A False Mirror - Charles Todd [94]
“Mrs. Hamilton as far as we can determine never left her house last night. And I don’t think she could have removed her husband without help.”
“Then the two of them are in it together. Just as I said. Mallory and Matthew’s wife.”
“We’ve searched the house and grounds. We’ve had to accept the possibility that Hamilton is very likely dead.”
She leaned forward in her chair. “He can’t be dead!” The shock was real and it took her a moment to recover. “I refuse to believe you.”
“We can’t find him, Miss Trining. The fact is, someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to be sure that we don’t have his body.”
“Was it that man Mallory, finishing what he’d started? Why did you not put a guard on Mr. Hamilton? It’s negligence, Inspector, sheer, blind negligence. What excuse does Dr. Granville put forward for this turn of events? I’d like to hear it.” She was furiously angry, beside herself with it. But Rutledge found himself wondering if she was afraid—afraid that he was tricking her.
“Dr. Granville has no excuses to offer. His wife was killed last night, presumably as she came to the surgery in her nightdress to see why someone was there at such a late hour.”
Miss Trining stared at him. After a moment she demanded, “And where was the doctor, pray?”
“He was attending a case of congestive heart failure.”
She digested that, nodding. “Will Joyner, I expect. His daughter is without doubt the worst cook in Hampton Regis. What she feeds him I shudder to think, but it has done him no good. I’ve been there when Dr. Granville gives her instructions, and never fail to wonder at her stupidity. I shall have to offer to bring Dr. Granville here. He can’t wish to stay in that house tonight.”
“Mr. Putnam has taken him to the rectory.”
“And quite right. Mr. Putnam has a very acute sense of what’s best. I shall send them their dinner. At least they’ll have no worries there.” She shook her head. “I find it hard to take in. I spoke to Margaret Granville only yesterday, we were planning the spring gala at the church. She was to make the table decorations for us to sell. And I shall have to find another volunteer for that.”
Noblesse oblige.
The Miss Trinings of this world coped. It was their duty.
She couldn’t have removed Hamilton alone. And Rutledge couldn’t quite see her as a coconspirator with anyone else in Hampton Regis.
He could safely strike her off his list of suspects.
19
Rutledge took a quarter of an hour to search out the man Joyner, the patient with congestive heart failure, and found him resting quietly in his bed, watched over by an anxious woman in her thirties. She looked tired, eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep and from worry.
“He’s only just drifted off, Inspector,” she told him on the doorstep of the small house on the road east, a mile beyond the churchyard. “Doctor says rest is what he needs.”
“I shouldn’t like to disturb him, Miss Joyner. Dr. Granville was here in the night, you say?”
“Yes, he’s good about that. I send the neighbor’s boy along, if Dad takes a turn. He’s pining for Mother, that’s what it is, but I don’t want to lose him. It’s his pension pays for this cottage, after all.”
Practical, the way the poor so often had to be.
Curiosity got the better of her. “What’s this about, Inspector? Mr. Bennett never comes to look in on us. Even when Dad had the influenza and nearly died.”
“Dr. Granville lost his wife in the night. We’re trying to pin down the time of her death.”
“Oh, the poor man! I shan’t tell Dad for a bit, it will upset him no end. And I asked after her, I remember I did. Doctor said she was in her bed and asleep, as I ought to be.”
“What time was Dr. Granville here?”