his wife. Passionately. Everywhere her body rested the night on the long journey south to London, he built a shrine. The wonder was, he didn’t smash the relic. But I expect he felt that the dung heap was a more fitting end for it. A fake, a sham.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Inspector. And there are patients waiting.”
“It was a story that must have touched Sir John. He hadn’t been able to save either of his wives, had he? The host was, after all, no more than a pretty fraud.”
The doctor’s face changed. “That’s an assumption that neither you nor I can make. Sir John was a soldier, a sceptic; hardly one to take seriously legends about relics and miracles. Where is this taking us?”
“I’m trying,” Rutledge returned blandly, “to establish whether or not Sir John loved Elizabeth Middleton as deeply as – for instance – you must love your wife. Because it was for her you did what you did. Not the patients out there in the waiting room.” It was a guess, but it struck home.
Taylor opened his mouth, then shut it again.
“Why did you put the dog out? Did it attack you? If I asked you to have another doctor look at your ankles or legs, would he find breaks in the skin to indicate you’d been bitten? Even if it has begun to heal, the marks must still be there. Would you agree to such an examination?”
Taylor rose from behind the desk. “Yes, all right, the dog was dying when I got there. Sir John was kneeling on the floor beside it when I opened the door and called to him. He told me he was in the study, and to come quickly. Still, the damned dog growled at me and got to its feet as I struck the first blow. I had to get rid of it because Sir John was still alive and I needed to hit him again. The cold finished it off, I expect. It’s breathing was shallow, laboured.” He moved to the hearth. “My wife has just been diagnosed with colon cancer. I’d already asked Sir John if I could borrow the reliquary. To give her a chance. He told me it had done nothing for his wife, dying of childbed fever. But I didn’t care. I was ready to try anything. I just wanted to try. But he was afraid that, if my wife recovered on her own, Mumford would be swamped with the desperate, the hopeless, believers in miracles. He said it would be wrong. Time was running out, and yet that afternoon he begged me to do something for his dog. It was obscene, I tell you.”
He reached down, his fingers closing over the handle of the fire tongs. Lifting his voice, he shouted, “No, no – you’re wrong! Put them down, for God’s sake.”
And, before Rutledge could stop him, he raised the tongs and brought them down on his own head, the blow carefully calculated to break the skin but not knock him down. And as blood ran down his face, he dropped the tongs and cried out, “Oh, God, someone help me … Mrs Dunne … he’s run mad.”
And in a swift angry voice that only reached Rutledge’s ears, Taylor said, “She’s ill, I tell you. I won’t be taken away when she needs me. Not by you, not by anyone.”
He rushed at Rutledge, grappling with him.
The door burst open, Mrs Dunne flying to the doctor’s aid, pulling at Rutledge’s shoulders, calling out for him to stop.
Rutledge had no choice. He swung her around, and she went down, tripping over the chair he’d been sitting in. He turned towards the hearth, to retrieve the fire tongs as Taylor reeled against the far wall, calling, “Stop him—”
Mrs Dunne, scrambling to her feet, must have thought Rutledge was about to use the tongs again, and she threw herself at him, carrying him backward against the hearth, stumbling over the fire screen.
Her screams had brought patients from the waiting room, pushing their way through the door, faces anxious and frightened as they took in the carnage, drawing the same conclusions that Mrs Dunne had leapt to. A woman in a dark green coat gasped and went to the doctor’s aid, and he leaned heavily against her shoulder. Two men put themselves between Rutledge and his perceived victim, one of them quickly retrieving the fire tongs from where they’d fallen, as if afraid Rutledge could still reach