by Charles Todd
It was unarguable. And Rutledge could see that Mallory was torn. In the end, he went up the stairs to speak to Mrs. Hamilton and the rector.
When he returned, he said only, “She wants you to stay. The rector offered, but I’d as soon have another soldier at my back tonight. Now if you’ve finished here, I’ll thank you to be on your way.”
“I’ll be here before dark,” Rutledge told him. “You can search my case for a weapon, but there won’t be one.”
23
Rutledge had given his word, but he made his plans with the care of a seasoned campaigner.
He set his men to guard the house, concealing them well out of sight. One stood in his room at the Duke of Monmouth, field glasses at the ready. Two others watched the roads to the headlands on either side of the Mole. And one was in the church tower, with its sweeping view of the town. They went early to their positions, armed with hot tea in thermoses and sandwiches put up by Mrs. Bennett. Constable Jordan was relieved in due course by his usual replacement. And another man kept an eye on Constable Coxe, as a precaution. Rutledge had also asked one of the men sent from another village to observe the Reston house, placing him where he could see it clearly, in the Cornelius family attic.
Mrs. Cornelius, a little anxious, had not wished to have a policeman spending the night in her attic, but Rutledge had assured her that it was to watch the same route that her son’s monster had taken two nights before. Not precisely the whole truth, unless the headless man had been Reston himself, but it served to allay her suspicions. He didn’t want gossip flying about the town before morning.
“But why should he come again? I’d nearly convinced myself it was Jeremy’s imagination, Mr. Rutledge, though I was reluctant to believe it at the time.”
“Your son’s imagination made a monster out of an ordinary event. What I’d like to discover is what he actually saw. It will clear up any remaining questions I might have now.”
“I must say, I’ve not really recovered from the news that Mrs. Granville is dead. And now poor Nan Weekes. We’ve never had anything of this sort happen in Hampton Regis before. And you’re quite sure that you aren’t trying to comfort me by telling me my family is in no danger?”
“If I thought you were, Mrs. Cornelius, the constable would be guarding your door, not standing at an attic window.”
Later, Mr. Putnam, concerned for the safety of everyone involved, asked Rutledge if it was wise to lay a trap with human beings as bait.
“Do you know of another way to catch this killer? He’s cold-blooded, he’s clever, and he’s not about to offer himself up to us without a fight,” Rutledge pointed out.
“Yes, well, you know where to find Dr. Granville if there’s any trouble.”
“Pray that it doesn’t come to that.”
Before leaving the station to pack a small case with what he needed, Rutledge spent an hour reading the reports of his men from the day’s monotonous rounds of questioning. He paid particular attention to the reports from the road where the cottage had stood. The only small flutter of excitement there had been a fox in the henhouse of the small farm where Mallory sometimes bought eggs.
A waste of time, Bennett told him. “But then, most police work comes to nothing. It has to be done, and we do it, else we’re slack. Mountains of paper and ink for one small grain of truth.”
Rutledge thought of all Inspector Phipps’s preparations to guard Green Park in London and a man who had watched them with interest from a nearby street lamp.
He had reported Nan Weekes’s death to Chief Superintendent Bowles.
“It’s to stop there, Rutledge, do you hear me? I’ll not be greeted in the morning with more bad news. And heed me on this as well. If Hamilton isn’t right in his mind, you’re not to let Bennett clap him up in Hampton Regis. We’ll bring him to London and sort it out.”
“Yes, I’ve thought about that possibility.”
“Then see that it’s done. I’m not best pleased with this trap you’re so keen to lay. On the other hand, if there’s no other possible way to lure a killer into the open, then we’ve not got much choice. But I’ll thank you not to let that fool Mallory start shooting before we know what we’re about.”
Stratton was waiting for him by Reception, stepping out of the lounge with a glass of sherry in his hand.
“Well met, Rutledge. Can I offer you anything?”
“Thanks, but I’m still on duty.”
“A long day,” Stratton agreed. “There’s been another killing, they tell me. This time a maid working for Hamilton. And Matthew’s still missing.”
“We hope to have someone in custody shortly. Which reminds me, Stratton, where were you last night? Not wandering about Casa Miranda looking for diaries, by any chance.”
“God, no. I understand that the man who is holding Mrs. Hamilton a prisoner in her own house is an ex-officer armed to the teeth. I’m not that brave, I can tell you. What I’d like to know is if you found anything there.”
“How did you know I was at the house last evening?”
“Opening doors in a busy inn can lead to unpleasant surprises, but I found a room where the windows do look out toward the Hamilton house. Yours, in fact. And I saw you go there while I was surveying my options.”
“In future, I’d consider spending my evenings with the drapes drawn, if I were you,” Rutledge said pleasantly. “It would be wise.”
Stratton’s eyebrows rose. “Expecting more trouble, are you?”
“No. Just a friendly warning that people who meddle with a policeman going about his duties often come to grief.”
“You haven’t answered my question about the diaries. Do they exist, do you think?”
“If they do, they belong to Matthew Hamilton. If he’s dead, they belong to his estate. Neither you nor I have any right to them.”
“Do you think it fair for one man to hold the fate of many in his hands while he decides what to do with information he should have been sensible enough not to collect in the first place?”
“The peccadilloes were not his, Stratton, they were yours, whatever it is you’re living to regret now. You should have thought of that in good time.”
Stratton grimaced. “I can only plead youth.”
“Then you’d better pray that Matthew Hamilton has learned discretion as he aged. Or that his wife doesn’t wish to memorialize him—assuming he’s dead now—by publishing his life’s history.”
He turned to walk away. But Stratton said, “Gaming debts are not a disgrace. It’s just that I’d rather not have my fondness for playing the odds publicly acknowledged.”
In the reference to Stratton that Rutledge had seen, it wasn’t gaming debts that had been mentioned. But he didn’t stop, moving on toward the stairs.
“Then you’ve nothing to fear, have you?” he replied over his shoulder.
But he found himself agreeing with Hamish that Stratton was a very clever man, and so was the murderer he would soon be waiting for.
Twenty minutes later, Rutledge went to the inn’s kitchen and begged a box of sandwiches from the staff, with apples from a silver bowl in the dining room. Then he made certain that his torch was ready for use and added to the case the extra pair of field glasses that Bennett had found for him. Finally he dressed in dark clothing that was serviceable and warm.
Hamish was not best pleased. “Yon Mallory has told you—he killed you once before.”
“That was just a game his doctor played. It has no bearing on the present situation.”
“Oh, aye? Does the lieutenant ken it was a game?”
“He won’t shoot me.”
“I wouldna’ turn my back on him in the dark.”
It was nearly four o’clock when Rutledge walked up the hill to Casa Miranda. His motorcar stood in the yard at the inn, where he’d left it each night of his stay.
As a ruse, it wasn’t very successful, Hamish had pointed out. “No’ if Stratton is watching fra’ a window.”
“He’
ll find a constable in my room tonight, if he ventures in there again. What’s more, I left orders for the constable to lock himself in, as an added precaution.”
He spoke to the man on duty under the swaying limbs of the evergreen, remarking on the wind’s force.
“I’d not like to be out on the water this evening,” the constable replied. “But I should be warm enough.”
“Stay in plain sight after dark.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do that.”
Rutledge went on to the door and knocked. Mallory answered quickly, smelling of whiskey.
“You’re a fool to drink tonight,” he said shortly.
“I’m not drinking. It was one glass, and I downed it with a sandwich. The house is cold. I built a fire in Felicity’s bedroom, and one in the back sitting room, to make it appear to be occupied. What’s in the case?”
Rutledge let him paw through it.
“And you’re not armed?”
He opened his coat and gave Mallory time to inspect him as he turned in front of him.
“All right, then. I accept your word.”
“There are more sandwiches in the bag. Fruit. I’m not sure anyone is in the mood to prepare dinner.”
“When do you think he’ll come? If he does.”
“Late. When we’re tired and not as alert.”
“Yes, that’s what I’d told myself.” A gust of wind shook the windows overlooking the sea. “Damned wind. And this house creaks like all the imps of hell are loose in it. Felicity is waiting. She’s not taken the powder that the doctor gave her. Hester, I mean. She wanted to see you were here first.”
They went up the stairs, and Rutledge could hear their footsteps echo through the silent house.
Felicity Hamilton unlocked her door at the sound of Rutledge’s voice.
He stepped into the room, feeling the warmth of the fire, and said, “Not to alarm you, just a precaution. Are you certain no one can reach your windows from the outside? If not, we’ll find a more suitable room.”
“I prefer to stay here. But I looked, before the light went. I’d thought about that too.”
He showed her the sandwiches, pointing out that there was a variety, chicken and ham and cheese with pickles. “And here’s enough tea to see us through the night. Is there anything else you require? Water for your powder?”
“I have water, Stephen saw to that. I’m not sure I want to be asleep if there’s any trouble.”
“We’re on the other side of the door.”
He went out. Mallory was dragging comfortable chairs from other bedrooms, with pillows and blankets and a pair of heavy quilts. “It will be drafty,” he said in explanation, then added a decanter of whiskey to their makeshift night camp. “As a blind for shooting lion, I think the lion has the advantage.”
“A lion can smell us before we see him. A man can’t. What about the back stairs?” Rutledge asked. “He could come from there rather than the main staircase.”
“I’ve got a chair braced against that door. If he tries the knob, we’ll hear him. If he intends to reach us, he’ll have to use the other stairs.”
While Mallory was collecting matches and lamps, Rutledge double-checked the servants’ door to the back stairs. It was solidly braced, and anyone attempting to come through would find himself making a considerable racket.
They settled down in the silent house, listening to the wind outside, and prepared to wait. Mallory brought out a small portable chess game, but they were evenly matched and it palled after a time.
Mallory said, “I’ll wager he doesn’t come. It will all be to do over again tomorrow night. You have to remember, he’s been badly hurt. He may need a night’s sleep before he can make the effort a second time.”
“There’s that,” Rutledge agreed. “Still, I don’t want to run the risk.”
“Nor I.”
Felicity Hamilton called through the door, “Is anything wrong?”
“We’re just passing the time. Don’t worry. If you want to sleep at all, between now and midnight might be best,” Mallory replied.
“Yes. I don’t want to turn off my lamp. But should I?”
“The drapes are drawn. Be certain they’re tightly closed. It should be all right then.”
“I could set it on the floor on this side of my bed.”
“Too great a risk of fire.”
“Yes.” It was a forlorn affirmative, and there was silence again from her room.
“I pray to God she sleeps,” Mallory said grimly. He poured a little whiskey into a fresh cup of tea. “I can’t count the times I wished for Dutch comfort in the trenches. If only to keep out the wet and the cold.”
“I don’t want to talk about the war,” Rutledge told him shortly. “We can’t afford to be distracted.”
“But it’s there, isn’t it, in the back of your mind? Mine as well. Will it ever go away, do you think?”
“If God is kind,” Rutledge answered, and pulled a blanket across his shoulders against the cold that was inside as well as out.
Sometime close to midnight, Mallory said in the darkness, “Do you ever dream—I mean, dream?”
His voice, like Hamish’s sometimes, came out of nowhere. They had turned down the lamps and set them inside the nearest room, to preserve their night sight.
Rutledge finally answered him: “No.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’ve told you, I don’t want to discuss the war.”
“I have to talk about it. It’s the only way I stay sane.”
“Not to me, you don’t.”
“Tell me about Hamish and the rest of the men I knew. How they died.”
“No!”
“I need to hear it.”
“I need to forget.”
There was a long stretch of silence, then Mallory asked, “If I didn’t attack Hamilton, who did?”
“A good question. What I’m wondering now is if we’ve got two separate problems. The initial attack—and what it might have set in motion.”
“Yes. Like running over Bennett’s foot. It wasn’t intentional, but I did it, and I’m paying for it. What I don’t understand is, why Hamilton, in the first place? If you’d asked me, I’d have said he’s the last man to find himself in trouble in Hampton Regis.”
Rutledge’s chair creaked as he tried for a more comfortable position. “Which explains why Bennett came to question you at the start. There’s been gossip, Mallory. You should have considered that, for her sake if not your own.”
A sigh answered him. And then, “Yes, well, you haven’t been in love. You don’t know what it’s like to pin your hopes on someone throughout that bloody war, and then discover that she’s learned to love someone else.”
But he did. And it was none of Mallory’s business.
“Did you expect her to wait for you? That was where you went wrong.”
“I had hoped she would. But I left her free to make that choice.”
“And she made it. You failed her by not accepting it and walking away.”
“When I was released from hospital, my doctor made me swear I wouldn’t come to Hampton Regis. But then I thought, what harm can it do, to live near her? And soon it was, what harm can it do to see her? I convinced myself I’d been extraordinarily careful, that no one would guess how I felt.”
“In a village the size of Hampton Regis? Where you can’t cross the road without being seen?”
“If Hampton Regis is a hotbed of gossip and general nosiness,” Mallory demanded with some heat behind the words, “why hasn’t someone come forward to give you the information you need about Matthew Hamilton’s disappearance?”
Felicity Hamilton’s voice came through the door panel. “What is it, what has happened?”
“My apologies, Mrs. Hamilton,” Rutledge said at once. “Mallory and I were engaged in an argument over how gossip works. We didn’t intend to disturb you.”
Mallory said in a lower tone, “You haven’t answered me.”
“I don’t know why we haven’t got what we need. It was late at night. Most decent people are in their beds. The pubs are closed. The milk wagon hasn’t gone round. The fishermen haven’t gone out—”
He broke off. From a room downstairs had come the sound of someone or something scratching at a window.
“Stay here. Don’t leave Mrs. Hamilton, whatever happens. And for God’s sake, don’t shoot me as I come back up the stairs,” Rutledge told him.
But when he finally located the source, it was a limb blowing back and forth across the glass panes of a drawing room window as the slender trunk of an ornamental fruit tree just outside dipped and swayed in the wind.
He stood there, looking out at the blustery night, and thought, He’s not coming. Not on a night like this. He needs his ears as much as we need ours.
Hamish answered him in the darkness, “I wouldna’ go back up the stairs.”
“I don’t have much choice. Mallory will come down here if I don’t return.”
He wondered how his watchers were faring. But there was no method of communicating with them. A field telephone would have been useful tonight, he told himself, turning away from the window.
He went to the hall and called up the stairs, “It’s Rutledge. Nothing but the wind.”
Mallory’s voice surprised him, rolling down from the head of the steps, invisible in the well of darkness there.
“I was beginning to worry. You’re a perfect target, you know. Against the panels of the door. I’d keep that in mind if I were you.”
Rutledge took the steps two at a time. “Thanks for the warning,” he said, and passing Mallory, nearly invisible except for the sound of his breathing, he felt a distinct shiver run down his spine.
Rutledge had lost track of the time. Eternity, he thought, must be like this. A world where there was no mark for day or night, or for sunrise or sunset, just an endless expanding infinity. He wondered what the rector would make of that.
The crash, when it came, seemed to shake the foundations of the house. Later, thinking about it more clearly, he told himself it had done no such thing.
Felicity Hamilton cried out, and came at once to the door, fumbling with the lock.
