A False Mirror

by Charles Todd

  She was a slight woman compared with Granville, and not nearly as tall.

  Hamilton? Or perhaps she had thought it was he, standing there in the dark, asking her to help him. And she had stepped behind the desk to turn up the lamp on the far side. That would have sealed her fate.

  Was it Stephen Mallory who had killed her because she had caught him trying to carry Hamilton out into the night? What was it the doctor had told him earlier? The garden door had been ajar. But where was her husband, and why was she here in the surgery alone in the dead of night?

  Unless she had answered a summons at the door because Dr. Granville wasn’t at home. Yet the surgery doors were seldom locked—Rutledge had discovered that for himself, and anyone else could have done the same.

  Rutledge turned back to the room and said, “Dr. Granville informed me that he’d already searched the surgery for Hamilton.”

  “So he had. But I expect he never thought to look behind the desk. It wasn’t likely that Hamilton would be crouching back there, was it? Not with his injuries.”

  Rutledge turned to Granville. “Doctor?”

  He roused himself with an effort. “No. I never—he couldn’t have been behind there. My first thought was he’d come to his senses and dragged himself out of bed to find something for his pain. And so I’d gone through every room, expecting him to be lying in one of them, unconscious. He’s a large man—I didn’t think to look—there. Not over there. The cabinets behind the desk contain files. The bottom drawer I keep locked because it has certain drugs in it that I don’t like to leave in the dispensary. Why should he hide over there? From me?” He got to his feet. “But then I saw that the garden door was ajar, and it occurred to me that he’d tried to reach his house.”

  “Why should your wife be in the surgery alone in the middle of the night? Surely you missed her at breakfast.”

  Granville wiped his hand across his mouth. “I wasn’t here for breakfast. I had—” He broke off and ran from the room. They could hear him vomiting outside the garden door. After a moment he came back in, his face still pale, his hands fumbling with a handkerchief.

  “I couldn’t bear to touch her. I could see she was dead. I just sat here, and then somehow Bennett was here, and I made him look.” He swallowed hard. “I’d been out with a case of congestive heart failure. William Joyner, that was. When I got back, I came directly to the surgery to look in on Hamilton. He was gone and I came for you. I didn’t go to my house—I didn’t want to disturb my—my wife. I saw no reason to worry her.” With sudden ferocity, he twisted the handkerchief in his hands. “I’ll kill Mallory for you. You needn’t wait for the hangman.”

  14

  They caught him as he lunged for the door, and Bennett swore as the doctor kicked out at his foot in his frantic effort to break free, cursing and fighting with the strength of fury.

  It took them several minutes to settle him in the chair again, and this time Rutledge held the glass so that Granville could drink a little of the whiskey. Still, he managed to spill most of it down his shirt, and Bennett said testily, “It’s not doing much good. Let it go.”

  Granville began to cry, his eyes red rimmed and unfocused. “I’m sorry,” he said over and over again. “I’m sorry.”

  Rutledge wasn’t certain whether he was apologizing to them or to his dead wife for somehow failing her.

  They could hear the outside door opening and closing.

  The constable came to the consulting room door and said, “It’s the rector. Mr. Putnam. Shall I let him in, Inspector Rutledge? I’ve turned away all the others as Inspector Bennett instructed, but I thought—”

  “Yes, yes, bring him here. Warn him beforehand, will you?”

  Rutledge went to the door as he heard Putnam coming down the passage with the constable, the two men speaking in subdued voices.

  “Mr. Putnam? I think Dr. Granville has need of you, sir. And, Constable, where is the nearest doctor? Send someone for him, if you please. Directly. Take my motorcar. It will be faster. And lock the surgery door before you go. We don’t want people walking in.”

  Putnam stepped into the room and went across to the doctor, kneeling by his chair. “This is shocking, I haven’t quite—Will you not come with me to the house for a bit?” he asked gently. “I’ll make you a pot of tea and you can leave these gentlemen to their duties.”

  Granville turned to face him, and at first Rutledge thought he was going to refuse to go with the rector. But then he stood up docilely and walked out of the room without looking back.

  Bennett said as soon as he was out of sight, “Well, Rutledge, will you arrest that bastard now, or shall I?”

  “Where’s the proof that Mallory attacked Mrs. Granville? It could have been Hamilton.”

  Bennett stared at him in shocked silence, then found his tongue. “Hamilton?”

  “Men with severe head wounds are sometimes muddled. If Mrs. Granville startled him in the dark, he might have thought she was whoever had attacked him in the first place.”

  “You’re a fool if you believe that.”

  Rutledge was out of patience. “Stop thinking with your foot and your pride. We have a dead woman on our hands, and a missing man. Mallory has two witnesses at that house, remember. And we have no idea when Hamilton went missing. At least not yet.”

  “What was Mrs. Granville doing here at the surgery in the middle of the night, if she hadn’t let Mallory in?”

  “I don’t know what brought her here. She could have seen a light and expected to find her husband in the surgery, not Mallory. She could have come to look in on Hamilton, and he woke up, dazed, confused, and afraid of the shadowy figure standing over his bed. When she turned away and went into Granville’s office, he could have followed her. She could even have been on the point of turning up the lamp by the desk to see if her husband was asleep in his chair.”

  “Farradiddle. If it was Hamilton, what did he use for a weapon? There’s none lying about that I can see.”

  It was useless. But Rutledge was irritated, and snapped, “A good barrister will bring up the possibility. We must be there before him.”

  Bennett would hear none of it. “You’ve done nothing since you got here but make excuses for that murderer. I told you from the start you’d come to protect him, not arrest him. It’s plain as the nose on your face. Did he serve under you? Is that it?”

  Rutledge started to reply but thought better of it. How was he to explain to Bennett that he was striving to be fair to Mallory because he had once hated the man. With a passion built of despair and aching resentment that strings pulled for one man had done nothing for so many others in greater need. Had done nothing, in fact, to save Hamish MacLeod and all those like him.

  A tense silence between the two policemen lengthened.

  Rutledge went to stand by the window, looking out at the rain forming puddles that became rivers through the back garden, any tracks of importance long since washed away. Bennett sat cushioning his foot as best he could on a stool in front of his chair. The smell of whiskey was still strong in the room, from where Granville had spilled it. And Mrs. Granville’s body was a forceful presence even though she was out of sight around the corner of the desk.

  Restless with waiting, Rutledge used the next half hour to search the surgery for himself, with particular care given to the room where Hamilton had been lying. But there was no indication of a scuffle. The bedclothes, thrown back haphazardly, were the only sign of agitation on Hamilton’s part—or haste on Mallory’s. The Crown would be hard-pressed to say with any certainty what had happened. Adding to that, Hamilton’s clothing and possessions were missing as well.

  There was a brush of what appeared to be blood, only a thin streak, on the edge of the door, as if Hamilton had grasped it to steady himself—or Mallory had had difficulty hoisting Hamilton over his shoulder in the small space. And how could he have carried a dead weight out of the building and as far as the Mole?

  Hamish said, “A barrow
from the shed.”

  “Then where is it now? And why didn’t Jeremy Cornelius see it? No, if it was Mallory, he came prepared to make Hamilton’s disappearance as inconspicuous as possible. And so far he’s succeeded.”

  But Hamish was not in the mood to agree. “What if the lad saw but one man, no’ two?”

  Hamilton himself, stooped in pain, his head covered to hide the bandaging. But what had possessed him to walk away from Casa Miranda? Unless he was too muddled to know what he was doing?

  Rutledge went back to the doctor’s office, but Bennett’s unvoiced condemnation beat against him, and he felt as if he would suffocate if he stayed there. He had already looked in the closet where medicines and supplies were kept, searched the waiting room, the other examining rooms, scanned the shelves behind the doctor’s desk, reached over it to pull open drawers and close them again, thumbed through shelves of files in another closet. Nothing appeared to be out of order. Nor had he found anything that might conceivably be the weapon that had killed Margaret Granville. All the same, for want of anything better to do, he returned to the waiting room.

  Dr. Granville’s medical bag stood forlornly where he must have set it down on his return from Joyner’s house. A reminder that medicine was powerless against death.

  Rutledge squatted beside it and opened the top. Inside there were boxes of pills and powders. He took out the nearest one. An emetic. The next he recognized as digitalis. A small notebook caught his eye, and he opened that to the page where a fountain pen had been clipped. Lines were scrawled there, dated today with the time given as four in the morning, describing treatment of one William Joyner whose heart was failing. Thumbing through earlier pages, he found that Granville kept careful records of patients he saw outside surgery hours. Joyner’s name came up a dozen times, with a list of symptoms and medicines prescribed, treatment instituted.

  He heard brisk footsteps in the passage. Setting the notebook back in the bag, Rutledge closed it and stood up. A youngish man with prematurely white hair stepped into the room. The constable following on his heels said only, “Dr. Hester, sir. From Middlebury.”

  “Thank you for coming.” Rutledge introduced himself, and added, “This way.” He led Hester to the office.

  Hester nodded to Bennett, who said, “It’s Dr. Granville’s wife, sir, she’s there behind the desk. I didn’t like to ask him to touch her.”

  “Perfectly right.”

  Hester set his bag on the desktop and knelt beside the body, working efficiently and carefully in the small space.

  “I daresay the cause of death will be skull fracture from the blow on the back of the head. She was probably unconscious before she hit the floor, and most likely dead shortly thereafter. Hard to tell until I’ve examined her in better lighting. She’s been dead for several hours—the body is cool but rigor hasn’t set in. As far as I can tell, she’s not been interfered with in any way. I should think the body lies as it fell, moving very little after that. As I’m sure Dr. Granville is already aware, she probably knew nothing from the time she was struck. I can’t say what instrument was used, but if there’s nothing out of place here—” He gestured to the room at large. “Most likely the weapon was taken away by whoever did this.”

  “A cane?” Bennett asked. “We saw that the doctor has an assortment of canes and crutches in a closet. For all we know, one is missing.”

  “It would depend on the shape of the cane’s head. I’d guess more round than angular. With sufficient force and room enough to bring one’s full weight into play, a single blow in the right area of the skull could kill.”

  Rutledge said, “Most of them have a knob at the end for a better grip.”

  “Yes, that’s the sort I keep on hand,” Hester agreed. “It couldn’t have done this. But that’s not to say it’s the only kind Granville has used.” He glanced at the body. “Poor woman.” It was the first time his professional manner slipped.

  Rutledge saw in his mind’s eye the rounded breast of the swan on Miss Esterley’s cane. “Then it wouldn’t have mattered whether the killer was a man or a woman, given the right weapon.”

  “Probably not.” Hester got to his feet. “That’s all I can give you here. You might have a look at those tongs by the hearth. Though I don’t expect they were used. Unwieldy, I’d say.”

  Rutledge said, “I’ve examined them. No hair, no blood. Unless they were wiped clean.”

  Bennett looked around the room as Hester had done, hoping to see it through new eyes. The silver candlesticks. A pair of carved bookends in the shape of globes, Europe and Asia on one side, the Americas on the other. A paperweight in the form of a frog. A display of early airplane models in bottles, the tiny canvas bodies and thin wooden struts too delicate to survive use as a weapon, even if the glass didn’t shatter.

  Hester said, following his gaze, “Apparently one of Granville’s cousins flew the damned things in France. And before he was killed, he made models of various types of craft for his parents. I expect no one wanted them in the house as a reminder. Either of you know what a knobkerrie is? Used in Africa for killing. Like a prehistoric club, actually, with a round knob at the end. Very efficient at caving in skulls. I’ve seen them. My grandfather spent some time in South Africa and up the western coast. He earned more as a doctor than as a prospector, and came home as poor as he left. Tells you something, doesn’t it?”

  And who else had been in South Africa? Certainly not Mallory. He could see the thought flit across Bennett’s face. But Miss Esterley had grown up in Kenya.

  “It doesn’t serve to guess,” Rutledge said finally. “If it’s not here, we’re wasting time. A simple hammer, brought with the killer? Who can say?” But that argued premeditation. And pointed to Mallory.

  “Yes, possible.” Hester took a deep breath. “All right, if you’re finished here, help me get her to my motorcar. There’s a proper canvas carrier, Bennett, if your constable will fetch it in. I’ll have more to tell you when I know more.”

  When the body of Mrs. Granville had been removed, Rutledge went to the house where the rector was keeping the doctor company. Bennett stumped after him on his single crutch, trying to keep pace. The constable was once more set to guard the surgery, his young face already older in the watery noon light.

  There was a fresh pot of tea waiting for them, and a plate of biscuits that Putnam had found somewhere, set out on a pretty floral plate.

  Granville was sitting at the table, staring vacantly out at the rain, his mind clearly somewhere else. Bennett refused the offer of a chair and leaned against the wall with his teacup balanced in one hand. Rutledge found himself thinking that Mrs. Granville wouldn’t have cared for people making free with her fine china, and would have worried about the cup in Bennett’s fist.

  Rutledge took his tea and drank a little of it to please Putnam, but then set it down and walked through the house, looking about him but touching nothing. On the first floor he found the bedrooms, and in what appeared to be Mrs. Granville’s room the coverlet had been thrown back, as if she had expected to return to her bed.

  From the window of her room she could look down on the rear of the surgery and the back door to the garden.

  An interesting thought. Was that the way that Hamilton had left, either under his own power or over someone’s shoulder? The door set ajar might also have been a diversion. Or Mrs. Granville could have left it open.

  Nothing else was in disarray. But there was a light film of face powder spilled across the top of the dressing table although Mrs. Granville’s hairbrush was placed next to her comb with tidy precision. Rutledge wondered if she was farsighted and failed to notice the powder there. Which would mean she could undoubtedly see as far as the surgery door.

  Why had she risen from her bed and gone to the surgery?

  Hamish said, “She thought she heard the doctor return. But he didna’ come into the house. After a time, she went to find him.”

  “Because she feared Hamilton was worse and G
ranville might need her. Yes, it could be that.”

  He stood there in the middle of the room. It seemed cold, as if the living part of it had died with its owner.

  The wrong place at the wrong time.

  He went back down the stairs to find Bennett waiting for him in the hall.

  “Well? I’m not up to walking about to no purpose.”

  “Nothing.”

  Bennett returned to the kitchen, but Putnam waylaid Rutledge in the passage.

  “I came to the surgery this morning to speak to Hamilton, or at least sit with him for a time,” he said in a low voice. “I never expected this!”

  “None of us did. Least of all Granville. Damn it, I warned him to find someone to watch over Hamilton.”

  “And there might have been two dead, instead of one,” Putnam replied quietly. “What’s become of him? Hamilton. Granville told me he’s nowhere to be found. That’s hard to believe.”

  “God knows where he is. Where could he go under his own power? And if someone took him away, where is he now? Thrown into the sea from a headland, left to die where we haven’t thought to look, carried far from here, and the body hidden?” Rutledge’s own sense of failure was burning inside him, along with the fear that Mrs. Granville’s death lay at his door. “Either way, taken or escaped, he could well be dead by now.”

  “I’d rather believe Mrs. Hamilton spirited him out of here.”

  “Mrs. Hamilton would have had no need to kill that poor woman.”

  “Yes, that’s true. But someone else might have come, found Hamilton gone, and taken his frustration out on Mrs. Granville.”

  Rutledge looked at Putnam. “That’s a very perceptive suggestion. But I’ve been to the house, and I can’t convince myself he’s there.”

  Hamish reminded him, “Ye didna’ search the woman’s room.”

  It was true. But to force his way in would have brought Mallory up the stairs, and what then? His instincts told him that Mrs. Hamilton had probably considered such a solution at some point, then failed to act on it. She’d have needed a motorcar, or the dogcart, and with either one, she risked Mallory storming out to stop her.