A False Mirror - Charles Todd [6]
Thrusting his wretched mood aside, Rutledge slowly walked the dog through the park, giving the animal time to explore the smells frozen in the grass. The very image of a man with time on his hands, an ex-soldier, perhaps, down on his luck, the greatcoat and an old hat betraying his reduced circumstances. He made himself stoop a little, to change his appearance and fit his role.
The dog caught sight of Bevins, but the constable was prepared for that, leaping to his feet and coming to kneel by the animal, petting it while looking up at Rutledge, asking questions about the breed. When Rutledge called the dog to heel, Bevins got to his feet, touched his hat to Rutledge, and went back to his wooing. A good man.
During the interlude, Rutledge had glimpsed someone entering the park. It was Phipps, walking too fast for a man strolling, his eyes everywhere. He took in the nanny and the constable, looked across at a corporal who was leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette, and a heavyset sergeant in a checked tweed coat, seated on a bench casually reading the morning papers. But the Chief Inspector passed through without speaking to anyone. It was clear he had come to judge the authenticity of his actors, and was satisfied.
Rutledge finished his tour of the park and returned to the Yard, the dog thoroughly pleased with its outing.
He met Inspector Mickelson on the stairs, and they passed without speaking. Mickelson was dressed as a banker, furled umbrella, hat set squarely on his head, on his way to take his own part in Phipps’s play.
The dog growled deep in his throat as Mickelson went by, and Rutledge patted the massive head. Mickelson was a stickler for the rules, and one of Bowles’s favorites. He had also nearly got Rutledge killed in Westmorland. It was with some satisfaction that Rutledge accepted the dog’s judgment corroborating his own.
After half an hour, Bevins also returned, his face flushed with the cold wind.
“Any luck?” Rutledge asked, meeting him in the corridor.
“No, sir.” Then he grinned. “I’m a chimney sweep next. Got the clothes off a man we took up for housebreaking last week. Pray God there’s no lice in them.”
Rutledge had walked the dog the third time, glimpsing the sweep working on his brushes as if something about them troubled him. The nanny was now unrecognizable as a shopgirl flirting with a young army private. Another man was arguing with a friend, and Rutledge caught part of what Sergeant Gibson was saying so earnestly—his views on the Labor Party and what the government ought to do about people out of work.
We’ve got the same number of actors—Rutledge thought, bringing the dog to heel again after allowing it to explore among the trees along the edge of the grass. It doesn’t vary.
No murderer worth his salt would walk into such a carefully managed trap.
And then Phipps was there again, carrying his umbrella, a folded copy of The Times under his arm. He looked like a retired solicitor, his nose red from the cold, his attention fixed on the distant traffic, just barely heard here in the park.
It was a waste of time, Hamish was saying.
Rutledge answered, “One of the murder victims sold pipes in a shop. The other was a conductor on an omnibus. What did they have in common, that made them a target?”
“It wilna’ be how they earned their living.”
“True enough.” Rutledge let the dog walk ahead to the base of one of the great trees that had given the park its name. “This was a place where men dueled, once. A long time ago.”
“Oh, aye? But to use a garrote properly, you must come from behind. No’ face-to-face. It’s no’ an honorable encounter!”
“A woman, then?”
Hamish answered, thoughtful. “There’s no woman, else yon Chief Inspector would ha’ had her name by now fra’ someone eager to turn her in for prostitution.”
“A gaming debt?”
“A warning,” Hamish countered.