A False Mirror - Charles Todd [54]
She could feel his head bob against her breast. “Then you must stand up like the little man you are, and take my hand. You’re far too big for me to carry.”
After a time, he sat up and then got down from her lap, but held tightly to her hand as they went back along the dark passage and into her room.
Watching him climb into her bed and snuggle under the bedclothes, she thought, He might be going on seven, but he’s still a baby.
She took the precaution of locking the bedroom door until her husband returned.
Moments later, Cornelius, sitting in his dressing room, was dragging his trousers on over his nightclothes and searching for his stockings and shoes, all the while grumbling under his breath. But he was accustomed to doing his wife’s bidding, and pulling on his heavy coat and finding a scarf, he set out in the darkness for the police station, two streets over.
He had rejected as foolishness taking Benedict with him but had sensibly brought his cane.
He didn’t like the sea mist any more than his son had done, and he listened to the muffled echo of his heels, thinking that Matthew Hamilton had been walking out later than this, and someone invisible in just such a mist had nearly killed him. Had Jeremy’s terror somehow been intended to bring another prominent man out into the dark streets to be assaulted? Nonsense, he told himself briskly. The child had had a nightmare, and his wife had been frightened by the unexpected intensity of it. Nevertheless he found himself looking over his shoulder whenever there was a sound behind him, and he walked a little faster.
Why the devil did a street appear to be so different on a night of mist? The shrubbery in back of Mrs. Pickering’s house looked like hunched monsters brooding over a pool of cotton wool shrouding their feet. And a chimney atop the Reston house sported a gull that floated in midair. When a cat ran out of a doorway on the Mole, it startled him so badly he nearly dropped his cane. A black cat, he was certain of it.
Whatever Jeremy had seen, by the time he reached the police station, Theo Cornelius had convinced himself that something indeed was abroad, and his heart was pounding from a sense of being watched.
The police station was empty. A lamp stood on the desk in the main room, and beside it a note that sent him on to Bennett’s house, growling as he went. All for a silly child’s nightmare, he told himself now. Otherwise he’d be at home in his own bed, sound asleep. Jeremy had been begging sweets in the kitchen again, and Cook spoiled him recklessly.
But bravado did nothing to stop the hairs on the back of his neck from prickling as he stepped into the street again.
It took him several minutes to rouse someone at Bennett’s house. The inspector came to the door, his crutch propping him up as he looked out at the man on his step.
“Mr. Cornelius,” he said, instantly recognizing his caller. “What’s to do, sir, is there any trouble?”
“My son is having a nightmare. My wife insisted that I summon you.” It sounded ridiculous, putting it that way, and he took a step backward. “Er—she felt that since Mr. Hamilton had been attacked on a morning when there was sea mist, it might be important to discover what had upset my son.”
“I see.” But it was evident Bennett didn’t. He cleared his throat and said, “You must fetch Mr. Rutledge at the Duke of Monmouth, sir. He’s in charge of the inquiry into what happened to Mr. Hamilton.”
“Look,” Cornelius began irritably, “I’ve been to the station, and I’ve come here. I’m damned if I’ll spend what’s left of the night—”
But Bennett was there before him. He pointed to his bandaged foot and said, “It’s all I can do to walk down the stairs, sir, much less as far as your house. We’re spread thin, and that’s why Mr. Rutledge has come. You’d do better speaking with him. He’s from Scotland Yard, you know. A London policeman.” He smiled grimly.
Cornelius turned away, angry and feeling a worse fool. He was of half a mind to go home and to bed, be