A False Mirror ir-9

by Charles Todd

  “They ought to be pleased with themselves at the moment. They’ve taken someone into custody for those wretched killings in Green Park. The newspapers are calling it masterly police work.”

  “Who? Did they say who it was?” he asked urgently.

  “I don’t think a name has been released yet.”

  Gentle God.

  He could feel Hamish in the back of his mind, thundering like the guns in France. The walls of the telephone closet seemed to press in on him.

  Was it Fields they’d taken into custody? Had Inspector Phipps come to suspect the same man, in his own roundabout fashion? Or had Constable Waddington, to shield himself from charges that he was courting while on duty, ignored Rutledge’s instructions and reported Fields to the Yard?

  He felt a strong sense of personal responsibility for dragging Fields into the search and told himself that Phipps had been thorough. It was Chief Superintendent Bowles, pressed by his own superiors to bring in the killer, who was not always reliable in drawing conclusions.

  By the same token, what if someone else had been taken into custody, in error? And the Yard knew nothing about Fields?

  But Rutledge had been ordered off that case. In no uncertain terms. It had nothing to do with him now.

  Aye, Hamish retorted, duty before conscience. It’s what got me shot.

  Frances was saying, “Ian? Are you still there? Ian?”

  “Yes, just digesting the news. I’d been dealing with the Green Park inquiry, just before I was sent down here. If there’s a name given, will you let me know?”

  He told Frances how to reach him and then rang off.

  He sat there for a moment, trying to reorder his thoughts.

  Melinda Crawford’s wide-ranging correspondence spanned continents, and if Hamilton had kept in touch with anyone in England during his years abroad, it might well have been with her. She had traveled most of her life and knew the world as few did. Her mind was razor sharp even in age, her wit was dry and entertaining, and her charm hadn’t diminished with time. He himself had treasured her letters in France, reading them over and over because they took him away from the war for a little while.

  Rutledge stood up and stepped into the passage, considering what to say to her. She would demand to know what his interest in Hamilton was. And she could spot a well-intentioned lie before he’d finished uttering it.

  The respite from the cramped confines of the telephone closet was a relief, and he went as far as the front windows of the inn, flexing his shoulders. One glance at the sky showed him it was now much lighter, as though the worst of the squalls had passed. If he was going to risk taking a boat out to the landslip, he must do it while he could.

  Melinda Crawford could wait. Miss Cole could wait. He had to know what was in the cottage that had gone down with the cliff face. If Hamilton was dead-and Rutledge was beginning to feel he was-then there were two murders to deal with. He set out briskly for the harbor, to look for the fisherman who had been cleaning his catch earlier. He’d gone, but another man was standing on the Mole, staring out at the sea.

  Rutledge came to stand beside him and said, “It appears to be a little calmer out there.”

  The man turned. “Aye. I was thinking the same.” He looked at Rutledge. “You’re the man from London?”

  “Yes. Rutledge.”

  The man nodded. “Perkins,” he said in response, his weathered face deeply wrinkled from exposure to the sea and the sun. It was difficult to tell his age, but Rutledge put him down as close to fifty.

  “Do you have a boat, Mr. Perkins?”

  “That I do. You aren’t of a mind to take her out, are you? I don’t let my boat to any man.”

  “I was thinking of hiring you to row me out to where I could have a good look at the landslip this morning.”

  “It’s a crazy thought. What for?”

  “I’m sure it is. Nevertheless, I have a sound reason. We don’t know if anyone was in that cottage when it went over. And Dr. Granville is missing one of his patients.”

  “He’d be a fool to take himself out to the cottage. It was derelict before, and will be matchwood now.”

  “A policeman can’t write that in his report,” Rutledge answered.

  “It’s Mr. Hamilton you’re looking for?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s not a thing he’d do. I don’t know him well, mind you. But we’ve talked a time or two. He was used to the sea, serving as he did on that island. Malta. He’d take a boat out of that harbor, just to see it from the sea and then sail back through. He said it was built by knights who knew what they were about, and even the Turks couldn’t take it by water.”

  “I understand the fortifications are formidable,” Rutledge agreed. “Did you talk about anything else?”

  “He said there were ruins there that were older than the Pyramids. I had a hard time believing it, but he said it was true. And I never knew him to be a liar.”

  “Will you take me out today? If it isn’t safe, I won’t press. But I need to see for myself that there’s no one there.”

  “There’ll be no one there now,” Perkins said darkly.

  Rutledge waited.

  After several minutes of silence had passed, Perkins nodded. “You’ll need rain gear, if you’re to stay dry.”

  “Do you have any I could borrow?”

  “You’re a fair bit taller than me, but my son’s things ought to fit. A little large, mind you, but they’ll keep you dry. Do you have Wellingtons, then?”

  It was a small boat, her name boldly painted on the prow-Bella-the mast useless in such variable winds, but two men could just manage her, pulling out from the Mole against the drag of the current, then making for a point under the headland from which they could feel the tug of the current back to the shore.

  Even from there they could see the raw spill of the landslip, its heavy soil flowing like a river to the water, taking with it clumps of grass, young trees, and what appeared to be a chimney sticking up at an odd angle among a scatter of bricks.

  It was a hard run to get closer, and Rutledge was sweating heavily inside his rain gear by the time they got there. But the waves hitting them at the wrong angle left the bottom of the boat awash and his sleeves wet to the wrist, water spilling down his head and under his collar and reaching as far as his back as he twisted and turned for a better view and called instructions to Perkins.

  In due course they were within good range of the clumped and riddled earth. It looked out of place reaching into the sea, as if it still belonged to the high reaches of land above and had lost its way. The eddies about it were muddy, sucking at this foreign bit of land as if hungry, then coming back for more, larger chunks sinking as he watched.

  The cottage was a ruin, beams and walls only so much lumber now, without form or structure. A cabinet peeked from under an edge of roof, and a small tin washbasin was caught on a rake, banging like a cheap bell against the handle. A table leg floated out to them, and then was pushed forlornly back again. A lumpy pillow lay like a dead bird against part of a door, as if it had been caught in the storm and taken shelter there.

  Only part of the chimney, surprisingly intact, spoke of what the debris had once been.

  “Rotted wood to start with. It won’t last long out here,” Perkins told him, shouting over the noisy waves lashing at the coastline. “This is as near as I can go. Or we’ll be aground on what we can’t see. And there’s another squall on the horizon. Look there!”

  Rutledge turned to see but calculated there was still time. “Is that ground firm enough for me to walk on? If it is, I need to go closer.”

  “What for? You can’t tell floor from roof. And if there’s any man in there, he’s long since buried beneath whatever fell on top of him as the lot went over.”

  It was true. It would take men digging with shovels to find Matthew Hamilton’s body in that morass. And even they couldn’t do it before the water took it away for good.

  But he had to be su
re. There would be doubts, uncertainties. No body to allow the police to prove Matthew Hamilton was dead. Or that murder had been done.

  Clever barristers and clever doubts, carefully placed.

  Unless his bones washed ashore somewhere and were found, then identified. They couldn’t wait for that.

  Matthew Hamilton, victim and witness.

  “Get me as close as you can, and hold her steady. I’ll give it a try.”

  “Did living in London’s fogs turn your wits?” Perkins asked sharply. “I’m not about to risk my boat on a fool’s errand.”

  “Look at the water, man. It’s clear just over there. If you can reach the foot of the cliff there, I can make it to that large rock, and then move across to firmer ground. Can you see where I’m pointing?”

  Perkins growled deep in his throat, and Rutledge, startled at the similarity to the sound that Hamish made sometimes, turned quickly and almost swamped them.

  “Here, you idiot, policeman or not, you’ll watch what you’re about,” Perkins told him harshly.

  In the end, Rutledge got his way, at a price, and Perkins did what he could to hold the boat steady enough for him to reach the boulder and then claw himself up on the flat surface. It was slick underfoot, and he thought, I’ll never make it back to the boat.

  Above him, the high rise of land loomed, and as he stepped across to the earth, he heard pebbles skittering down, like a warning that one false move could bring another twenty yards of solid ground down on his head, breaking up and burying him as it came crashing toward him.

  But nothing happened, and he made the leap to the landslip, his feet sinking above the ankles in the soft, pliant earth. Laboring to bring one foot out and then another, he wallowed like a drunkard toward the first of the shards of lumber that littered the ground, many of the bits sticking straight out of the mud, others buried and only recognizable when his boots struck something solid underfoot.

  It was a wild-goose chase, Hamish was telling him roundly. “And how ye’ll manage to clamber back into yon boat again, God alone kens!”

  But he was here now, and the only thing to do was go forward. Casting a glance back at the squall line, he wondered if Perkins would abandon him if it came to a choice between the boat and the stubborn fool who had brought them out here.

  He struggled on, searching with his eyes, his hands busy keeping his balance. The footing was so treacherous he found a length of door framing and tried to use it as a cane, only to find that it sank too deep and nearly had him stumbling in its wake.

  Sticks of furniture, a rusted pot, a vase-miraculously in one piece, the lilacs on its surface a small bit of color in the shambles-lay among the ruins. As Perkins had predicted, Rutledge could barely tell what room or what part of the structure lay where, the whole smashed to nothing. Like an iceberg, the debris went deep, only a portion of it showing on the surface where he walked.

  He rescued the small vase and tucked it in a coat pocket, intending to take it back to Perkins as a souvenir. Bending over invited disaster again, and he slipped and fell, swearing, against a protruding beam and part of the chimney corner. For an instant, he could feel the earth under his body shift, and he thought, This was not a very wise decision, with a fatalism born of long practice.

  Hamish was after him, urging him back to the boat, telling him to take the warning seriously.

  After a moment of perfect stillness, he could sense that all movement had stopped, nothing more was going to happen, at least not now, and he shoved himself upright, testing his weight with extreme gentleness just where he stood. It was then that he saw something on the far side of the chimney, caught in what appeared to be the splat of a chair back.

  With great care he shifted himself to one side, and then found a length of planking wide enough to use as a footbridge to the other side of the chimney, and then another added to that.

  Walking on the slippery boards, he kept his gaze fixed to where his feet were set, and he didn’t look up again until he’d come to the far end of his improvised bridge.

  What he’d seen was there in front of him: a wad of bloody bandaging, the dark red already turned to a running pink in the rain. But bandaging it was. A doctor’s work, he thought to himself.

  He reached out for it, and in the nick of time stopped, remembering what he’d risked retrieving the vase. Move his weight a bare few inches more, and the plank behind him would dip like a board over a pool, sending him headlong and face-first into the smothering earth.

  Just the fear of it made him shiver like a man in fever, but he caught himself and took a deep breath, shutting out the voice roaring now in his mind. He’d been buried alive once, in France. It didn’t bear thinking of. And this time, there would be no body lying above him, giving him a precious pocket of air to keep him alive. Hamish’s body-long since rotted to bones in the rains of the Somme Valley.

  To one side he saw a rung from the broken chair or perhaps its brother, and carefully squatted down until he could retrieve it, though his feet slipped and nearly launched him where he most feared to go. Catching himself again, he used the muscles in his thighs to bring himself upright once more, and felt them burn with the effort.

  He had himself under control now, and gingerly using the chair rung as a tool, he slowly brought the length of bandage toward him until he could grasp it safely and shove it inside his coat, water and all.

  Matthew Hamilton had been here. Or had been brought here. But whether he’d gone over the cliff with the cottage or not, God alone knew. There was no way human agency could answer that.

  Over the next five minutes, Rutledge thought he might not make it back to the Bella after all. It took enormous physical effort to reach the boat, climb up on the rock, and lower himself onto the thwart once more. By that time his thigh muscles quivered from fatigue in the cold air, alternately burning and tightening in spasms.

  “You’re a fair fool,” the man shouted at him with resignation. “I’d not have brought you out, if I’d guessed. I should have left you there.”

  “A lucky fool,” Rutledge replied with what little breath he could spare. In fact, it had taken far more than his share of luck to cross that unstable ground back to where Perkins was struggling to keep the Bella in the eddies off the rock.

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when another five feet of earth came roaring down toward them, missing the wooden stern where he was sitting by no more than a few yards and sending them bouncing like a ball across the impact wave. For an instant he thought the swell would surely swamp them.

  They’d taken on a dangerous amount of water, and Rutledge, who had been using an oar to shove off hard from the rock face, swung it inboard as quickly as he could to begin bailing like a madman in an effort to lighten the load they were carrying. But Perkins was nothing if not an experienced seaman, and he kept them afloat until the waves had subsided and there was only the sea itself to fight.

  Then the long, hard pull to the Mole began, one eye to the weather, the other on their destination. Every time Rutledge looked up, Hampton Regis seemed to be no closer than it was before, while the squall line was bearing down on them faster than they could row. It was, he told himself, going to be a very near thing, and very possibly they’d lose the race.

  But miraculously the rain held off until they had reached the street that ran along the harbor. Rutledge welcomed it then, to wash off the worst of the muddy earth that clung to him like a skin. He was glad to rid himself of his gear at the small house where Perkins lived and feel the cool air strike him as he walked back to the police station.

  Perkins hadn’t asked what he’d found but refused to accept the small vase Rutledge had given him along with the exorbitant sum owed him.

  “That’s an unlucky thing, that vase,” he said.

  “It survived,” Rutledge pointed out. “That should make it lucky.”

  “I’m a superstitious man, Mr. Rutledge. I thank you for the thought, but I’m not happy with looking at that bit o
f clay and wondering why it was not crushed by what it endured.” He looked up at Rutledge with sober eyes. “What the sea wants, it takes. In the end, it’ud pounded that thing to white dust and then washed it away as nothing. I don’t want it to claim me in its place.”

  But why, Rutledge found himself thinking, if Hamilton had been on the sea so many times, had the sea waited until he’d returned to England to claim him?

  What gods of clay or wood had he disturbed that came after him so great a distance?

  The sea had nearly drowned Hamilton three days ago, but it had been cheated of its prey. Perhaps it hadn’t forgotten.

  Shaking off his black mood, Rutledge turned his mind to what he must tell Inspector Bennett.

  16

  The police station was a beehive of activity. Bennett was in a sober mood.

  “I waited half an hour for you. Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, looking Rutledge over. “Crawling through a farmer’s field, I’ll be bound.”

  “Close enough. I’ve-”

  Bennett interrupted him. “The Chief Constable was here. I don’t know who told him what has happened-I’ll wager you it was Miss Trining, damn her eyes-but he has given us twenty-four hours to find out where Hamilton is and who killed Mrs. Granville. He’s not a man to be crossed, the Chief Constable. We’ve got one and twenty hours left.”

  “It’s likely that Hamilton is dead. I went out to the landslip. And this was caught on the back of a chair that had been splintered by the fall.” He held out the wet bandage, and Bennett stared at it as if it could bite him.

  “Good God!”

  “I can’t think of anyone else who might have left it there. We must show it to Granville, to see if he recognizes his handiwork. Then we should have a talk with Mr. Reston.”

  “Reston couldn’t have killed the doctor’s wife, whatever you’re suggesting. There’s no sound reason for it.”

  “Unless she got in his way when he came for Hamilton.”

  “But why should he want to harm Hamilton? You won’t make me believe it’s because of some bits of clay on a shelf at the man’s house. Mr. Reston may be a fanatic for religion, but that doesn’t make him a murderer.”