by Charles Todd
When Granville had gone and before Mallory had presented himself again, Rutledge tapped lightly on the door to Mrs. Hamilton’s room.
“Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Putnam. I should like to borrow your keys for a little while. Do you mind?”
Putnam, his eyes on Rutledge’s face, said, “Ah, I haven’t given Dr. Granville one, have I? My mistake. Thank you, Inspector.” He brought them to the door. “It’s rather an unconventional collection, I’m afraid. I never think to take off one when I add another. Those to this side of the longest one are to the church. The others are the rectory keys. I can’t tell you where one or two of them came from. My predecessor, very likely.”
He passed them to Rutledge.
“You aren’t leaving, are you, Inspector?” Felicity asked anxiously.
“Not for a while,” he reassured her.
And then he set about trying the rector’s keys on the locks of Casa Miranda.
The trouble, he thought, was that there were too many doors. The main entrance facing the drive possessed a newer lock, and none of Putnam’s fit it. There was a door to the back garden, another down a short passage where Mrs. Hamilton or her predecessors had cut and potted plants for the house, several ways into the kitchen area, and a door leading directly into the servants’ quarters, where they could come and go without walking through the kitchen. The cellar door boasted a padlock.
He found, working methodically through the handful of keys, that while several of them raised his hopes at first, only two of them actually fit into a lock well enough to reach the tumblers. Both turned stiffly at first, but after a little effort on his part, he heard the tumblers fall into place.
He now had two keys that unlocked two house doors: one that led to the servants’ belowstairs quarters and the other to the door where tradesmen brought their goods and supplies. Holding them up to the light, edge to edge, he could see that they were identical.
Dr. Granville had been right. It wasn’t only Matthew Hamilton who could enter the house at will but anyone in Hampton Regis who possessed a key of the same shape.
Rutledge returned the keys to Putnam, told Mallory that he would be back within the hour, and left the property, walking quickly in the direction of the police station.
His watchers had left their reports on the table that served as his desk.
Rutledge thumbed through them quickly and found that the man in the church tower had seen very little. “The way the trees were tossing about,” he’d scrawled in pencil, “it was nearly impossible to be sure what was shadow, what was dog, and what was not. I saw the constable on watch a time or two, and that was all I could identify with any certainty.”
There had been no trees to speak of between the man in the Cornelius attic and the Mole. He reported no activity until two fishermen went down to look at the sea and walked back again ten minutes later. Mr. Reston was not seen leaving his house.
Nor had Constable Coxe.
The constable in Rutledge’s room at the inn swore he’d seen someone moving about in the shadows, “But not clear enough to be sure who it was. He didn’t walk up the drive to the door, I made certain of that. But where he went I can’t say. The constable paced about a bit, and he might have had a clearer look.”
The constable declared he’d seen no one.
Hamish said, “It could ha’ been Stratton, poking about.”
“Yes, I think it very likely was.”
No one had made an attempt to climb up from the sea, and no one had gone to the other cliff, where Mallory had watched the lights of the Hamilton house from his motorcar.
“A night’s sleep lost for verra’ little.”
Rutledge could feel the tiredness across his own shoulders. “I wonder if Stratton made free with the hotel keys.”
“It doesna’ signify. They do na’ look the same.”
It was a good point. The key to his own room was newer in style and shape. But what about those to the kitchens and the ser vice entrance? He made a mental note to look.
He tossed the reports aside. No one had come to Casa Miranda after all. In all likelihood the branch had driven itself through the fragile old glass of the dining room windows.
And his men were sleeping now after a long cold night.
He got up and walked to the door of the police station. The wind had dropped with the dawn, leaving twigs and bits of straw, scraps of paper and any other debris not nailed down scattered on lawns and pavement. The lid from a dustbin had been wedged tightly into a clump of bare-limbed lilac, and someone’s hat was caught on a branch of a tree by the nearest house.
Hamish was telling him that a good officer could have put that wind to use last night, infiltrating half a dozen men through enemy lines. “Crawling on their bellies, they’d no’ make a silhouette against the sky.”
“But Hamilton wasn’t in the army,” he said. “And so he didn’t come. Or whoever it is, with a fierce design on everyone around Hamilton.”
He went for a walk, climbing the headland across the sea from the house. It wasn’t terribly high, but it gave a good view of Casa Miranda. He could see the marks left in the damp soil by a motorcar’s tires. Mallory, then, and his obsession with Felicity Hamilton.
Out to sea, Rutledge could just pick out a steamer passing on the horizon, black smoke marking its progress along the rim of the sky. Nearer in, a fishing boat bobbed, for the current was running fast.
His thoughts kept returning to the events of the night.
We were prepared for a frontal assault, he reminded himself. And too many people knew that. So the killer never came. The bough through the windowpane notwithstanding.
“If I had it to do over again,” he told Hamish, unaware that he was speaking aloud, “I’d spread my forces better. I’d see that the lure was more enticing. And I’d watch the lamppost.”
“There willna’ be anither time. Have ye no’ thought it was the man’s defense of the Germans that unsettled someone who lost a son or brother or lover in the war? Ye ken, the Kaiser is in Holland and untouchable, but his advocate is here in Hampton Regis. But two wrongly dead is a verra’ high price for revenge. It’s over, and ye’re no closer to the killer than before.”
Rutledge turned from the view, feeling the damp biting through him, though the sun was making a yeoman’s effort to warm his shoulders.
“The killer may think it is finished. He doesn’t know me.”
There was a shop near the police station, and Rutledge walked toward it, thinking about a hot cup of tea. He had drunk only half of it when one of Bennett’s men came to fetch him.
There had been a telephone call for him from Exeter. Someone from the hotel had brought the message to the police station.
25
Rutledge decided, as he paid his account at the teashop, to return the Exeter telephone call from the Duke of Monmouth. He could count on more privacy there.
Constable Jordan, not to be put off, said, “Inspector Bennett would like to know, sir, if this is to do with Mr. Hamilton.”
“Tell Inspector Bennett that I’ve found a woman who knew Hamilton as a young man. She may have remembered something useful. When I spoke to her last, she wasn’t very encouraging. But she’s had a little time to think about it.”
“Yes, sir. Something in his past, then. Inspector Bennett asks you keep him informed, sir.”
Bennett had been curt about Felicity Hamilton’s attempt at suicide, describing it as nervous theatrics. “I’d send Mrs. Bennett along if it weren’t for putting another pawn in Mallory’s hands. It’s better for that whole house of cards to come tumbling down. And it will, mark my words. If not today, by tomorrow.” There had been satisfaction in his certainty, as if this had been his plan from the start.
Rutledge nodded and walked briskly on. Halfway to the Duke of Monmouth, he encountered Dr. Granville coming toward him.
“I was just coming to find you, Rutledge. Miss Esterley has agreed to consider staying the night. It was the best I could do
. But I was able to arrange a thermos of broth for Mrs. Hamilton, and I’m taking it up when it’s ready. Unless you’re going back yourself? The Duke of Monmouth kitchen is preparing it now.”
“I’ll see to it. Thanks.”
“If you need me, I’ll be at the undertaker’s. After that, you’ll find me at the rectory. No later than one or half past, I should think.” He walked on, his shoulders braced for the ordeal ahead.
Rutledge looked after him, not envying him. On impulse, he called after Granville, “Would you rather wait until I can spell Mr. Putnam?”
Granville turned. “I don’t know that his company would make it any easier. But I’ll need to confer with him about the ser vice. Let him stay with Mrs. Hamilton as long as she needs him.”
Rutledge reached the inn and shut himself into the telephone closet. He put through the call to Exeter and found himself speaking to an Inspector Cubbins.
“I’m calling on behalf of a Miss Miranda Cole,” Cubbins told him, curiosity thick in his Devon voice. “She has asked me to tell you she regrets her stubbornness yesterday. If you could find it in yourself to forgive her, she’ll speak with you again this afternoon.”
It was not the message Rutledge had expected from her. As the silence lengthened, Cubbins asked, “Is this by any stretch of my imagination something to do with what’s going on there in Hampton Regis? If it is, I’d like to hear about it. I’m told one of my constables took you to the Cole house in the evening when I was off duty.”
“’Ware!” Hamish warned.
Rutledge, brought up short, said, “I called on her, yes, to see if she could give me any information about Matthew Hamilton’s early years in England. She knew him then but hasn’t seen or as far as I know heard from him since that time. I thought, a formality. Who brought you the message? Is there anything wrong?”
“Should there be?”
“All was well when I left her.”
“Then it’s well now. Her maid, Miss Dedham, came in not half an hour ago. She refused to wait, just delivered a note from her mistress and went back to the house. But she seemed perfectly composed.” There was a pause. “How did you come to hear about Miss Cole?”
“A woman in Kent told me Miss Cole had moved in the same circles as Hamilton and his family. It was a shorter drive to Exeter.”
“So it is.” Rutledge could hear fingers tapping on the man’s desk. “You’ll come and fetch me if there’s more than a formality involved, won’t you? I’d like to think we look after our own.”
He took a chance. “If you’ve nothing better to do, meet me there.”
“We don’t have murderers running about undetected, but I’ve got a pleasing sufficiency on my plate at the moment. No, I leave it to your good judgment, Rutledge. You know where to find me.”
And he rang off.
Rutledge went to the dining room for Mrs. Hamilton’s broth and discovered that luncheon would be served in fifteen minutes. He used the time to dress for his coming meeting with Miss Cole and then ate his meal in his usual corner.
He dropped the thermos of broth at the door of Casa Miranda.
Mallory, accepting it, said, “She probably won’t touch it, now that I have.”
“She isn’t expecting you to poison her.”
“You’d think she was, refusing to let me come near her.”
“Leave her alone, Mallory, and set your own house in order.”
With that he turned on his heel and strode back to the motorcar.
“Where will you be, if we need you?” Mallory called to him.
“Not far away.”
“I saw you on the headland over there. Did you find anything?”
“Only the marks of your tires,” Rutledge retorted as he let out the clutch. “So much for secrecy and discretion.”
At the end of the drive, he turned to the west, soon leaving Hampton Regis behind.
It must have been market day somewhere, Rutledge decided, driving through the second herd of cows moving placidly along the road ahead of him. He caught up with another cart shortly afterward, laden with chickens in wicker baskets. They squawked in alarm as the motorcar passed by.
But he made steady time in spite of the traffic, and it was only a little after afternoon tea that he found himself pulling into the drive at the house where Miranda Cole lived with her aunt.
Dedham answered his knocks, her face drawn as if she hadn’t slept well. “She’s expecting you. Don’t upset her any more than you already have.”
“I never intended to upset your mistress.”
She opened the door to the sitting room, ushered him in, and shut it almost on his heels with a snap that told him her opinion of him.
Miss Cole was sitting in the sunlight that poured through the window beside her. He thought at first that she’d been crying, and then realized that her eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep.
It had been a long night in this house as well as the one named for this woman in Hampton Regis.
“Sit down, Inspector. I have had my tea. You’ll find the pot is still warm, if you care for a cup.”
“Thank you, no.”
“Then please tell me, from the beginning, what you know about Matthew Hamilton and everything that happened to him in the last week.”
Rutledge began with Mallory’s decision after leaving hospital to live outside Hampton Regis, and his inability to stop himself from seeing Felicity, one way or another.
“Is she pretty, the woman Matthew married? Felicity.” She seemed to taste the name, as if it could present her with an image of his wife.
“I would call her pretty. She has a vivacity that must be attractive in happier circumstances. And a certain vulnerability.”
He went through the morning that Matthew Hamilton had walked along the water, and how he had been found. Watching her—for she couldn’t see him and he kept his gaze steady, reading each expression that flitted across what she must have supposed to be a still face—he thought, She wasn’t blind from birth. Her eyes follow me when I move. There must be some sense of light and dark, or perhaps a range of shadows.
But she couldn’t distinguish, for instance, the shabbiness of her surroundings. How the colors had faded, and how alive she looked among them, her fair hair and the dark blue sweater and string of fine pearls setting her apart, as if she’d wandered here by mistake.
She lifted her hand to her face as he described Hamilton’s injuries, and said, “He must have been in great pain.”
“The doctor took every care of him,” he assured her.
As he told her about Mallory’s race to speak to Felicity, and the subsequent decision to hold her against her will until Rutledge arrived from London, she said, “You know this man, don’t you? From the war, was it? I can hear the difference in your voice as you describe him.”
He hadn’t been aware that he was betraying himself as well.
Hamish, his own voice soft in Rutledge’s ear, said, “She has lived wi’ blindness a verra’ long time.”
“We served in France together,” he conceded, and left it at that.
The rest of the story unwound like wire from a spool, tangled sometimes because she didn’t know all the players. And at other times, she would interject a question or comment that was remarkably astute.
She was interested in Miss Esterley, who had become friends with Hamilton after her accident. “He had a way of making it seem that you had his entire attention,” she commented, her first personal remark. “It isn’t surprising that someone alone at such a trying time might feel comforted.”
“I’ve not had the good fortune to know him at his best,” Rutledge said. “But yes, he was kind to her, and it was valued.”
When he reached his account of Hamilton’s disappearance, she was tense in her chair, her hands tightening and her body braced.
But she stirred as he once more described Mrs. Granville’s death, almost as if she were hearing it for the first time.
The sun had gone in
, and darkness was coming down. She said, as if to gain a little time, “Could you light the lamps, please, Inspector Rutledge? And hand me my shawl? It should be there on the table by the door where you came into the room.”
He saw to the lamps and found the shawl where she’d told him to look. By the time he’d returned to his seat, she had herself under control again.
Nan Weekes’s death shook her to the core.
“How did anyone get into the house? Surely it must have been this man Mallory. What has become of Matthew’s keys? Have you thought to look for them?”
“His clothing was taken from the surgery the night he disappeared. If he’s alive, he must have the keys as well. Another reason why it’s imperative to know who may have them if he doesn’t.”
“But I don’t understand. If he was attacked, then he’s a victim.”
“Of the assault, yes.”
“I think your Inspector Bennett may be right, that this Lieutenant Mallory is behind everything that’s happened. Mrs. Granville’s death and the maid’s death,” she said, grasping for straws to build her case. “And Matthew has been made to look like the scapegoat.”
“I’m beginning to think Mallory was intended to take the blame. For that death and Mrs. Granville’s.”
“Well, there you are, then. Matthew had nothing to do with it.”
“Then where is he? Why hasn’t he come forward? And who besides Hamilton cares whether Mallory is hanged or not?”
“Surely there are other suspects?”
“A very short list. Perhaps you’re willing to help me add to it. Or take one away by telling me Hamilton is dead.”
She shivered. “Believe me, I wish I could help you.”
“Mallory may be innocent. If he is, he’s already suffered more than enough. There’s that to consider as well.” He waited. “I’ve come because Inspector Cubbins tells me you have something to say to me. I hope it’s true. Or I’ve wasted my time.”