The child began to scream at two in the morning. When Nanny failed to comfort the boy, she went to his mother’s room and knocked.
“He’s hysterical. I don’t understand why, there’s nothing amiss that I can find.” The anxiety in her normally calm voice was a counterpoint to the heartbreaking wails issuing from the nursery.
“Should we summon Dr. Granville?” Mrs. Cornelius asked, quickly knotting her dressing gown around her. “Is he feverish, you think? Has he been sick?”
“He’s very well. It was the window, you see. He insisted I close it and put down the shade. He said something out there wanted in.”
“Was the shade raised? Whatever for?” Mrs. Cornelius followed Nanny down the passage and opened the nursery door. She could hear her son before she got there, sobbing inconsolably now and calling for her. She crossed to the bed and put her arms around him. He clung to her, burying his face in the dark hair that tumbled down her shoulder.
“What is it, my love, what is it?” she repeated in a singsong voice, ignoring the hovering nanny. But he shook his head with some force, as if he didn’t want to tell her.
Nanny said softly, “Sometimes in the night, he’ll wake up and go to the window seat. It looks out to the sea. He likes that. He’s learned to lift the shade for himself.”
“Was it the sea that frightened you?” she asked the clinging child. But he shook his head again. “Or the mist? You’ve seen mists before, haven’t you, my love?”
Nanny had closed the window but had not pulled down the shade.
Mrs. Cornelius turned to peer out. This window looked down on the street but she could see the water just beyond the next house but one. Or could have done, in the moonlight. A sea mist had crept in, a filmy white wraith that made the street and the rooftops and the outlines of houses seem unfamiliar and unfriendly.
Cradling the child in her arms, she shivered. Anything could be out there, she thought. What had Jeremy seen? And it was in just such a mist that Mr. Hamilton had been struck down.
What if someone lurked in the shadows, watching this lighted window, perhaps knowing it was her son’s nursery? What if he had lured the boy to slip down and open the house door?
They were wealthy enough to pay a goodly ransom.
She had caught her son’s fear.
She said to Nanny, “Rouse Mr. Cornelius, if you please. Ask him to send for Inspector Bennett. It may be nothing, but on the other hand, better safe than sorry. Tell him to take Benedict with him.” The footman, she thought, would be protection enough. “And beg him to remember to lock the door behind him. Hurry!”
When Nanny had gone, she said, soothingly, “It’s all right, Jeremy, there’s nothing to worry you. Would you like to sleep in my bed for a bit?” Anything to take him away from here and the lighted window.
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 damned to alarums in the night. But his wife would simply send him out again, and so he went instead to the Duke of Monmouth Inn. The sense of danger had faded, replaced by anger and resentment. What he should have done was hunt the fool down himself! Not come for the incompetent and unhelpful police. The Chief Constable would hear about this-
It seemed to be the middle of the night when Rutledge came out of a deep sleep to hear voices in the passage outside his door.
He listened for a moment or two, and recognized the desk clerk’s as one of them.
By the time the man knocked, Rutledge was on his feet and reaching for his clothes.
Rutledge opened his door to the desk clerk, his hair disheveled and trousers thrown on with haste. Behind him was a taller man, fair and flustered but well dressed.
“Mr. Rutledge? This is Mr. Cornelius. Inspector Bennett has sent him to you.” He turned slightly to include Cornelius in the conversation.
The man said, “There’s something wrong at my house. My son’s had a shock, and my wife sent me to fetch you. Will you come?”
“What kind of shock?” Rutledge asked, swiftly finishing dressing.
“I don’t know. He was screaming the house down half an hour ago. There’s a mist coming in. My wife was concerned about that, what with the assault on Mr. Hamilton.” He stopped, seeming at a loss for words. His story hadn’t come out the way he’d intended it should.
But Rutledge followed him without argument, with Hamish alert and awake in his mind, quarreling and taunting during the silent walk to where Cornelius lived.
The mist had grown denser, and it was a strangely quiet, soft world, the sea itself hissing somewhere to his left instead of rolling in with its usual thunder.
The Cornelius house was on Mercer Street, which curved away from the center of town but still allowed a very nice view of the water. More prosperous residents lived here-Reston’s house was just down the road-and the Victorian flavor of money and respectability was reflected in the size and style of the dwellings.
Rutledge was reminded of Bennett’s comment that fish scales made for slippery social climbing.
They went up the walk to Number 4 and Cornelius let them in with his key. There was a lamp at the foot of the stairs, but the ground floor was in darkness. Carrying the lamp, Cornelius took the steps two at a time to the first floor, and Rutledge followed.
The man was annoyed that his wife had locked the bedroom door, and knocked briskly.
She came out to them, shushing them. “Jeremy’s just gone to sleep again.”
She stared uncertainly at Rutledge, and her husband hastily presented him, adding, “He’s here in Bennett’s stead.”
“What seems to be the trouble?” Rutledge asked her.
“It’s probably a wild-goose chase,” she began apologetically, confronted now with this stranger from London instead of Mr. Bennett. She was beginning to wonder if she’d been wise to call in the police. But the memory of her son’s distress kept her from making light of her fears. “Nanny tells me my son sits by his window late at night, and tonight there was something in the mist that frightened him. He began to cry and it took me some time to calm him down again. But after what happened to Matthew Hamilton-”
“Yes, you did the right thing,” Rutledge replied, cutting short the apology. “Did he describe to you what he’d seen?”
“A hunchback creature stumbling along the road at the head of the street. He believes it was a monster of some kind, but of course that’s only a child’s interpretation. I can’t think what it might actually have been.” She glanced at her husband. “Jeremy is possessed of a lively imagination, and his grandfather encourages him by reading to him books that are, well, perhaps a little mature for him. But he doesn’t make up stories. Something was there. I’m convinced of it.”
“A fisherman carrying his nets down to the boat?” Rutledge took out his watch. “When do the fishermen set sail? Before dawn, surely.”
“I hadn’t thought of that-but why should that frighten Jeremy? He must have seen them dozens of times. And this-this creature wasn’t walking toward the Mole but away from it, following the west road.”
“And yet,” Hamish put in, “she didna’ fear to send her husband out in the dark.”
Which was an interesting point. Mr. Cornelius was a prime target, if someone was intent on distracting the police from the attack on Hamilton by hunting other likely prey in the night. Rutledge shifted his emphasis slightly but that was in effect his next question.
“If you were concerned about who or what was out there, was it wise to send Mr. Cornelius to the police?”
She stared at Rutledge. “But he took Benedict with him. And besides my husband has no enemies.”
Over her head Rutledge and Cornelius exchanged glances. In silent agreement that she needn’t be told her husband had gone out alone.
“Neither, apparently, did Hamilton have enemies,” Rutledge answered her.
Mrs. Cornelius refused to wake the boy for Rutledge to question further tonight. “The problem is out there, not in here. I’ve told you everything my son told me. There’s been enough time wasted already, Inspector. If this ‘monster’ is to be found, you’d best hurry.”
In the end, he didn’t press, and Cornelius saw him out again with heartfelt apologies.
Walking back through the mist, Rutledge could understand the sense of unease that had triggered the boy’s fear. Nothing appeared to have its normal shape in this white shroud. A cat skirting a garden walk loomed large as it rounded the corner of a wall, as if magnified by the murky light. And a small boat, putting out to sea, seemed to be sailing into a milky curtain that clung to it and draped it until it vanished, a captive of some voracious sea monster. Rooftops appeared and disappeared, chimney pots were heads poking out of the swirls as if strange creatures were dancing there high above the street. A wandering dog knocked over a pail, and the noise of it rolled among the houses with waves of echoes.
He spent half an hour searching for whatever it was young Jeremy had seen, but there was nothing to account for it.
“The lad should ha’ been abed and asleep.”
And if the Nanny had caught Jeremy disobeying rules, he might have invented a monster to distract her. It had to be considered.
Rutledge had circled back to the head of Mercer Street and now stood still, looking down it toward the Cornelius house. The windows were dark, everyone settled in his bed. He found himself wondering who would see him if he raised his arms high, threw back his head and howled silently.
Chances were, no one. Perhaps whoever had passed here, briefly crossing Jeremy Cornelius’s line of sight, had counted on that. And in the mist, everyone was all but invisible.
A straying husband hurrying back to his wife. A drunk, hoping to find his bed at last, or a housebreaker taking his chances?
“Or yon doctor, on his way to a confinement,” Hamish put in. “It needna’ be more out of the ordinary than that.”
Rutledge turned toward the inn, grateful for his heavy coat against the night chill.
Odd that Bennett had sent Cornelius to him, he found himself thinking as the inn came into sight. The sign was disembodied, a floating man high above the street, catching the light from the lamp that Rutledge had left burning in his room.
Even with its tenuous connection to the Hamilton matter, Jeremy Cornelius’s ghostly figure was not a case for the Yard. Bennett had hoped to make him look like a fool, chasing a child’s hobgoblins in the middle of the night.
A not-so-subtle attempt to show the outsider that the local man knew what he was about, and at the same time, placating a prominent citizen in need.
Rain came an hour later, a downpour that went on until the eaves were dripping and the dawn was lost in the heavy clouds that seemed to rest on the very rooftops, replicating last night’s fog.
Rutledge awoke some forty minutes later than he usually did, the darkness in his room and the regular pattering of the rain blotting out nightmares, allowing him for once to sleep deeply.
The dining room was empty, his breakfast set out on the long table by the kitchen door. He filled his plate and sat down, Hamish seeming to hover behind him in the shadows. The woman who was now serving at meals brought him his tea and stood by his table for a moment looking out the windows at the weather.
He thought to ask about Becky and was assured that she was expected to resume her duties by early next week.
“Thank goodness this wasn’t a busier time of year,” she went on, and then nodded toward the rain, coming down harder as they watched. “My grandmother told us last night this was coming. Her knees ached something fierce. The barometer bore her out, but we didn’t know, did we, that it would be such a stormy morning.” She sighed. “Poor daffodils, they’ll have muddy faces now.”
He offered a smile, and she went back to the kitchen. It was a depressing morning, true enough, and Hamish was vigorously reminding him of the rain in the trenches, the sour smells of unwashed bodies, wet wool, mud, and despair in equal measure.
Finishing the last of his toast and tea, he rose and walked out to the lobby, opening the door to a gust of air so heavy with moisture it seemed to have come from the sea, not the sky.
He had expected to go back to Matthew Hamilton this morning, to sit there again and talk to the man, hoping to bring him back to the present once more. He had the feeling that Hamilton had understood more than Rutledge or the doctor realized, and that the words flowing around him had partly roused him out of the pain and blackness that engulfed him. But it was late, and his first duty must be to Mrs. Hamilton and her maid.
The situation there was unstable enough to change by the hour.
He fetched his hat and coat, and with a sigh dashed through the downpour to the motorcar, feeling his shoulders and his shoes taking the brunt of what was pelting down and swirling in puddles under foot.
He turned the crank and ran for the driver’s door, nearly colliding with a man half hidden behind a large black umbrella. He seemed to appear out of nowhere from the boot of the motorcar.
The umbrella flexed as it struck Rutledge and dumped a shower of water into his face as he ducked away from the points.
The man holding it swore, and then as it shifted a little so that he could peer under the dripping edge, he said, “Rutledge?”
It was Dr. Granville.
“Are you looking for me?” Rutledge asked, and then added, “For God’s sake, come inside before we’re both wet through.” Leaving the motorcar running, he urged the doctor through the yard door into the inn.
They found themselves in the narrow, flagged passage that led from the back hall, and Granville left his umbrella outside, taking out a handkerchief to wipe his face.
“What is it? Has Hamilton taken a turn for the worst?” Rutledge asked when the man seemed to hesitate.
“Or is he dead?” Rutledge went on, staring hard at the doctor.
“I don’t know.” The doctor’s voice was diffident, as if he were embarrassed to say what had brought him here.
“You didn’t put a guard on him, is that it? After I’d warned you. Well? What has happened to him now? Come on, man, speak up!”
The doctor looked up at him. “He’s gone,” he said simply. “Just-gone.”
At first Rutledge took that to mean that Hamilton had died in the night, alone and without regaining his senses. But then he realized that the doctor meant what he said quite literally. The shock in his eyes was unmistakable.
“Gone? When? Where?” Rutledge demanded.
“I don’t know. For God’s sake, I don’t know. His bed was empty when I went to check on him half an hour ago.”
“Are you quite sure he hasn’t passed out in another room as he tried to find help?”
“I’ve searched the premises. He’s gone, I tell you.”
“To the house. To find his wife.” Rutledge swore, and wheeled toward the door. “Come on, man, we’ve got to search for him.”
“He can’t have made it far, it’s not a climb he can-”
But Rutledge had the sleeve of his coat, pulling at him, and the doctor came reluctantly behind him, catching up his umbrella but with no time to open it.
They made for the motorcar and climbed in, bringing the miasma of wet wool after them, steaming up the windscreen with the heat of their bodies.
Rutledge found a cloth under his seat and scrubbed at the inside of the glass, swearing again. Then he tossed the cloth to the doctor, put the motorcar into gear, and turned in a shimmering fan of spray.
They came out of the inn drive and went toward the street that ran along the Mole. “Have you spoken to Bennett?” Rutledge asked, taking the next turn far too fast, feeling the tires slipping sideways in a spin. He brought the vehicle back under control and headed to the east.
“No. I couldn’t face him. I came straightaway for you instead. I thought perhaps-look out, you fool, there’s a bicycle ahead!-damn it, we’re no good to Hamilton or anyone else if we’re dead.”
But Rutledge paid him no heed. Every second counted now. Three minutes later, he found a very wet constable standing under a tree some distance from the drive to the house, where he’d taken what shelter he could find against the trunk.
“How long have you been on duty?” Rutledge asked, lowering the window.
“Since six, sir,” the man answered, looking as wretched as he must feel. “It’s been all quiet at the house. Not a sound out of them.”
“And no one has come in or out?”
“No, sir. No one.”
But if the earlier watcher had been standing where this man was, it would be hard in the dark to know who had come. Or gone.
Rutledge thanked him and drove up to the door.
The shrubbery by the drive was as wet as a rain forest, he thought, getting out to hammer on the house door. And the downpour had hardly lessened since it began.
Mallory came to answer his impatient summons, looking as tired as Rutledge had ever seen him. “What do you want now?” He glanced over Rutledge’s shoulder and saw the doctor in the motorcar.
“For God’s sake, why have you brought him? I’ve done them no harm.”
“Hamilton has disappeared,” Rutledge told him bluntly. “He may have come here. I want to search the house, and after that the grounds.”
“It’s a trick. He’s dead, isn’t he? Well, you aren’t bringing any of your men or Bennett’s here on a pretense to search. I’ll use the revolver if I have to. Do you hear me?”
“He’s missing,” Rutledge said grimly. “You’d better listen to me, Mallory. I’m not here to play at cat and mouse. If he’s been out in this rain for hours, he’ll be running a fever by now, or he could have bled to death from his internal injuries-God only knows. Will you let me in to search or not?”
Mallory called out to Dr. Granville. “Is this true? Is Hamilton gone?”
“In the night,” the doctor confirmed. “He must have come here, man! Where else would he go? In his condition?”
Mallory swore. “He isn’t here, I tell you!” But his gaze moved toward the dark, silent house behind him. “I’d have known.”
“Stay here if you like, and guard the door. But let me search,” Rutledge said rapidly. “I’ll do it alone, and I give you my word now that I have no other motive. I won’t leave a window or door unlocked, I won’t frighten either of the women. It’s his house, Mallory, he knows it better than you do.”
“I thought he was too badly injured to know where he was, much less walk away. You told me as much, damn it,” he retorted accusingly. “You lied to me!”
“We believed it to be true. But you know as well as I do that badly injured men are capable of heroic effort. We saw that often enough in the war, for God’s sake. If he’s determined to know why his wife hasn’t visited him, he may have tried to reach her, for fear something has happened to her as well. Or he may be out for revenge. It’s better if I find him first, before you come on him in the dark.”
The other man stood there, undecided. And then he opened the door wider and let Rutledge step inside, watching the water dripping relentlessly from his coat and his trousers to puddle on the floor.
Mallory gestured to it and said ruefully, “I can’t even call the maid to clear it up. Just stay away from Nan, and from Mrs. Hamilton. And don’t linger. I don’t trust you, and I’ll be searching the house again after you leave. I’m quite serious, Rutledge, don’t drive me into a corner.”
He said to Mallory, “If Hamilton managed to make his way here, pray that his mind is clear. It could be your salvation.”
And with Hamish behind him, alternately warning and driving him, Rutledge set about his search.
It would be to Mallory’s advantage to bring the wounded man to his wife, Rutledge kept telling himself, since she couldn’t go to him. And yet-
He went into every room belowstairs and on the ground floor, testing the window locks, looking for signs of a break-in while Mallory slept. He searched for wet footprints on carpets and felt for damp draperies where windows might have been thrown open during the heavy rain. And he listened intently for any sounds that might tell him that Hamilton was here, and also a prisoner.
But a quarter of an hour later, he had found nothing except the irate Nan, demanding to know why she hadn’t been set free long since.
Passing Mallory where he sat on the staircase, Rutledge moved on to the first floor, methodically going from bedroom to bedroom even as he began to realize it was hopeless. Looking under beds, into wardrobes, behind screens, even behind the stiff brocade draperies that hung at each window, he tried to think where Hamilton might have gone if he hadn’t come here to Casa Miranda. But there were still the grounds to search.
The only room he didn’t enter was Mrs. Hamilton’s.
When he’d finished in the attics, he stood outside her door and tapped lightly on the panel. He had the feeling she was cowering inside, unwilling to face him.
Without Stephen Mallory’s knowledge, had she gone to the doctor’s surgery during the night and somehow managed to bring her husband back with her? It would have been a disastrous act of courage and determination even to try, and she couldn’t have moved Hamilton if he’d been unconscious still.
Mallory had to sleep sometime, although he looked as if he’d never closed his eyes. Was that her solution to the need to know how her husband fared?
And if it was, then he himself must now tread with care.
“Mayhap she doesna’ know who is at the door,” Hamish pointed out.
The room must look out to the sea and the headland on the other side of the Mole. She may not have heard his motorcar with the rain making such a racket. “It’s Inspector Rutledge, Mrs. Hamilton. No one else is with me.”
Except for Hamish, he added silently. But how would she know?
After a moment, he called to her again, more insistently this time.
And she said, her voice tremulous, “What do you want? Is there news?”
“Are you alone in there, Mrs. Hamilton?”
There was a pause before she came to the door, opening it a crack. She too looked very tired, her face already losing some of the soft vulnerability he remembered.
Warily she said, “What do you mean? Of course I’m alone.”
“May I come in and look around your room, Mrs. Hamilton? I won’t take more than a moment or two.”
“Look-what is it you’re looking for?”
“I want to see that all is well with you, as Mr. Mallory has assured me it is.”
But with the intuition of a woman, she could sense that something wasn’t right.
“Have you interviewed George Reston?” she demanded suspiciously. “What has he said to you?”
“I’m looking into that, I promise you. Just now-”
Pulling her shawl closer, as if trying to warm herself, she said, “No. I don’t want to see you or anyone else. Go away.”
“Mrs. Hamilton.” He studied her hair, but it appeared dry to him. Yet out in this storm, nothing stayed dry for very long. Had Matthew Hamilton been moved before the rains began? Under cover of the mist?
“I’m not feeling very well this morning. I want to be left alone. Don’t disturb me again until you can bring me good news.” She looked away from him, tears filling her eyes. “I can’t bear much more.”
She closed the door in his face, and he heard the key turn in the lock.
Hamish said, “She didna’ ask how her husband was, this morning.”
There was nothing for it after that but to search the grounds. And the heavy rain hadn’t let up. Rutledge briefly explained to Granville what he was doing and why, then asked to borrow his umbrella.
The doctor said before he handed it over, “I really ought to look in on Mrs. Hamilton while I’m here. When she hears what’s become of her husband, she’ll be distraught. If you’ll have a word with Mallory-”
Rutledge cut him short. “Stay out of it. If you want to be useful, think where we ought to look if Hamilton isn’t here.” He took the umbrella, effectively stranding Granville in the motorcar.
The umbrella turned out to be all but worthless, and after a time he gave up and furled it. There was no sign of Matthew Hamilton on the grounds or in the outbuildings. No sign, even, that someone had been there, no muddy marks on floors in the garden shed or the small stable that had been partly converted to a garage. Rutledge put his hand on the bonnets of the motorcars there-they were cool to the touch-and hunted for deep footprints in the soft wet earth. The lone horse nickered as he leaned into its stall, and blew as he offered his hand to it. And he used his instincts as well, lifting rain-heavy branches, burrowing under shrubs, putting himself in the shoes of a man desperately tired or overcome by weakness. He even poked a hand around the iron seat in the back garden, now draped in a tentlike covering of oiled cloth to prevent rusting over the winter. Mrs. Hamilton and her husband must have sat here and watched the sunset of a summer’s evening. Today the sea and the sky seemed to have merged, a gray mass that was nearly indistinguishable behind the curtain of fresh squalls on the horizon.
Rutledge was just turning away when he realized that closer to hand there was a gathering of men down along the Mole, Bennett among them, leaning on his crutches. They were all getting into a line of carts and carriages and motorcars, hurry evident even at this distance.
Hamish said, “They’ve found him, then.”