by Charles Todd
It took him several minutes to calm her enough to tell her about Hamilton. He left out any reference to Mrs. Granville, and he said nothing about the Reston cottage.
It was cold comfort.
“Oh, my God, are you telling me that it could have been Matthew? That he thought—but surely, he’d have realized that wasn’t Stephen down there? That it must be Nan. Or—or me.”
“We don’t know. We don’t know what state of mind he’s in. We don’t know if he could have survived in the cold rain yesterday morning. Please, you must tell me anything you can that will help us find him. It’s urgent, Mrs. Hamilton—you must tell me whatever you know, however impossible it may sound.”
But she was beyond thinking, and in the end, he brought her tea, told her he would be in the house for another hour or so, and prepared to shut her door.
“Is she—is Nan still downstairs?” She shivered. “I shan’t be able to swallow a bite of food now. I’m so frightened.”
“She must be taken away now, to her family. You needn’t know, you needn’t watch.”
“I must talk to her cousin. I want to tell him that it wasn’t intended, that we were just upset.”
“Let me speak to him on your behalf. I think it might be better just now. Would you care to have us ask for Mr. Putnam? He can offer you comfort.”
She shook her head. “I can’t pray. I’m to blame.”
“I don’t think Mr. Putnam cares about any of that.”
But she shut her door without answering.
“She didna’ know,” Hamish said as Rutledge went down the stairs. “It wasna’ her doing.”
“Not directly,” Rutledge replied.
Bennett went out to his constable and sent for Dr. Hester.
He came at length, but before he could reach the house, Nan Weekes’s cousin arrived, in a fury that was loud and uncontrolled.
“Where is she, then?” Constable Coxe roared from the drive. “And where’s the bastard who’s been hiding behind her skirts? I’ll see him hang, that I will. Come out, you bloody coward and talk to me. Tell me how a poor woman died doing her duty.”
Rutledge, on his way to speak to Coxe, had first to deal with Mallory. His face red with a mixture of feelings, his eyes wild, he was about to confront the man outside, his pent-up emotions badly in need of an outlet. “I’m not standing for this, he has no right—”
“No, don’t be a fool, Mallory. He wants to draw you out there. Are you ready to leave this house and face being locked up in the station?”
“Little good it’s doing me to stay here. Nothing has gone as I’d expected, I ought to step into the garden and end it. But that’s an admission of guilt, and I won’t make it. I tell you, whether you want to hear it or not, Matthew Hamilton is alive and on a rampage. It’s the only logical explanation. I’m certain he meant to kill Felicity when he killed Mrs. Granville. And when he got it wrong, he came here looking for her. He thinks—God knows what he thinks. But he found that poor woman instead. What will he do when he realizes this is his second mistake?”
“Why would Hamilton want to kill his wife, and not you? Are you saying he believes she attacked him on the strand?”
“Use your wits, Rutledge. The Hamilton’s man of business isn’t likely to be here in Hampton Regis after Felicity. If he’s the one who finished Hamilton, he knows his client is dead, and is back in London busily covering his tracks. He doesn’t need to muddy the waters by killing Felicity. He’s hoping I’ll do it for him.” The shouting beyond the door was growing more abusive. “All right, go out and shut up that fool before I’m tempted to shoot him. They can only hang me once.” He moved out of Rutledge’s way.
Rutledge opened the door and stepped out.
Coxe was a burly man, his face lined with years in the sun and his eyes, used to staring out to sea, hooded under heavy lids.
“Mallory isn’t coming out, Coxe. You might as well stop making a spectacle of your grief and go home. We’ll bring your cousin to you as soon as may be. She’ll need you then.”
“You can’t protect him, Rutledge. I didn’t believe Inspector Bennett when he told us you were, but I believe it now. That man in there is a murderer. Give him up and let him face charges.”
“We have no proof that he’s killed anyone.”
“He’s locked in a house with two women, and one of them is dead. It doesn’t take a London policeman to know what must have happened. When she wouldn’t let him have his way with her, he killed her to shut her up.”
“She was smothered in her sleep, not interfered with. Go home. Or I’ll have you locked in the police station and forget where I put the key.”
Coxe examined Rutledge, looking him up and down without insolence but with judgment.
“I’m not afraid of Scotland Yard. This is my flesh and blood, lying there dead.”
Rutledge said nothing, standing between Coxe and the house with the authority of a man used to command. It was a presence that had served him well in the trenches. He had learned it over the years, dealing with everything from drunken men outside pubs to riotous fans at football matches. One man, unarmed, several stone lighter than the heavy-shouldered, angry constable in front of him, wrapped in the certainty that he would be obeyed.
Coxe tried to stare him down and failed. In the end, suddenly mindful of his own career, he blustered, “I didn’t say good-bye. I sent her to work that day, telling her I’d not eat what she spoke of making for our dinner. I told her I was tired of a pasty made from what was left of Sunday’s roast. That I worked hard and didn’t need to cut corners to save for my old age.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I spoke out of turn. And I never had the chance to make amends. She’s dead, and there’s an end to it. But not for me. He took that from me, that bastard behind the door listening to me.”
Rutledge waited.
“All right, I’m going. I owe no apology to the house, save to Mrs. Hamilton. I’ll pray for her. Odds are, she’ll be dead in another day or two.”
And with that he turned on his heel and walked away.
Rutledge saw him out of sight.
Not five minutes later, Dr. Hester arrived and, following instructions, brought Mr. Putnam with him. The rector was shown up to Mrs. Hamilton’s room and Bennett went to find the constable who had been on night duty at the house. Rutledge took Hester to the servants’ hall.
He examined Nan Weekes, and said, “Very likely smothered as she slept. Taken by surprise, she didn’t have much chance to fight her murderer off. A knee already on her chest, a determination to see it through. That’s what it took.”
He lifted the maid’s hands one at a time. “See, she grazed her knuckles against the wall there. But her nails are clean. He’d have been wearing a coat, long sleeves, something that protected him.”
“A man or a woman, do you think?”
“It would depend on the killer’s state of mind, I should think. A timid man might fail where a resolute woman succeeded. Hatred breeds strength, oftentimes.”
Hester looked around the room, bare and yet somehow holding on to the anger and fear trapped with the woman confined here. “She couldn’t have run, even if she had been awake; there was nowhere to go. But he didn’t give her a chance to escape. He must have been very quiet, coming through that door. Dark as it was, she never saw his face, even if the pillow had slipped.” He turned over the pillow on the floor. “It’s one of the feather pillows from an upstairs bedroom, I should think. Servants don’t often sleep that comfortably. Fairly new too, and therefore better able to do the job.”
“I’m told that bedding was brought down from one of the guest rooms.”
“Yes, that fits. Well, that’s all I can tell you. Sorry.”
“Mrs. Hamilton is in the house, and in distress. Will you leave something to help her through this?”
“I’ll see her, if you like. As for Miss Weekes, shall I take her back with me?”
“If you would.”
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br /> “Yes. I’m getting quite a collection of Dr. Granville’s patients.” Dark wit from one professional to another. “But I daresay he won’t feel up to returning to his surgery for a few days yet. Not until after his wife’s funeral.” He closed up his case. “Whose hand is behind this, do you know? It’s not a very safe thing, to have whoever it is loose on Hampton Regis. But he failed with Hamilton, so I’m told. First try at any rate. I wonder what this poor woman did to make herself a target?”
“As far as we know, nothing. Mistaken identity?”
Hester turned to look at Rutledge. He was quick, his mind already leaping ahead. “Really? If you’re telling me that first Mrs. Granville and then Miss Weekes were killed because someone thought they were Felicity Hamilton, then I’d see to it that that policeman spent the night outside her door, not under that tree by the road.”
Bennett joined them then, with word that the constable had seen no one come or go from the house during the night. Hester gave him an abbreviated account of his preliminary examination. Then he prepared to move the body.
Looking down at the woman, Bennett said to Rutledge, “My money is still on Mallory. Hamilton’s dead, a scapegoat. Problem is, how are we going to prove any of it? You were saying before we have a clever bastard on our hands. But even clever bastards make mistakes. Let’s hope nobody else dies before he makes one.”
Putnam spent some time with Mallory, and then went back a second time to knock on Felicity Hamilton’s door. When she answered, his heart went out to her.
“My dear child!” he said and held her as she cried on his shoulder.
It seemed to ease her a little, although he could see that she was frightened and feeling the onslaught of responsibility for all that had taken place since her husband had been carried into Granville’s surgery.
He sat with her, brought her tea and a sandwich he’d managed to put together in the kitchen, careful to avoid the room where Nan Weekes had died.
But he had gone in to the maid before her body was removed, giving her the comfort of the church, wishing that she had heeded his encouragement to cooperate and had died without such resentment on her conscience. He tried to keep himself from dwelling on the question of which of the household would be blamed for her death. Mallory most likely, although it was even possible that Felicity might have been tempted to rid them of such an angry presence. He hoped Rutledge wouldn’t look in that direction. He himself felt none of the animosity toward Mallory that others had expressed, seeing only a wounded soul. But he grieved for the maid, in his own way.
After Felicity Hamilton had eaten, Putnam offered to come and chaperone her, now that Nan was dead.
But she shook her head. “I must see it through,” she told him. “I was the cause of so much of the trouble here. I must somehow make restitution.”
“You shouldn’t concern yourself with that. Leave it to Mr. Rutledge, my dear.”
“Where is Matthew, Mr. Putnam? No one will talk to me about him. And I know what the police must be thinking. If it wasn’t Stephen who killed her, then it was Matthew, trying to find Stephen and stumbling on Nan instead. But she wouldn’t have given him away, you know, even if he’d decided to slaughter half of Hampton Regis.”
“Is that what you believe must have happened? That he managed to make his way here?”
She rubbed her temples, as if her head throbbed. “Either I’m married to a murderer or locked in this house with one. And I don’t want to think about that. Stephen was as tired as I was of Nan’s tantrums, he could have killed her out of sheer despair. But not in cold blood, not in her sleep. Matthew could have decided that it was Stephen who was on the strand with him and wanted revenge. But why harm Nan? She liked Matthew, and he was wonderful with her, keeping her jolly when I couldn’t. She didn’t like me very much. And now either way I’ve got her killed.” Felicity turned to look out the window. “If Matthew came searching for his revolver and couldn’t find it because I’d given it to Stephen, Nan could have told him. She knew.”
Putnam didn’t put what was on his mind into words. That Nan, in that back passage, would have raised the alarm if someone had crept in. And it might have been all the warning Stephen Mallory and that revolver of his needed.
He was ashamed of the thought as soon as it had formed.
But almost at the same time that Putnam was considering the possibility, Bennett brought it up to Mallory.
“All right, let’s assume for the sake of argument that this is Mr. Hamilton’s work. In for a penny and all that. If he’s going to be hanged for Mrs. Granville, what’s one more corpse? And if he wanted you badly enough, he might feel that the maid was a fair exchange for the opportunity. Only, he discovered you had his revolver. Oh, don’t be a fool, Mallory, it must have been his, you weren’t in possession of one when you ran me down.”
“I can’t see why Hamilton had to hurt her,” Mallory said, rubbing his face with his hands, as if to scrub away his fatigue. “At least if he’s in his right mind. If he’d come to the bed and put a hand over her mouth, she’d have listened to him and done whatever he asked. Mrs. Hamilton tells me she thought he walked on water.”
Rutledge, the devil’s advocate, said, “In the dark, how could he know it was Nan? Or even that she was here? Besides, if he’d touched her, she’d have screamed bloody murder before he could convince her who he was. Her first thought would have been that you were in the room with her, Mallory. What I want to know is, if Hamilton is alive, if he didn’t go into the sea with that cottage, where was he concealed, all day yesterday when we were searching everywhere for him?”
“In the Granvillle house?” Bennett asked, hazarding a guess. “We never actually searched it, only the surgery. And after Granville went to the rectory, it stood empty. Or there’s the church. Putnam is half daft, he wouldn’t have noticed Hamilton if he’d hidden himself beneath one of those wretched choir stalls. Besides, he was occupied all the day with Dr. Granville. I doubt he set foot in the church.”
“Then why did we find bandages in the ruin of the cottage?” Rutledge reminded him. “You can’t convince me they belonged to anyone else but Hamilton. If he had the strength to make it as far as the cottage, I don’t think he could have walked all the way back into Hampton Regis.”
“How do you know it was Hamilton who left that bandage out there?” Mallory interjected. “Someone could have done it for him, to throw you off his scent. Then the question becomes, who would help him, knowing he’d killed Mrs. Granville and now Nan Weekes?”
Hamish said only, Mrs. Reston.
Rutledge took a deep breath. “It all comes down to the fact that if Hamilton’s dead, whoever killed him is still out there. Which brings us to the next problem. Why isn’t he satisfied now?”
Mallory’s tiredness dropped from him. “I hope you aren’t suggesting that he’s after Felicity? In God’s name, why? And why kill me? I’m the one who will hang, for Hamilton, for Mrs. Granville, and now for Nan. Kill me and the police will know I’m not guilty of any of this.” He looked from Bennett to Rutledge. “What worries me most is that Hamilton is on the loose and half demented. And if that’s the case, he’s a very dangerous man. I can tell you I’m not looking forward to nightfall, if that’s the case.”
“What about his injuries?” Bennett said. “And who was it attacked him on the strand?”
“He might not have been as badly injured as Dr. Granville thought,” Rutledge said, slowly. “But there’s someone who might have struck Hamilton down by the Mole, who might have come back to get rid of him after learning he wasn’t dead, and who could have a very good reason for wanting to get into this house.”
He told them about Stratton and the diaries.
But Bennett shook his head. “I can see this Stratton arguing with Mr. Hamilton Monday morning, and anger getting the best of him then. I don’t see him killing two other people over a book that’s not been written. And how did he get in and out of Hampton Regis that day without anyone seeing
him? I don’t think that’s possible.” He turned back to Mallory. “As for tonight, there’s the safety of the station for you, Mr. Mallory,” Bennett offered. “Safe as houses. And as for Mrs. Hamilton, we’ll put her up in my spare bedroom until this is finished. No one will touch her there.”
Mallory shook his head. “I’ve told you from the start, to turn myself in is an admission of guilt.”
“You’re helping us with our inquiries,” Bennett pointed out.
“And Hamilton, if that’s who is behind these killings, vanishes abroad and I’m left holding the bag. I’ve got the revolver. I don’t want to kill him, but I can damned well knock him down. I’m a decent enough shot for that.”
“Here, there’s going to be no gunfire in this house, tonight or any other time,” Bennett corrected him.
“Yes, well, we’ll see what the night brings.”
“Let Putnam take Felicity with him. I’ll stay in her place and together we’ll keep watch,” Rutledge said to stop their bickering.
“She’s no safer in that rambling warren of rooms in the rectory than she is here. Can you picture Putnam defending her? No, she’ll remain in the house, even if I have to sleep across her threshold.”
“Think about it,” Rutledge urged him. “You’re out on your feet, man. And you’ve got my word that I won’t take any steps against you. But another pair of eyes and ears could be very welcome at three o’clock in the morning. The wind is rising out there. You’ll be wishing by then that you’d agreed.”
“I’m armed, and Hamilton isn’t,” Mallory retorted, stung by Rutledge’s suggestion.
“Yes, but remember that old children’s riddle about transporting geese from one side of the river to another, while making certain the fox isn’t left with the flock on either bank? If I’m here and it comes to shooting anyone, I’ll be your witness. Otherwise it’s your word against a dead man’s. A man you’re already accused of beating until he was unconscious.”