
He wasn’t in the mood to challenge her views. He said, “He married Margaret Granville after leaving London?”
“Yes. Entirely too timid to be a doctor’s wife, but I must say she’s shown