A False Mirror - Charles Todd [111]
And it had been a terrifying month, that June. A month without mercy. But he’d survived that and nine more. It was March of 1920, and he was still alive.
Whether the struggle had been worth it, he didn’t know. He couldn’t stand aside and be objective. Not where Hamish was concerned.
By the time Rutledge reached Hampton Regis, he was too stiff and too drained to seek his bed.
Instead he stopped the car some distance past the Mole and for an hour walked along the strand, pacing back and forth, listening to the roar of the waves coming in, feeling the crunch of his heels on the wet shingle, and remembering how he’d nearly been sucked into the mud of the landslip. Was it only just that morning?
And what the bloody hell was he to do about Matthew Hamilton?
By the time he had turned for the Mole, he startled a fisherman coming down to the boats tied up there.
The man swerved, then swore. It was Perkins, who’d taken him out to the landslip. “Damned if you didn’t turn my heart over in my chest, Mr. Rutledge! I thought for certain the sea had given up Matthew Hamilton.”
22
Rutledge was up early, waiting at the police station when the extra men came in from outlying towns, arriving on their bicycles.
He set four of them to work on the west road, knocking on the doors of farmers and householders on either side of the Reston cottage. Two more finished canvassing the shops and businesses along the Mole for anyone who had seen Matthew Hamilton walk down to the strand on the morning he was attacked. And one of Bennett’s men was to finish the last of the names on a list of Dr. Granville’s neighbors.
That left one man to return to guarding the house on the hill.
When that had been done, Rutledge set up a room for himself in the back of the station, using what had been storage space until 1914, when it was enlarged to stockpile gear for rescuing men washed ashore in U-boat attacks.
It was a bare room, painted an ugly brown, no windows, and a deal table for his desk. But it gave the newcomers ready access to him, and it kept them out of Bennett’s way.
He was just sitting down gingerly in the chair someone had brought him, testing it for a wobble on the uneven flooring, when the outer door of the station was flung open and someone shouted his name.
Rutledge came on the run and found himself face-to-face with the young constable who had been at the surgery with Bennett the previous morning. He was out of breath and in some agitation.
“They’re shouting for you at the house, sir,” Jordan blurted out. “I don’t know what it’s all about, but I could hear him, that Mr. Mallory, sir, yelling for me to pay attention, damn it—begging your pardon, sir—and finally I stepped out to the gate to see what the uproar was. I’m to bring you back with me, sir.”
“My motorcar is around the corner. Come along.”
Bennett had peered out of his office to listen. “Here!” he said, reaching for his crutch. “Wait, I’m coming as well.”
Rutledge had the engine cranked and was behind the wheel when Bennett caught them up. He got in, careful of his foot, and had barely slammed the door when Rutledge was moving.
It was no distance to the house, but to Rutledge the road seemed cluttered with marketgoers and lorries passing through to the west. He threaded his way among them, reached the turning up the hill and gunned the motorcar into a leap forward.
Hamish, in the back of his mind, was a low, familiar rumble, like the guns in France.
They reached the front door of the house, and Rutledge said to the constable, “Take up your station again. I’ll call if I need you.”
Jordan hurried down to the gates as Bennett, already out, pounded on the front door.
It was opened by Mallory, his face pale and so lined with worry that he seemed to have aged overnight.
“I sent for Rutledge,” he snapped at Bennett.
“It makes no difference. What’s happened? Did Hamilton show up in the night?”
They hadn’t speculated in the short ride from the police station, but it had been