by Charles Todd
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.
“No, stay where you are,” Mallory murmured in her direction. “Rutledge, where did it come from, that noise?”
“I couldn’t tell. The back of the house, I think.”
She had the door open, standing there outlined in the dim glow of her shaded lamp, fully clothed and clutching a shawl around her shoulders. “Don’t leave me!” she begged. “I won’t stay here by myself.”
“Felicity, for God’s sake-”
“No, if you go, I’m going too. I won’t be cornered like this.”
Rutledge said, “We’ve got a choice. Stay and wait, or go and investigate.”
They listened, holding their breath as they did. But there was no other sound from below.
“If he’s in the house, he could be anywhere,” Rutledge said softly. “We could walk straight into him before we knew he was there.”
“He must be searching rooms. One at a time. It sounded as if he’d knocked over something.”
“It was more like a window breaking-glass falling,” Rutledge said.
“I think it must have been the dining room,” Felicity whispered. “It was in the back, at least. I know how this house creaks in the wind, like a ship at sea. It wasn’t like that.”
“Which bedroom is over the dining room?” Rutledge asked her.
“The guest room, second door beyond the stairs. On your right.”
“I’ll go and have a look,” he said, but Mallory stopped him.
“We shouldn’t separate. That was the bargain.”
“I went down alone before.”
“That was different, damn it. It was suspicious, but not threatening.”
They were on their feet, standing together in the dim light. Mallory turned to Felicity. “If you must stay here, shut that door. I can’t see with your light in my eyes.”
She did as he asked, and the passage was dark again. Rutledge nearly jumped out of his skin as her hand brushed the back of his shoulder, so certain it was Hamish that he nearly cried out. But she was just moving
nearer, he could smell the scent she wore as she clutched at Mallory’s arm, the paleness of her shawl picking her out as his eyes adjusted again to the lack of light.
“You won’t shoot him, promise me you won’t. If it’s Matthew, we don’t want to hurt him,” she was whispering importunately.
“Shhh.” Mallory leaned forward, as if to help his ears penetrate the shadows that lay between them and the top of the stairs.
But nothing came up the stairs, neither a figment of their imaginations nor a shambling wounded man half out of his mind.
Rutledge thought, standing there, It’s easy to believe in monsters in the dark. Young Jeremy was not alone.
And Hamish, whose ears had always been the sharpest, said, “He isna’ coming.”
Rutledge replied silently, “You can’t be sure. The stairs are carpeted.”
“He’s no’ coming. It’s a game.”
And although they stood there for another quarter of an hour, pinned where they were by the tension of not knowing, Hamish proved to be right.
In the end, the three of them ventured down the stairs as the first gray threads of light broke over the horizon and the head of the staircase loomed ghostly in front of them. It didn’t take them long to find what they had heard. A long black length of tree limb had been driven through the panes of the dining room window, protruding like a battered and obscene spear above the shattered bits of glass scattered on the polished floor below it.
Rutledge went outside then, but beneath the window the thick matting of leaves blown against the foundations masked any sign of footprints.
He could see the tree where the limb had come from. Three had broken off, one of them driven deep into the soil, another leaning crookedly against the foundations, and the third thrust through the window.
But what he couldn’t determine, in spite of carefully searching for any sign that might confirm it, was whether that one branch had had the help of a human agency to ram it through the glass. He could have done it, tall as he was, and actually reached up to pull it out as Mallory shoved it toward him and then went for something to patch the hole.
