A False Mirror - Charles Todd [23]
Bennett took out his watch. “I’ve posted two men near the house, out of sight but where they could hear the women scream or a shot fired. It’s time to relieve them. I expect you’ll want to come along. You can speak to Mallory yourself.”
They went out to the motorcar, and Bennett beckoned to two constables who had just arrived at the station to accompany him. They nodded to Rutledge and stepped into the rear seat, where Hamish usually sat. The familiar Scots voice rumbled with irritation.
All the while, Bennett was still pressing, eager to wrap up the inquiry. For him, the matter was very simple. Rutledge was here, therefore Mallory ought to surrender himself to the police. It needn’t drag on any longer.
Rutledge didn’t interrupt, understanding the pent-up frustration that drove the man. But the harangue also served to fix his own actions. Bennett was using the listening constables behind him to make certain that the man from London couldn’t avoid doing his duty.
Fate was never kind.
He wasn’t prepared tonight. No more than he expected Mallory to be prepared. His mind needed to be fresh, and in the dark, Mallory would be on edge, expecting trickery.
Hamish spoke just behind his shoulder. The voice seemed much nearer, as if the Scot had leaned forward to whisper. “Mayhap he willna’ open the door.”
And Rutledge answered silently, “He’ll want to see what I’ve become.”
Hampton Regis was fitted inside the curve of its tiny bay with the snugness of centuries. Houses along the Mole—the ancient harbor—were timeless, their facades much the same, Rutledge thought as he turned the motorcar, since the days of Drake and the Duke of Monmouth. The later houses—and they were barely later than the last century—had been built along streets set perpendicular to the waterfront, like newcomers handed second best.
Bennett, suddenly aware that he’d lost Rutledge’s attention with his barrage of advice, dropped the subject of Mallory and nodded toward the western end of the Mole disappearing behind them. “The river was broader once, and the shipyards and fishing industry lined its banks. Once the river silted up, Victorian money leveled the ground and built there. Now the Hampton’s hardly more than a little stream passing under a stone bridge.” Then he added with the satisfaction of the working-class man, “My grandfather always said fish scales make the slopes of social climbing rather a slippery business.”
He waited for Rutledge to smile at his grandfather’s plebeian sense of humor, but the man seemed to be intent on his driving, as if feeling the miles he’d already come.
Instead, Rutledge was struggling to marshal his thoughts, wondering in another part of his mind if anything remained of the authority he had once exercised over the lieutenant under his command in France. And whether he could wield it now.
The Hamiltons lived out on the road he’d come down from London, the one that ran in a gentle bend down into the town, traced its way along the water, and then rose softly to the far headland, following the coast for miles before vanishing into Devon. Bennett was telling him now that the western stretch of cliffs was prone to landslips, and from time to time over the centuries had sent houses and farms and churchyards down into the sea. Matthew Hamilton on the other hand had chosen the more stable eastern heights, living in one of the larger houses there on the seaward side, with sufficient property around them to give them privacy.
The view of the water as the motorcar climbed was stippled with faint moonlight, like a tarnished mirror. Bennett pointed and Rutledge paused to drop off the pair of constables. Then he turned through gates into a trim garden. The drive made a loop through the flower beds, ending at the steps.
Time had run out. What was he to say to Mallory?
He looked up at the house, wondering what emotions ran rampant behind that late Georgian front, upright and gracious, its weathered brick surely a lovely rose in the daylight. Very much the sort of classic design a career foreign ser vice officer might have yearned