A False Mirror

by Charles Todd

  There was no answer to his knock, and he tried again.

  The cottage was actually outside Bennett’s jurisdiction, set a good half mile from the town’s inland boundaries. He was within his rights to be here, due to the nature of events, and the charge would be murder soon enough.

  The door seemed to open reluctantly, and Stephen Mallory stuck his head out. He was unshaven, and smelled of whiskey. Bennett made a mental note of that, examining Mallory’s eyes. They were bloodshot, and there was a cut on his cheekbone under the left one. But Mallory was fully dressed.

  “That’s a nasty cut, sir. How did you come by it?”

  “I don’t know. I think I fell out of bed. What do you want?”

  “It’s in connection with a body we found this morning. Might I come in, sir?”

  “A body?” Mallory seemed to gather his wits. “Here? You mean in Hampton Regis?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Not the war, then…” He wiped a hand across his mouth, relief evident. He’d dreamed—but let it go.

  “No, sir.”

  Mallory stepped out onto the vine-covered porch, his eyes wary now. “What body?”

  “I’d rather talk inside, if you don’t mind, sir.”

  “Why? There’s no one here to listen, saving the occasional sparrow. What body?”

  It was Bennett’s turn to feel reluctance. “An early riser found the body of a man down by the breakwater.”

  Mallory seemed to relax. “Washed ashore, you mean?”

  “No, sir, though the tide had nearly taken him. He hadn’t been in the water long, as far as we could tell.”

  “What’s it to do with me, then?”

  “You sometimes take an early walk along the water or the cliffs. Did you do either today?”

  “You mean, did I see the body and not report it. No, I didn’t walk this morning. I was—under the weather. Does this body have a name? Or do you want me to identify him, if I can? Is that why you’re here?”

  Standing face-to-face with Mallory, Bennett found it difficult to measure his man. It would have been more useful—and more comfortable—inside, where he could have sat across the room and watched the play of emotions.

  “We’ve identified the victim, sir. But I’d like to ask you a few questions first, if I may. Can you tell me where you were last evening and early this morning?”

  Mallory was nothing if not quick. The truth began to dawn on him, and there was something in his eyes that startled the inspector. Relief? Anger, certainly, and then something else. A very real fear.

  “He’s dead, you say?”

  “I haven’t said,” Bennett responded. “If you’ll just answer my questions—”

  “It’s Matthew Hamilton they’ve found, isn’t it?” For an instant Bennett thought Mallory was going to take the lapels of his coat and shake the answer out of him. “Isn’t it!”

  “Why should you think that, sir?” Bennett asked, keeping his tone level, unchallenging.

  But Stephen Mallory was already out the door, shoving him aside and racing toward the bicycle that Bennett had left against the gatepost.

  He caught the handlebars, dragged the bicycle with him, and opening the door, tossed it high and into the rear of his motorcar. He wheeled to reach the crank, but Bennett was there, trying to catch him around the shoulders and wrestle him to the ground. Mallory threw him off with the strength of a madman, Bennett thought, as he found himself hitting a fence post with a crack that made his head swim.

  It was all the time Mallory needed. He’d brought the engine to life with the crank and was already stepping into the motorcar when Bennett charged him again, tackling him around the hips. Mallory kicked out with his free leg, bracing himself with the frame of the door and the steering wheel. Bennett’s breath came out in a long whoosh! Then Mallory was free and throwing himself into the driver’s seat, reaching for the gears.

  He had just time enough to swing the door shut when Bennett, still game, though breathing hard and struggling to keep on his feet, leaped for the door.

  Mallory gunned the motor, shifted into first and then as fast as he dared into second, dragging Inspector Bennett with him as the motorcar jumped forward like a horse under the whip. Fighting for control of the wheel, Mallory drove on, weaving at first and then more smoothly as his tires hit the lane and caught.

  Bennett, holding on for dear life, was being dragged, his grunts of pain and anger jerked from his body as he bounced beside the car. But then his grip slipped and Mallory hammered with his fist on the other hand still clinging to the door.

  Bennett fell off with a wild yell, and then screamed as the rear tire bumped over his foot.

  Mallory didn’t stop. There was only one thought in his head now. Reaching Felicity before she could hear the news from anyone else.

  4

  Felicity sat by her husband’s bed in the small examining room near the garden door of the surgery, where Dr. Granville treated his more serious cases.

  Next to the bed were rolls of bandaging and a pan filled with bloody water, a sponge on the floor beside it and a pair of scissors next to that.

  Matthew Hamilton, lying naked on the sheet, seemed to be wrapped in gauze and tape. His face was covered, although she could just see the cut lip and the thickening bruise on his chin. One arm was entirely swathed, and there was more bandaging around his chest and on one thigh.

  His color was ghastly, she thought, catching his good hand in hers and holding it tight.

  “Matthew,” she whispered, trying to keep her voice steady against the shock of seeing him like this. “Matthew, it’s me. Can you hear me? Oh, darling, can you hear me!”

  But there was only silence from the quiet figure on the bed. Dr. Granville, behind her, said impatiently, “I told you not to come in—”

  She whirled on him, her face twisting with fear and anger. “He’s my husband!”

  As if it explained anything. Anything at all.

  “Come sit in my office.” Granville was trying persuasion now. “Until I’ve had a chance to finish my examination. You mustn’t interfere. There could be internal bleeding, for one thing—” He caught himself before he added brain damage.

  “Why can’t he hear me? God in heaven, you’d think he would know my voice, no matter how hurt he is!”

  “He’s not conscious, Mrs. Hamilton. I’ve tried to explain—it was a severe beating about the head. One arm is broken. There’s a deep bruise on his thigh. At least two ribs cracked as well. That’s as far as I’ve got. For his sake, he’s better off out of his pain just now. I can’t administer any other relief until I know how his brain is affected. If you’ll just sit there in my office…”

  She held on to Hamilton’s hand as if it were a lifeline. “I want to be here, not somewhere else. He’s going to be all right, isn’t he? And I want to be here when he wakes up.”

  Granville thought, She’s hardly heard a word I’ve said to her. Aloud, he went on, “I don’t need two patients on my hands, Mrs. Hamilton. Think what’s best for your husband.”

  Still she refused to let go.

  He ignored her then, concentrating on running his hands over the broken body in front of him, watching the thin trickle of blood that had begun to appear at the corner of Hamilton’s mouth.

  There was a commotion out front, and Mrs. Granville came to the door. “Doctor. Inspector Bennett is here. I think you ought to have a look at his foot—”

  Granville glanced at her. “I’m busy!” he snapped.

  “All the same,” she answered, and was gone.

  After a moment, he sighed and walked quietly out the door. When his wife insisted, he had learned to pay heed.

  In the examining room behind his office Granville found Inspector Bennett hunched in a chair, his face gray with pain, his eyes blazing with what appeared to be impotent fury.

  Dr. Granville looked down at the man’s foot, and his attention sharpened. His wife had removed Bennett’s boot, and the stocking was humped
with the swelling. Broken—

  He knelt by the inspector and his wife handed him a pair of scissors to cut away the policeman’s stocking. Bennett was biting his lip, forcing down a groan of pain. “Had to drag the bloody thing half a mile before I could find help,” he managed at last, then glanced at the doctor’s wife. “Begging your pardon, ma’am.”

  “What happened?” Granville asked, looking at the discolored ankle and twisted metatarsals.

  The constable standing woodenly beside the inspector, his face without expression, waited.

  Bennett said in a growl, “That bast—That devil ran over me!”

  “Motorcar?” The inspector nodded, and Granville went on, “It will hurt, but I need to run my hands here—and there.” He began gently, and Bennett all but screamed when the doctor pressed on the raised area just ahead of the big, calloused toes.

  “Dislocated, I think. Your foot must have been on its side when the tire compressed it. Into sand, I would guess—any harder surface and the entire foot would have been crushed.”

  “Yes, sand,” Bennett answered between clenched teeth.

  “And I think this bone took the brunt and is probably broken.” He looked up, nodding at his wife, and she disappeared into the back, reappearing almost immediately with a basin of soapy water and a cloth.

  Dr. Granville began to bathe the injured area, keeping his hands away from the part that hurt the most. Then he proceeded to bandage the entire foot, glancing again at his wife as he worked.

  “For right now, swollen as it is—and will be—it’s most important to stay off your feet entirely. But if you can’t—” He turned, and his wife set a pair of crutches into his hands. “If you can’t, then use these. Don’t walk at all until the swelling is down. I’m quite serious. Elevate your foot on a stool, and soak it in this—” His wife passed him a small packet of crystals. “Bandages and all, every two hours and again before you go to bed. After that we’ll see. I’ll come round to the house after my dinner and have another look at that bone.”

  Mrs. Granville stood smiling at her husband’s back, as if he’d worked a miracle for the inspector.

  “Crutches?” Bennett demanded. “Can’t you just set it, put some plaster over it, and let me be about my business?”

  “You’re not to put your weight on that foot, Bennett. Do you hear me? Not until I can look at it again. Who did this to you? Mrs. Blackwood?”

  Mrs. Blackwood had learned to drive her husband’s motorcar when he hadn’t come home from France. She was a terror on the roadway, her control minimal and her attention seldom on the mechanics of driving.

  The silent constable smothered a grin.

  “Mrs. Blackwood?” Bennett said, almost snarling. “What has she to do with it? No, it was that—that—” Words failed him. “I was trying to bring in Mallory, in connection with Mr. Hamilton’s thrashing. Mrs. Granville tells me Hamilton’s still alive but not speaking. More’s the pity. All he has to do is nod his head to a question or two, and I’ll have my man.”

  Granville said sharply, “You think Stephen Mallory is behind this beating? Surely not!”

  “Then why did he nearly break my neck, and run over my foot in his hurry to get away from me? When I set eyes on him again, it’s charges he’ll be hearing, assaulting a police officer with intent to do bodily harm, suspicion of attempted murder, and anything else I can think of. I’d almost wish Hamilton dead, to make it murder.”

  “You don’t believe that!” Granville answered him, indignant. “Why should Mallory want to kill Hamilton—I understood they were friends.”

  “Because,” Bennett exclaimed, his voice raised in fury, “he covets Hamilton’s wife. Didn’t you know? It’s the gossip all over town.”

  Granville saw the inspector, hobbling unsteadily on his crutches and in a foul temper, out of the surgery. For a moment he watched the man down the walk, then cautioned the hovering constable to keep out of Bennett’s way. His face thoughtful, the doctor turned and strode back to Hamilton’s room.

  He stepped across the threshold, an apology for the delay on his lips. And found his patient alone.

  Mrs. Hamilton had gone out through the garden door, leaving it half ajar.

  Granville bent over Matthew Hamilton’s broken body, listening to his uneasy breathing. To the doctor’s practiced eye, his patient’s condition remained unchanged. And if his wife’s voice hadn’t roused him, it was safe to say that no one could, for several more hours at the very least. The body found its own methods of healing, often enough, and a wise medical man learned to leave it to work its own miracle. He was almost grateful for Bennett’s injury, to keep the man out of the sickroom with his loud, badgering demands for answers and information.

  “You have twenty-four hours of peace. Make the most of them,” he added softly to the silent, bandaged man. “After that, I shall have to find another way of keeping the inspector at bay.”

  Straightening, Granville looked toward the open door just behind him. Bits of conversation reached him down the passage. Two women in the midst of what must have been a lively discussion in one of the other rooms. His wife speaking to someone in his office, though he could only make out every other word. There was a rumble of a reply, then as the man raised his voice, Granville caught the end of the sentence. “…if you wouldn’t mind, Missus.”

  Had Mrs. Hamilton overheard any of his exchange with Inspector Bennett? The man had all but shouted at times, his anger getting the better of him. Had she heard Bennett accuse Stephen Mallory of trying to murder her husband? Was that why she left so abruptly, after hovering over Hamilton, nearly in tears?

  He silently repeated Bennett’s last comment. He covets Hamilton’s wife. Didn’t you know? It’s the gossip all over town!

  Dr. Granville found himself wondering how much of that was true.

  Felicity Hamilton walked quickly through the streets without taking any notice of where she was going. First one shock and then the other. She wasn’t sure she could deal with either of them. She couldn’t stop thinking about Matthew lying there on the narrow bed of the doctor’s surgery, looking like a dead man. Bruised, battered, his bones broken—it hurt to imagine what he’d endured.

  She hadn’t thought to ask who had discovered him lying on the strand. Why hadn’t she gone searching for him herself? Everyone knew he enjoyed walking along the tideline after a storm, looking for treasures washed ashore. Not that he ever found many—but he’d bring home a bit of driftwood or a smoothed shard of brown glass with the wide grin of a boy who had been out without leave, offering his tokens in the hope of avoiding a scolding. Wrapped in a sea mist, he particularly liked to stand at the edge of the sea listening to the waves break and roll toward him. And there had been a sea mist this morning, filling the gardens with a soft white veil, smothering all sound as it swathed trees and walls with a pale dampness.

  People would say she ought to have known—

  Tears ran down her face. She loved him more than she’d ever told him. And if he died, and didn’t know, it was her fault.

  She refused to consider Bennett’s claim that Stephen had attacked him. It was too bizarre, too unbelievable. And yet she had almost believed it, in the first shock of hearing Inspector Bennett’s bold accusation. It had torn at her heart and the icy truth of guilt had swept her.

  You can’t love two men. Not in the same way. For God’s sake, it’s not possible!

  The gates to the drive loomed ahead, small things, decorative, hardly intended to keep intruders out or love inside. She had no recollection of how she had got this far, or how long it had taken her. Her feet had guided her home. That was all that mattered. Had anyone spoken to her? She’d been deaf and blind, absorbed in her own misery.

  Home.

  The graceful tiled plate on the gatepost mocked her. Casa Miranda. The name of a house where Matthew had lived in one of his postings. He’d liked it, he’d told her, and had carried it with him ever after. She had wanted to name the house on the
hill Windsong, but he’d laughed and said that was commonplace and she’d soon grow to like Miranda better. It meant Vantage Point, he said, but it still sounded foreign to her, like a woman’s name. Wasn’t there a Miranda in one of Shakespeare’s plays?

  She all but ran up the drive, her gaze on the door, and then stopped short.

  Why had she come back to the house? Why hadn’t she gone to search for Stephen?

  She didn’t know the answer to that. Except that she’d run home like a hurt child to hide her face in her mother’s skirts.

  Or—yes, she did know why she hadn’t searched—she hadn’t wanted to look into his face and read shame and guilt and love there.

  For an instant she debated going back to the doctor’s surgery, but her feet were once more carrying her toward the front door, not down the way she had come. After what she’d heard, she couldn’t bear to face any of them. She was sure Granville’s wife had never liked her. This would only give Mrs. Granville more fodder for gossip. What Bennett had said would be all over Hampton Regis before the day was out. If no one believed it before, everyone would believe it now.

  Opening her door, she realized it was Nan’s day to clean—she’d forgotten that Nan was here when the constable had knocked. Well, she’d just have to send the maid home, she couldn’t bear having someone there, in the house, moving about. She needed to think.

  Stepping from the bright morning into the dimly lit foyer, she once again stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Matthew?” she said to the ghost of him sitting at the bottom of the staircase. A sudden fear swept her. Had he died without her there to hold his hand? Had she left him to die and he’d come to chide her?

  But it wasn’t Matthew’s ghost, it was Stephen, very much alive.

  She watched his face crumple as he read the shock in her face. “How is he?” he asked, his voice husky. “For God’s sake, tell me he’s still alive?”

  “He’s alive,” she heard herself saying. “But he’s so—I’ve never seen anyone that badly hurt.”

  “Thank God. Bennett told me they’d found a body—I thought—”