A False Mirror - Charles Todd [146]
The glimmer of an answer that had struck him there in Hester’s office had nothing to support it.
Intuition, he reminded himself, was a very unreliable gift. A burst of brilliance that showered light on one single corner of the darkness surrounding it and left the rest impenetrable.
But in the hands of an experienced policeman, intuition could sometimes lead to proof. Given a little luck.
Rutledge made good time to Hampton Regis, considered his options, and in the end went to the telephone closet at the Duke of Monmouth Inn and put through a call to London.
He had to wait more than an hour in that stuffy little room, shut in with Hamish and his own thoughts, before the call was returned.
After a while, Rutledge put in another call to London as well. This time to Inspector Phipps.
When the man came on the phone, Rutledge said, “I’m told you’ve found the Green Park killer.”
Phipps answered, “Indeed, yes. A man named Berenson and his wife. She lured the victims there because they didn’t know her, and he strangled them. Revenge, as it happened. They’d swindled him in a financial scheme and he wanted revenge.”
“Berenson?” He didn’t recognize the name.
“That man Fields, the one you’d had watched—he told us his sister’s husband wasn’t the only one cheated by the dead men. There were four others in on it, Berenson being only one of them. Fields had been of two minds about helping us with our inquiries. In the end, glad as he was to see rough justice done, he realized it would have been a better lesson if both men had lived to be clapped up in prison. I tried to make the Chief Superintendent aware of your role in turning up Fields, but he didn’t like the man and would have gladly seen him taken up instead.” He cleared his throat. “Mrs. Berenson is quite—pretty. And convincing.”
“You’re certain of your facts?”
“Oh, yes. We found the garrote amongst her knitting.”
“And Constable Waddington?”
“He received a commendation for his part in the arrests. A good man, that. Chief Superintendent Bowles is impressed with him.”
Rutledge said nothing. As he’d thought, Waddington had been eager to protect himself.
Phipps went on. “I’m to appear in court in fifteen minutes. Is there anything else?”
Rutledge thanked him and put up the receiver.
Bringing his attention back to Hampton Regis, he went over everything he knew, and still there was no single motive to explain both the attack on Hamilton and the two subsequent deaths. Murderers killed for a reason—out of fear, greed, jealousy, love, envy, or even sheer hatred. And none of these seemed to fit here. Unless he was completely wrong about Stephen Mallory.
Hamish reminded him, “Ye canna’ judge him on the way he was in France.”
“I’m not convinced he’s clever enough—”
The telephone rang at last, making him jump at the loud jangle that seemed to echo around the tiny room, deafening him. He swore.
The voice on the other end of the line, apologetic for taking so long to find the information he needed, made Rutledge sit up in the narrow-seated chair and listen with concentration.
Gibson had paid a visit to the person Rutledge had named, and that led to a bank in Leadenhall Street. What he had to report was enlightening.
It came down to money, as it so often did.
But not quite in the way he’d expected.
29
Rutledge walked up the hill to Casa Miranda. The sun was strong now, and he thought he heard a blackbird singing somewhere in the distance.
“Wishful thinking,” Hamish told him sourly. Yet spring came in this part of England long before it touched the Highlands, and in the air today was the scent of warm earth, mixed with the salty cast of the sea.
When he climbed the stairs to the room Hamilton was using, he found the man awake, propped with pillows. Lines of pain etched his face, but he said briskly, “On Malta the heat is already building. There’s so much white stone, you see. It holds in the warmth. Even the soil is white in the summer. Limestone.”
“Do you miss it?”