A False Mirror - Charles Todd [99]
“The hotel is named for him. It’s to their advantage to show him as an heroic figure. I’m still waiting.”
“I was a friend of Matthew Hamilton’s at one time. I hope I still am. The problem is, we’ve wondered, some of us, if he’s writing his memoir. When the Chief Constable dropped a word in the right ear that Matthew was in serious condition and unconscious, we wondered if we might find ourselves with a posthumous publication. Disappointed men sometimes use the pen when the sword has failed them.”
“And you are here to ferret it out if anything should happen to him?”
“I’m not from the Foreign Office. That is, I am, but not officially. I came as a friend. He’ll do himself no good, raking up things best forgotten. The newspapers will make much of it, then lose interest. But by that time the harm will have been done. He, er, kept diaries. We do know that. We don’t know what was in them.”
Rutledge asked, “Did that have anything to do with the customs inspections he endured from time to time?”
Surprised, Stratton recovered quickly. “I daresay he invited them with his rather cavalier approach to other people’s property.”
“If something was sold on the open market, it was hardly appropriated by Mr. Hamilton. He simply bought the object. As I understand it.”
“All very true. But of course when a man has a reputation for buying without asking questions, he encourages tomb and site thievery. It’s simply not done. Still, a handful of rare statuary is not my interest. I’ve seen his collection and wouldn’t give it house room. We could never understand why Hamilton chose to live in Hampton Regis rather than London. The only answer was that he found it the perfect place to work. Quiet, out of the way, attracting no attention other than the social aspirations of his neighbors. A perfect place.”
“Did it occur to no one that he might like that house above the sea, that he chose a quiet place for the first years of his marriage, to give it time to flourish?”
“Of course it occurred to us, we’re not fools,” Stratton retorted irritably. “But it was unlike him. There was no connection in his past to this part of England. His wife wasn’t from this vicinity. Hampton Regis is a very long way from London, not so much as the crow flies, you understand, but in the kind of life everyone expected Hamilton to lead. It aroused our—suspicions.”
“It might well send them soaring to learn that Matthew Hamilton has vanished.” Rutledge got to his feet and lifted his coat from the back of the chair. “What’s more, a woman was murdered at the same time and in the same place. If Mr. Hamilton has been writing an account of his career, it has upset more than his friends, it’s unleashed an enemy.”
Stratton was still standing there, stunned, as Rutledge walked out of the room.
It was half past nine before Rutledge again shut himself inside the telephone closet and put in his second call to the home of Melinda Crawford.
Her voice was strong as it came over the line, and Rutledge smiled to hear it.
“Well, Ian, what have you got to say for yourself, neglecting an old woman until she’s left to wonder if you are alive or dead—and on the brink of not caring either way!”
Melinda Crawford, a child in 1857’s bloody mutiny of native troops in India, had survived that and cholera to marry, lost her husband when she was in middle age, and set about traveling as an antidote to grief. Returning to England in what most would have considered their final years, she set up a home in Kent and soon acquired a large and interesting circle of friends. If she was still waiting to die, no one suspected it.
“Mea culpa,” he said. “Blame the Yard, if you like. It’s half their doing. I’d asked for leave to visit you, and they wouldn’t hear of it.” It was the truth. But he made it sound like a lie.
“A likely story.” She waited on the other end, knowing him too well.
“It’s about Matthew Hamilton—do you remember him?”
“Of course I do. Are you breaking bad news, Ian? It’s late and I shan