by Charles Todd
“I don’t see why it isn’t simple. Go to his house, inspect the cane, and you’ll have all the proof you need,” she pleaded. “And I can sit with Matthew.”
Mallory winced but said nothing.
“Yes, as soon as possible. Can you tell me who Clarissa’s mother is, and how I can find her? I’ll need to speak to her.”
Felicity Hamilton went flying from the room and came back with a sheet of paper bearing a name and an address. “Here. Call on her, whatever you must do. But today, please! I can’t bear any more of this.”
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Hamilton. If there’s anything else you can think of, just ask Mr. Mallory to call to the constable standing near the gate. He’ll see that I get word.”
She seemed to have bloomed into brightness, her face flushed with the prospect of resolution, her hopes high. Like a child waiting for a treat, he thought. Would this soon grow tiresome to a man like Matthew Hamilton? Or was he still enthralled with his wife’s beauty and brightness and waywardness?
Hamish had no answer for that as Rutledge asked Mallory to allow him to look in on Nan Weekes.
She was still angry and resentful. After a time, he was able to calm her tirade sufficiently to say, “I’m here to ask if you’ve thought of anyone we might question or investigate. Someone who may have come to the house and quarreled with Mr. Hamilton, or someone who upset him in any way.”
“You know who it was struck down Mr. Hamilton. He’s standing there behind you. Or if it wasn’t him, it was her. You’d do well to arrest both of them before I’m murdered in my bed.”
“You think he might harm you, rather than Mrs. Hamilton?”
“He’s barged in here, hasn’t he, and had his way with her. When he’s tired of that, he’ll likely rid himself of both of us. And she’d like to see me dead now, so there are no ears in this house to hear what goes on.”
Mallory was already objecting vociferously, his voice rising in fury above hers. “No one has touched her, and if you say I have, then you’re a liar—”
Over his shoulder Rutledge ordered him to be silent. “This must be done, and you know it.”
Mallory turned his back on both of them and slammed the door behind him.
“He’s got a temper on him. It’s just a matter of time before he kills again,” Nan said spitefully. “Mark my words!”
Rutledge said, “Listen to me, Miss Weekes. Your anger does you credit but it won’t serve you here. Do you understand me? You’ll only antagonize your keeper. If Hamilton dies before he can speak, we may never get at the truth. And whether you like it or not, your life may come to depend on something you can tell us, something you may know that we don’t.” He tried to keep his voice level, reasonable, in an effort to break through the maid’s stiff resistance. “Put aside your feelings and help me. There must surely be others in Hampton Regis who had a reason to dislike Hamilton, or even his wife. You keep house for people, you overhear conversations in the course of your duties. You have friends who clean for other families and who gossip with you.”
“We were God-fearing people in Hampton Regis, before he brought her here. A good Christian woman wouldn’t have let him put those idols up in plain sight in his drawing room. She encourages him, if you ask me. All very well in parts of the world where people believe in such nasty things, but not here, rubbed in our faces. And when she tires of that sport, she lures her lover here. If she didn’t wield the stick that struck down her husband, she drove that man into doing it for her. If that isn’t true, tell me why she and her lover plotted this business of keeping us locked up here? Oh, yes, I saw it with my own eyes! You’d think if she truly loved her husband, she’d want to be there, sitting beside him, and nothing would stand in her way. That man has to sleep some time.”
“You’re telling me that it was Mrs. Hamilton who devised the plan to hold you both at gunpoint?”
“I heard them, didn’t I? And I’ll testify to that in a courtroom. See if I don’t.” With another spiteful glance at the closed door where Mallory must be listening, she added, “Ask anyone. At night he’d drive to the headland across the way and watch this house. He doesn’t think people know about that, but they do. They whisper behind his back. He’s been plotting to murder Mr. Hamilton for months, if you want my opinion, but as long as the poor man is breathing, she won’t leave with him.”
“Because she loves Hamilton, after all?”
“Because he’s better off than Mr. Mallory. She’s a little hussy, that one, and she married Mr. Hamilton for his money. Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you the same.”
And if Hamilton was dead, she’d inherit that money…assuming she came through this ordeal unscathed.
It was, Hamish commented as Rutledge left Nan sitting there and rejoined a very tense Mallory in the passage, a very good motive for murder.
They walked through the house in silence. Then, at the door, Mallory asked Rutledge quietly, making certain that his voice didn’t carry up the stairs or into the drawing room, “Are you keeping something from me? Did he say anything?”
“Why should I lie to you? He was in no state to answer questions. But we can hope that by tomorrow the news is better. Mallory, listen to me, encourage Mrs. Hamilton to remember the names of wedding guests and friends she and Hamilton visited in London. It could be your salvation if Reston is in the clear.”
With that he stepped outside and walked on, without turning back.
12
The child began to scream at two in the morning. When Nanny failed to comfort the boy, she went to his mother’s room and knocked.
“He’s hysterical. I don’t understand why, there’s nothing amiss that I can find.” The anxiety in her normally calm voice was a counterpoint to the heartbreaking wails issuing from the nursery.
“Should we summon Dr. Granville?” Mrs. Cornelius asked, quickly knotting her dressing gown around her. “Is he feverish, you think? Has he been sick?”
“He’s very well. It was the window, you see. He insisted I close it and put down the shade. He said something out there wanted in.”
“Was the shade raised? Whatever for?” Mrs. Cornelius followed Nanny down the passage and opened the nursery door. She could hear her son before she got there, sobbing inconsolably now and calling for her. She crossed to the bed and put her arms around him. He clung to her, burying his face in the dark hair that tumbled down her shoulder.
“What is it, my love, what is it?” she repeated in a singsong voice, ignoring the hovering nanny. But he shook his head with some force, as if he didn’t want to tell her.
Nanny said softly, “Sometimes in the night, he’ll wake up and go to the window seat. It looks out to the sea. He likes that. He’s learned to lift the shade for himself.”
“Was it the sea that frightened you?” she asked the clinging child. But he shook his head again. “Or the mist? You’ve seen mists before, haven’t you, my love?”
Nanny had closed the window but had not pulled down the shade.
Mrs. Cornelius turned to peer out. This window looked down on the street but she could see the water just beyond the next house but one. Or could have done, in the moonlight. A sea mist had crept in, a filmy white wraith that made the street and the rooftops and the outlines of houses seem unfamiliar and unfriendly.
Cradling the child in her arms, she shivered. Anything could be out there, she thought. What had Jeremy seen? And it was in just such a mist that Mr. Hamilton had been struck down.
What if someone lurked in the shadows, watching this lighted window, perhaps knowing it was her son’s nursery? What if he had lured the boy to slip down and open the house door?
They were wealthy enough to pay a goodly ransom.
She had caught her son’s fear.
She said to Nanny, “Rouse Mr. Cornelius, if you please. Ask him to send for Inspector Bennett. It may be nothing, but on the other hand, better safe than sorry. Tell him to take Benedict with him.” The footman, she thought, would be protection eno
ugh. “And beg him to remember to lock the door behind him. Hurry!”
When Nanny had gone, she said, soothingly, “It’s all right, Jeremy, there’s nothing to worry you. Would you like to sleep in my bed for a bit?” Anything to take him away from here and the lighted window.
She could feel his head bob against her breast. “Then you must stand up like the little man you are, and take my hand. You’re far too big for me to carry.”
After a time, he sat up and then got down from her lap, but held tightly to her hand as they went back along the dark passage and into her room.
Watching him climb into her bed and snuggle under the bedclothes, she thought, He might be going on seven, but he’s still a baby.
She took the precaution of locking the bedroom door until her husband returned.
Moments later, Cornelius, sitting in his dressing room, was dragging his trousers on over his nightclothes and searching for his stockings and shoes, all the while grumbling under his breath. But he was accustomed to doing his wife’s bidding, and pulling on his heavy coat and finding a scarf, he set out in the darkness for the police station, two streets over.
He had rejected as foolishness taking Benedict with him but had sensibly brought his cane.
He didn’t like the sea mist any more than his son had done, and he listened to the muffled echo of his heels, thinking that Matthew Hamilton had been walking out later than this, and someone invisible in just such a mist had nearly killed him. Had Jeremy’s terror somehow been intended to bring another prominent man out into the dark streets to be assaulted? Nonsense, he told himself briskly. The child had had a nightmare, and his wife had been frightened by the unexpected intensity of it. Nevertheless he found himself looking over his shoulder whenever there was a sound behind him, and he walked a little faster.
Why the devil did a street appear to be so different on a night of mist? The shrubbery in back of Mrs. Pickering’s house looked like hunched monsters brooding over a pool of cotton wool shrouding their feet. And a chimney atop the Reston house sported a gull that floated in midair. When a cat ran out of a doorway on the Mole, it startled him so badly he nearly dropped his cane. A black cat, he was certain of it.
Whatever Jeremy had seen, by the time he reached the police station, Theo Cornelius had convinced himself that something indeed was abroad, and his heart was pounding from a sense of being watched.
The police station was empty. A lamp stood on the desk in the main room, and beside it a note that sent him on to Bennett’s house, growling as he went. All for a silly child’s nightmare, he told himself now. Otherwise he’d be at home in his own bed, sound asleep. Jeremy had been begging sweets in the kitchen again, and Cook spoiled him recklessly.
But bravado did nothing to stop the hairs on the back of his neck from prickling as he stepped into the street again.
It took him several minutes to rouse someone at Bennett’s house. The inspector came to the door, his crutch propping him up as he looked out at the man on his step.
“Mr. Cornelius,” he said, instantly recognizing his caller. “What’s to do, sir, is there any trouble?”
“My son is having a nightmare. My wife insisted that I summon you.” It sounded ridiculous, putting it that way, and he took a step backward. “Er—she felt that since Mr. Hamilton had been attacked on a morning when there was sea mist, it might be important to discover what had upset my son.”
“I see.” But it was evident Bennett didn’t. He cleared his throat and said, “You must fetch Mr. Rutledge at the Duke of Monmouth, sir. He’s in charge of the inquiry into what happened to Mr. Hamilton.”
“Look,” Cornelius began irritably, “I’ve been to the station, and I’ve come here. I’m damned if I’ll spend what’s left of the night—”
But Bennett was there before him. He pointed to his bandaged foot and said, “It’s all I can do to walk down the stairs, sir, much less as far as your house. We’re spread thin, and that’s why Mr. Rutledge has come. You’d do better speaking with him. He’s from Scotland Yard, you know. A London policeman.” He smiled grimly.
Cornelius turned away, angry and feeling a worse fool. He was of half a mind to go home and to bed, be damned to alarums in the night. But his wife would simply send him out again, and so he went instead to the Duke of Monmouth Inn. The sense of danger had faded, replaced by anger and resentment. What he should have done was hunt the fool down himself! Not come for the incompetent and unhelpful police. The Chief Constable would hear about this—
It seemed to be the middle of the night when Rutledge came out of a deep sleep to hear voices in the passage outside his door.
He listened for a moment or two, and recognized the desk clerk’s as one of them.
By the time the man knocked, Rutledge was on his feet and reaching for his clothes.
Rutledge opened his door to the desk clerk, his hair disheveled and trousers thrown on with haste. Behind him was a taller man, fair and flustered but well dressed.
“Mr. Rutledge? This is Mr. Cornelius. Inspector Bennett has sent him to you.” He turned slightly to include Cornelius in the conversation.
The man said, “There’s something wrong at my house. My son’s had a shock, and my wife sent me to fetch you. Will you come?”
“What kind of shock?” Rutledge asked, swiftly finishing dressing.
“I don’t know. He was screaming the house down half an hour ago. There’s a mist coming in. My wife was concerned about that, what with the assault on Mr. Hamilton.” He stopped, seeming at a loss for words. His story hadn’t come out the way he’d intended it should.
But Rutledge followed him without argument, with Hamish alert and awake in his mind, quarreling and taunting during the silent walk to where Cornelius lived.
The mist had grown denser, and it was a strangely quiet, soft world, the sea itself hissing somewhere to his left instead of rolling in with its usual thunder.
The Cornelius house was on Mercer Street, which curved away from the center of town but still allowed a very nice view of the water. More prosperous residents lived here—Reston’s house was just down the road—and the Victorian flavor of money and respectability was reflected in the size and style of the dwellings.
Rutledge was reminded of Bennett’s comment that fish scales made for slippery social climbing.
They went up the walk to Number 4 and Cornelius let them in with his key. There was a lamp at the foot of the stairs, but the ground floor was in darkness. Carrying the lamp, Cornelius took the steps two at a time to the first floor, and Rutledge followed.
The man was annoyed that his wife had locked the bedroom door, and knocked briskly.
She came out to them, shushing them. “Jeremy’s just gone to sleep again.”
She stared uncertainly at Rutledge, and her husband hastily presented him, adding, “He’s here in Bennett’s stead.”
“What seems to be the trouble?” Rutledge asked her.
“It’s probably a wild-goose chase,” she began apologetically, confronted now with this stranger from London instead of Mr. Bennett. She was beginning to wonder if she’d been wise to call in the police. But the memory of her son’s distress kept her from making light of her fears. “Nanny tells me my son sits by his window late at night, and tonight there was something in the mist that frightened him. He began to cry and it took me some time to calm him down again. But after what happened to Matthew Hamilton—”
“Yes, you did the right thing,” Rutledge replied, cutting short the apology. “Did he describe to you what he’d seen?”
“A hunchback creature stumbling along the road at the head of the street. He believes it was a monster of some kind, but of course that’s only a child’s interpretation. I can’t think what it might actually have been.” She glanced at her husband. “Jeremy is possessed of a lively imagination, and his grandfather encourages him by reading to him books that are, well, perhaps a little mature for him. But he doesn’t make up stories. Something was there. I’m co
nvinced of it.”
“A fisherman carrying his nets down to the boat?” Rutledge took out his watch. “When do the fishermen set sail? Before dawn, surely.”
“I hadn’t thought of that—but why should that frighten Jeremy? He must have seen them dozens of times. And this—this creature wasn’t walking toward the Mole but away from it, following the west road.”
“And yet,” Hamish put in, “she didna’ fear to send her husband out in the dark.”
Which was an interesting point. Mr. Cornelius was a prime target, if someone was intent on distracting the police from the attack on Hamilton by hunting other likely prey in the night. Rutledge shifted his emphasis slightly but that was in effect his next question.
“If you were concerned about who or what was out there, was it wise to send Mr. Cornelius to the police?”
She stared at Rutledge. “But he took Benedict with him. And besides my husband has no enemies.”
Over her head Rutledge and Cornelius exchanged glances. In silent agreement that she needn’t be told her husband had gone out alone.
“Neither, apparently, did Hamilton have enemies,” Rutledge answered her.
Mrs. Cornelius refused to wake the boy for Rutledge to question further tonight. “The problem is out there, not in here. I’ve told you everything my son told me. There’s been enough time wasted already, Inspector. If this ‘monster’ is to be found, you’d best hurry.”
In the end, he didn’t press, and Cornelius saw him out again with heartfelt apologies.
Walking back through the mist, Rutledge could understand the sense of unease that had triggered the boy’s fear. Nothing appeared to have its normal shape in this white shroud. A cat skirting a garden walk loomed large as it rounded the corner of a wall, as if magnified by the murky light. And a small boat, putting out to sea, seemed to be sailing into a milky curtain that clung to it and draped it until it vanished, a captive of some voracious sea monster. Rooftops appeared and disappeared, chimney pots were heads poking out of the swirls as if strange creatures were dancing there high above the street. A wandering dog knocked over a pail, and the noise of it rolled among the houses with waves of echoes.
