A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [132]
Light bloomed, a bright and golden glow that sent the shadows in the kitchen fleeing into corners.
There was no sign of occupation in this room. No food on the table, the pitcher back on the sideboard where it belonged, the bedding returned to whatever room it had come from. But then a man like Hauser wouldn’t be caught twice like a rat in a hole.
Rutledge waited until the wick had caught well, and then he took up the lamp and moved out into the passage. He could hear his own breathing in the confined space.
Swinging open the door, he said again, “Hauser? It’s Rutledge.”
The light preceded him out into the hall, picking out the sheets and the shrouded furnishings, giving an odd life to the long flight of stairs, and to the rooms he walked into one after another. He was clearly visible in the aura of the lamp, and took care to give no appearance of hostility.
It was an eerie experience, the silence fraught with nothing, the urgent whisper of Hamish’s voice in his head, his quiet footfalls as he moved slowly, carefully, examining any place large enough to hide someone. The lamp was growing heavier in his hand, the heat warming his face.
Anyone in the kitchen could have heard him fumbling with the latch—anyone in the house would have heard him stumbling against the chair. And there were many ways to disappear here. If Hauser was innocent, why should he hide? But then he’d learned to his cost that the police were not as sympathetic as Elizabeth Mayhew had been. . . .
Rutledge stood in the hall and called Hauser’s name again, then listened to the stillness around him. After a moment he walked on, methodically investigating, making certain that each room was empty before moving on to the next.
He was beginning to think he’d been wrong. That Hauser wasn’t here.
Rutledge climbed the stairs, no longer on guard, yet unwilling to stop until he was certain. He went into the first of the bedrooms, found nothing, and moved on. In the third, deep inside a man’s wardrobe, was a small valise. He set down the lamp and opened the bag. Inside were personal items, clean clothing, a pipe and some tobacco, and a worn photograph of a smiling woman standing by the gate of a barnlike house, her fair hair shining in the sun. And documents in the name of one Gunter Manthy, of the town of Gronigen, in Holland. On a square of paper someone had sketched a likeness of a chased silver cup, with details laboriously added. It was very convincing.
A prop—or an heirloom?
Hauser had never really left this house. He had given himself up—but he had concealed his belongings, including the photograph, where they wouldn’t readily be found. The safest place he could think of. Someone had cleared away the bedding and food in the kitchen, to give the impression the house was no longer occupied. Allaying any suspicion that he might return.
Which meant he expected to come back and retrieve his possessions.
Had Hauser gone to Maidstone, just as Elizabeth believed he would? In the slim hope that Jimsy Ridger had passed that silver cup on to someone in his family?
“Then what’s become of Brereton?” Hamish asked. “If yon German is still alive and out of harm’s way?”
“A very pressing question now!”
He was at the end of the passage on the second floor when he heard something. The sound traveled far in the empty, silent house.
Hamish said softly, “’Ware!”
Brereton? Or Hauser? Who had followed him here?
31
RUTLEDGE STAYED WHERE HE WAS, LISTENING. HIS HEARING had of necessity been acute on the battlefield, where sound was a betrayer. And Hamish had always heard what he could not.
He asked, into the silence of his head, “Where?”
“On the ground floor . . .” came the reply after a moment.
And as Rutledge held his breath for an instant, to listen more intently, he heard it again.
—thump—
AT FIRST IT sounded as if someone had bumped into a chair in the dark—as he himself had done in the kitchen. And then as his brain processed