A False Mirror - Charles Todd [13]
“I didn’t run him down. He was clinging to the door of the car, and wouldn’t let go. When he couldn’t hold on any longer, he dropped the wrong way. I couldn’t have stopped if I’d had angels holding the motorcar back. All I could think of was that I had to see you, had to tell you that I didn’t touch Matthew.”
“Then who did?” she asked wearily.
“I don’t know. I’m going to find out, I promise you that.”
“Oh, Stephen—” Her voice broke.
He stepped forward, intending to comfort her, and then turned away. “For God’s sake, don’t cry.”
“Don’t cry?” she repeated through her tears. “Matthew’s probably dying, and I’m here, instead of there, and I love you both, and I don’t want anything to happen to either of you. Why can’t we just be happy, and not think of anything else but that?”
“Because I love you,” he told her bluntly. “And God help me, I can’t stop.”
5
Rutledge, following his quarry through the busy London streets, kept a good distance between himself and the man who had been leaning against the lamppost.
Old Bowels would have his head on a platter if he was wrong. Hamish was busy reminding him of that. But instinct told him he wasn’t wrong. The man’s interest had been too intense. Too personal.
His quarry moved briskly, but without the illusion of hurrying. They were into Kensington now, shops and flats on one side, the palace grounds on the other. At length the man turned down a side street, walked four houses from the corner, turned up the steps, and let himself in the door.
Rutledge stayed where he was. It was an old trick, walking into a building and waiting to see who was behind you. And if someone was there, he was often gullible enough to keep on going, right past the window where you watched. And you simply stepped out when he was past and went quietly in the opposite direction.
But after half an hour, no one had come out the front door, and Rutledge was swearing with certainty that his quarry had gone out the back and disappeared.
He had resigned himself to losing the man altogether, just as his quarry stepped out of the door again, looked both ways, and then came toward Rutledge.
“Whist!” Hamish warned in his ear.
There was nothing for it but to disappear into the door at his shoulder, and Rutledge found himself in a tobacconist’s, the aroma of cigars strong in the confines of the small, paneled shop.
“May I help you, sir?”
He turned to find an elderly clerk behind the counter, staring at him.
If he confessed to being a policeman, Rutledge thought, it would be all over the neighborhood before tea.
And then his quarry came around the corner and opened the door to the shop.
Rutledge quickly said to the clerk, “I’m looking for a Mrs. Channing—”
It was the first name that came into his head.
“Channing? I don’t believe I know any Channings hereabouts. Mr. Fields, is it a name you’re familiar with?”
And Rutledge, turning, found himself confronting the observer at the lamppost.
His face was scarred, giving it a bitter twist, the slate blue eyes wary, the mouth tight.
“Channings? No, I can’t think of any. Sorry.”
Rutledge had no option. He thanked the man and the clerk and went out the shop door into the street. He made a pretense of standing there, looking first one way and then the other, as if uncertain what to do next. Hamish, in the back of his mind, said, “Ye canna’ loiter.”
Rutledge snapped, “You needn’t tell me.” He turned back the way he’d come and moved on, wondering where the constable whose patch this was might have taken himself.
He found a pub one street away, and went inside.
“Do you know where I might find Constable—” He left the name open.
The barkeep’s face was closed. “Constable Waddington? May I ask why you’re looking for him? Is there trouble?”
“There’s been a break-in at a neighbor’s house, I’ve been sent to find him.”
“Well, then—he’s just stepped over to Mrs. Whittier’s house, sir. He—er—he looks in on her from time to time.”
“And where do I find Mrs. Whittier?” Rutledge asked patiently.
“On Linton Street, around the next corner