Bowles was livid.
“Where have you been? Not where you ought to be, that’s certain. I sent men to the park to find you. You were away from your post, damn it!”
“I think I may have-”
“I don’t give a dance in hell what you think, man! You’re off the case.”
“If you will listen to me-sir-”
“Look at this.” Bowles shot a sheet of paper across the desk. “Know this man, do you?”
Rutledge scanned the message. It had come in as a telephone call from the south coast.
One Stephen Mallory holding two women at point of gun, refuses to surrender to local authorities, will speak only to Inspector Rutledge. Wanted for severely beating one Matthew Hamilton and leaving him for dead, for assaulting a police officer in the course of his duties, presently threatening to murder his first victim’s wife and her maid, if Rutledge does not come in person.
Stephen Mallory. His memory rejected the name. Drew a deliberate blank.
But Hamish said roughly, “Lieutenant Mallory.” Reminding him against his will.
The war. So many things came round to the war. He couldn’t escape it, no matter where he turned. For him it had really never ended.
He could feel himself sliding back there again. To the trenches, to the Somme. And Lieutenant Mallory, standing in the summer rain, cursing him, cursing the war, cursing the killing. Rutledge could smell the foulness of the mud and the fear of his men, heard the noise that threatened to deafen him-the constant rattle of machine-gun fire and the sharpness of rifle fire and the heavy pounding of the shelling. Men were screaming all around him, and the dead or dying were everywhere he looked, along the top of the trench, under foot, out in the wire and in shell holes. The first day of that bloody battle, when so many men died. Twenty thousand of them in one day.
Hamish brought him out of the nightmare, his voice loud in Rutledge’s ears. “He was wounded, but they sent him back to the Front.”
“Yes,” he answered silently.
They had been so short of men. The medical staff had cleared anyone who could still hold a rifle as fit for duty. Days later Rutledge himself had taken his own turn at the aid station, resting a few hours, then getting to his feet and stumbling out of the tent, like a man sleepwalking.
Rutledge remembered Mallory’s dazed eyes, the stiffly bandaged shoulder, the fearlessness that had bordered on recklessness. It had turned his salient against the lieutenant, and there had been whispers about him. That he was bad luck. That he got men killed. And Mallory had been hell-bent on proving he was no coward, whatever the doctors had murmured about possible shell shock.
“Missed the bone,” he’d told everyone, making light of it. “Still, it aches like the very devil. But nothing for the pain until I’ve won the war.”
And four days later, he had been found crouched in a shell hole, crying softly. This time the wound was in his calf, and he couldn’t walk. The stretcher bearers had got him back to the rear, while rumor debated whether he had shot himself or been picked off by one of the new German snipers. Or-by his own men.
They hadn’t seen him again.
Bowles was still waiting, searching Rutledge’s face.
Dragging himself back to the present, Rutledge looked up at him.
“He was in France.”
It was a reply brief to the point of curtness, but it was all he was prepared to say while the Chief Superintendent glared accusingly at him as if he bore the responsibility for whatever had happened along the south coast.
“So was half the male population of Britain in France. Why should this man Mallory summon you in the circumstances? With the war well over?” The suspicion in Bowles’s voice was palpable.
“I can’t answer that, sir. We weren’t-close friends, if that’s what you are suggesting. I can’t imagine why he should wish to see me now.” It was the truth. Rutledge was still recalling more details about Mallory, details stuffed long ago into the bottom of the black well that was nightmare and the war: a gifted officer, yet he lacked the common touch that made tired and exhausted soldiers follow him over the top. Hamish MacLeod had possessed that touch…and so, although he had hated it, had he himself. He had felt like a charlatan, a pied piper, using his voice and his experience in command to lure unwilling men to their deaths. A Judas goat, unharmed while so many were slaughtered around him, like cattle at an abattoir.
But Mallory had got out. He had deserted his men and got out.
“Hmmpf.” Bowles slammed a drawer shut, taking out his impotent anger on the unoffending desk. “So you say. Well, you’d damned well better get down there and see what this is all about. And you’re not to play favorites, you understand me? The man this Mallory is said to have attacked-he’s got friends in high places. They’ll be howling for my blood and yours if his wife’s made free with. You understand me?”
“Are you sending me to-” He glanced down at the message again. “To Hampton Regis?”
“I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“Who is the victim, this Matthew Hamilton?” The name was not uncommon.
“Foreign Office, served on Malta before he resigned. Went uninvited to the Peace Conference in Paris, I’m told, and wasn’t very popular with his views there. But he’s still too bloody important to ignore, and if his wife wants you, she’s to have you.”
“I thought it was Mallory who asked for me?”
“Don’t quibble, Rutledge. Just get yourself down there as soon as may be. I don’t want to see your face until this business has been resolved.”
“I must speak with Phipps before I go. Sir. There’s something he ought to know about the Green Park killings-”
“Phipps is perfectly capable of drawing his own conclusions. I want you in Hampton Regis this night. And I expect you to get to the bottom of this business as fast as you can.”
“Sir, there’s a man in Kensington-”
“Are you deaf? Leave Phipps to his own affairs and see to yours. That’s an order. Good day.”
Rutledge turned and walked out of the room.
He’d have given much to know whether Fields had had a hand in the Green Park killings. And for a moment he considered going in search of Sergeant Gibson. But if Bowles got wind of that, the sergeant would find himself caught in the middle.
Rutledge went back to his own office, collected his coat and hat, and made his way out of the building to his motorcar.
If he wrapped up this business in Hampton Regis quickly, he would be back in London in good time to look into the possibilities himself. And he had a strong feeling that Fields wouldn’t kill again unless he was pressed.
Rutledge had hoped that chance would throw Sergeant Gibson in his path before he’d left the Yard. It would have been better for both of them if the encounter had come about naturally. He’d taken his time going down the stairs, out the door, listening to voices here and there. But the sergeant was nowhere to be seen. Or heard.
“What if ye’re wrong aboot Fields?” Hamish asked. “Ye canna’ put him at risk, withoot better proof.”
A hunch wasn’t proof. A gut feeling wouldn’t stand up in court. But in hasty hands either could send an innocent man to die on the gallows. Bowles was right, it was best to step aside and leave the case in Phipps’s hands. For the time being. Rutledge turned away from the Yard and drove to Kensington to find Constable Waddington.
If Fields was guilty, he’d still be there when Rutledge got back. And it wouldn’t do for Waddington to become the third victim of the Green Park killer simply because Rutledge had put the fear of God into him about Duty.
It was time to call him off. Until there was something he himself could do about Fields.
The drive to the south coast was long and cold. This part of England held bitter memories for Rutledge. He hadn’t been to the West Country since last summer. He caught himself thinking about those ghosts in his past, cases he’d dealt with even while he struggled to cope with Hamish MacLeod driving him nearly to suicide. He tried to shut the ghosts out by filling his mind with familiar lines of poetry, then realized that from habit most of them came from a single author. O. A. Manning had been an echo of his war, her poetry locked in his brain because it had touched a nerve at a time when he was grateful for any understanding. He had found that in the slim volumes he carried with him in the trenches, a voice of sanity in the middle of a nightmare. O. A. Manning had reached many men at the Front, though she herself had never set foot in France.
Hamish was taunting him. “You were half in love wi’ her.”
He wasn’t sure whether it was half in love-or caught in her spell.
Still, ever since then, he’d found himself measuring other women by her memory. That had not always been a wise thing to do, for it had drawn him to one woman in particular. And memory had been a false mirror, as he had learned to his sorrow.
Hamish said, his voice unforgiving, “In France I lost Fiona forever. What right do you have to be happy now?”
It was unanswerable. They drove in silence for miles after that, Rutledge forcing his attention to stay on the road ahead and then as night fell, on the sweep of his headlamps marking his path. Traffic had thinned, and at times his vehicle was the only one he saw for long stretches. He passed a lorry once, and later a milk wagon trundling on its way. An owl flitted through the light that guided him, and later what looked like a hunting cat darted to the side of the road, startling him awake.
He kept reminding himself that two lives hung in the balance in Hampton Regis. If he failed, two women might die. And he couldn’t be sure-he couldn’t be absolutely certain that Mallory would spare them. Not if he was driven to the point of desperation.
Because Rutledge had no idea how Mallory had changed in the past three years. For better or for worse.
He heard a church clock striking the hour as he drove the last winding half mile into the heart of Hampton Regis. Although it was quite late, he found a furious Inspector Bennett waiting impatiently for him in the police station off the harbor road.
“What took you so long? I expect the train would have been quicker.”
Rutledge, his shoulders tight from pressing as hard as he had on the roads, said only, “I’m here now.” He’d refused to take the trains since he’d come back from France. They were crowded, claustrophobic, leaving him shaken and frantic to get down as soon as possible. A hurtling coffin of metal and wood. He doubted if Bennett would understand that.
“Yes, and I’d like to know what you intend to do about Mallory. Made me look a fool, having to send for you. I manage my own patch, thank you very much, without outside interference.”
“I intend to do nothing at the moment.” Rutledge glanced down at the man’s foot, in a thick and unwieldy cast. “That must be hurting like the very devil. How did it happen?”
He’d been intent on changing the subject but was taken aback by the vehemence of Bennett’s retort. “Mallory ran me down, that’s what happened. When I went to arrest him. Flung me off the damned motorcar, directly into its path. If I hadn’t been quicker, I daresay he’d have been glad to see me dead under his wheels.”
The note had said something about Mallory assaulting a police officer, but Rutledge had assumed there had been a brief exchange of blows or a shoving match.
Such violence put an entirely different complexion on the coming confrontation. And it seemed to underline Mallory’s guilt in attacking Hamilton.
He’d hoped to wait for daylight, for his own sake as well as to give Mallory time to rethink his position. After all, there had been no set timetable for his arrival, and darkness often put fears and decisions into uncomfortable perspective. Men brooded in the night, and were grateful for sanity in the morning.
“Are you up to answering questions?” he asked Bennett now. “I’ll need a better picture of events than was available at the Yard. For one thing, has anything changed in Mallory’s situation? Are the women still safe? Has he tried to harm either of them?”
They walked back to Bennett’s office. Bennett sank into his chair like a man in pain, easing the injured foot out of the way of his single crutch. Rutledge took the only other chair.
It was a tiny room, hardly wide enough for the desk, the chairs, and the two men. From the scatter of papers across the desktop, Rutledge could see that his counterpart was not a tidy man, more impetuous than organized, and likely to have a temperament to match.
Bennett shuffled irritably at the papers, turning some, shoving others aside, creating a small avalanche that he caught just before it went over the edge. The near mishap did nothing for his mood.
Hamish said, “He’ll no’ help you, if he isna’ forced to.”
“A facade,” Rutledge answered silently. “That’s all I’m expected to be. But we’ll see about that.”
Bennett was saying, “There’s not much to tell. Matthew Hamilton-you probably know the name, coming as you do from London-was walking on the strand early this morning in a heavy sea mist. Apparently it’s something he does to help him think. That’s what one of the other vestry members told me. Miss Trining, that was. At any rate, someone came up behind him, footsteps no doubt muffled by the incoming tide, and struck him down. While he was still dazed, his attacker hit him repeatedly with something heavy, a stick, a cane, a bit of flotsam-who knows? By the time someone saw him lying there and summoned help, Hamilton’s feet were awash, and all tracks had vanished. If no one had seen him in time, he might well have drowned in another quarter hour.”
Matthew Hamilton…Rutledge cudgeled his tired wits. His sister had spoken of the man from time to time. Or one of her friends had done. Rutledge had paid scant attention, but he possessed a good memory and he managed to dredge up a few details. Hamilton moved in good circles, but he wasn’t particularly enchanted with London and soon after his marriage he’d disappeared from the social scene. That accounted for the move to Hampton Regis. But why had he chosen to close up his flat as well? London gossips had looked for an answer to that and failed to find it.
The information Bowles had given Rutledge was lean to the point of skeletal: that Hamilton had been at the Peace Conference in Paris, coming unbidden from his station on Malta, and was sent back there posthaste.
Wasn’t it this same Hamilton who had been against stiff reparations from Germany? French vengeance he’d called it. And hadn’t he railed against the American president Wilson’s belief in self-determination, publicly branding it foolishness in the extreme? Wilson had been tired, ill, his idealistic pronouncements according to Hamilton failing to take into account the realities of world politics and setting the stage for grave consequences down the road. The British and French delegations had been intent on ignoring the American president, palming him off with his precious League of Nations. Hamilton had tried repeatedly to convince them all that they were sowing the seeds of disaster which another generation would reap in blood. It hadn’t been a popular stance.
The British had all but disowned him, as they had disowned Lawrence and others with a clearer vision. Rutledge had been in hospital during most of the Peace Conference, his knowledge of it secondhand. But the displeasure of the Foreign Office hadn’t sent a man of Hamilton’s stature to a backwater like Hampton Regis. Small wonder the gossips had been busy.
Given Hamilton’s history, what scandal or past indiscretion might have caught up with him here? Stephen Mallory had had no role in Hamilton’s diplomatic career. Yet that had covered at least twenty years of Hamilton’s life.
Bennett was still speaking, his voice sour. “And how is it you’re acquainted with this man Mallory? Does he have friends in high places?”
“Hardly high places. I expect the Yard was more concerned about the Hamiltons and their maid than any connection I might have with your suspect.”
“Then you won’t mind telling me how it was you came to know him.”
“In the war,” Rutledge answered him, and changed the subject, though he knew Bennett wasn’t satisfied. “Any improvement in Hamilton’s condition?”
“Not according to the doctor.” Bennett grimaced as he shifted his foot again. “He’s been close to consciousness a time or two, but he never quite wakes up. That doesn’t bode well for his ability to recall who attacked him.”
“Yes, I see that. What happened next?”
“I sent my constable, Jordan, to the Hamilton house to fetch Mrs. Hamilton to him, and I went to Mallory’s cottage myself. It lies inland, a few miles up the Hampton River. My intent was to question him about where he’d been that morning, but he lost his head and went directly to find Mrs. Hamilton. She was at Dr. Granville’s surgery. He waited until she came home, and took both Mrs. Hamilton and her maid hostage. When we went to try and talk him into surrendering, he threatened to kill both women if we didn’t summon you directly.”
“Since then, you haven’t tried to-er-persuade him to surrender?”
“I had myself driven up to the house shortly before nightfall, and called to Mrs. Hamilton. Mallory answered for her and reminded me that their safety depended on you coming down from London.” He considered Rutledge, his eyes hostile. “I still can’t see why he should have sent for you by name. There must be more to it.” His posture was insistent, as if he were determined to get to the bottom of the connection.
“I’ve told you. We served together in France, and I expect I’m the only policeman he knows.”
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 for in his long exile abroad in the heat of some godforsaken island or busy, overcrowded capital. An England that existed now only in homesick dreams. The war had changed all that.
There were no lights that Rutledge could see. He hoped the household had gone to bed, where he wished he was now. But it would not be a peaceful sleep for the two women imprisoned there with a possible killer. And he was their only hope.
He tried to picture Mallory creeping up behind Hamilton as he walked along the strand, and striking him hard across the back of the head. He wanted to believe it was impossible that a man he’d known in the trenches could do such a thing. But then they’d been taught to kill by masters, and what was one more life in the long rolls of the dead? Bennett had been treated with equal callousness. There had to be a reason. And why, if he’d had the chance to run, had Mallory come here instead?
And that brought Rutledge to Hamilton’s wife. What was her relationship to Mallory? Or his to her?
Without warning Hamish said, “You should ken how he feels.”
Rutledge caught his breath on the realization. In spite of the promises they’d made to each other at the start of the war, Jean had left him, to marry a diplomat serving now in Canada.
Had Mallory been Mrs. Hamilton’s lover once? Was that the key?
Bennett was staring at him, waiting for him to act.
Rutledge forced himself back to the present.
“Stay here,” he said to Bennett, and left the motor turning over quietly as he went to lift the knocker.
After a time a male voice called warily, “Who’s there?”
He didn’t recognize it.
“Rutledge, from Scotland Yard,” he answered carefully. “It’s very late, I’m aware of that. I drove straight through, after the summons. I wanted you to know I’m here.”
“Stand in your headlamps, so that I can see you.”
Rutledge turned and did as he was asked. After nearly a minute, a curtain twitched in an upstairs room.
Then the voice was back at the door, calling, “You’ve changed. But then so have I. Come back in the morning. Alone. Keep Bennett out of this.” The tension behind the words was clear even through the door’s wooden panels.
“I told you,” Bennett jeered. “Wound like a spring.”
“I won’t leave until I’m certain the women are safe,” Rutledge responded, returning to the door himself to listen for whatever sounds he could hear from inside.
Someone had a candle, its brightness wavering as if in an unsteady hand. Had Mallory been drinking? That was a bad sign. Rutledge tried to recall what they’d talked about in the lines, and what the man’s weaknesses were. The problem was, they hadn’t been close. Mallory, like Rutledge himself, had had other things on his mind. Rutledge had had more in common with Hamish, though they had come from vastly different backgrounds. Both had possessed an instinctive understanding of tactics and strategy, and that had drawn them together.
Over his head the fanlight was elegant, reminding him of Georgian houses in London. It had been crafted, he thought, by a master hand. But all the candle’s golden light showed him was a shadowy flight of stairs and the lamp hanging in the hall. Venetian, he thought in one corner of his mind.
Hamish was saying, “He broke, Mallory did. Only you didna’ shoot him.” And that summed up more than Rutledge was prepared to deal with tonight.
The voice inside the house went on, “They’re safe. I had promised as much, if Bennett sent for you. They’ll be safe until the morning. I swear it.”
“I want to speak to Mrs. Hamilton myself.”
“Damn it, man, she’s asleep.”
“Nevertheless. I’ve kept my half of the bargain.”
There was a silence broken only by Bennett’s grumbling from the motorcar.
Finally a woman’s voice, nervous and uncertain, called, “Inspector? He hasn’t harmed us. Please do as he asks. We’ll be all right tonight.”
“Mrs. Hamilton?”
“Yes. Have you news of my husband? I’ve been so worried about him.”
“He’s resting, Mrs. Hamilton. So I’m told. But you need to be with him. If Mr. Mallory will allow it, I’ll take you to the surgery myself, so that you can be reassured your husband is going to live.”
From the motorcar Bennett called, “It’s not her we want out of there, it’s him.” Rutledge ignored him.
“I-I can’t leave,” she answered. “I-in the morning, perhaps?”
“Mallory? Surely you’ll relent for Mrs. Hamilton’s sake?”
But there was only silence from the other side of the door. After a time, Rutledge returned to the motorcar and climbed into his seat. He could feel the tension of the last few minutes smothering him, until his head seemed to thunder with it.
“You should have pressed him,” Bennett told him in no uncertain terms. “While you had the chance. God knows what state those women will be in, come morning.”
Rutledge said, “Mallory is tired. He won’t be thinking very clearly. Anything that strikes him now as interference on our part will only make their situation worse. I can’t believe he’ll harm them tonight. Not after he’d got what he wanted. We’ll leave him to wonder about tomorrow and how he’s to explain himself.”
“That’s foolishness,” Bennett retorted. “You’re coddling a murderer.”
Hamish said, making clear his opinion of Bennett, “He’s no’ thinking sae verra’ clearly himsel’. He hasna’ considered that yon lieutenant would gladly see ye deid.”
“Why do you so firmly believe Mallory attacked Hamilton?” Rutledge asked the fuming inspector beside him as they drove out of the gates. He could see that a new face had replaced the watcher he’d glimpsed earlier in the shadows of a large tree. He presumed that while he was speaking to Mallory, distracting him, there had been a swift changing of the guard and the other constables had already walked back into Hampton Regis.
“Jealousy,” Bennett said baldly.
“Mallory was involved with Hamilton’s wife?” He considered the ramification of this. “Or only infatuated with her?”
Hamish, derisive in his mind, demanded, “Does it make any difference?”
“I can’t say,” Bennett added grudgingly, “how much involvement there has been. If gossip is to be believed, certainly on Mallory’s part there was the desire to step into Matthew Hamilton’s shoes. Or bed. How Mrs. Hamilton felt about it, no one seems to know.”
“What else do the gossips whisper?”
“There’s a difference in age between Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton. Twenty years, at a guess. Mallory on the other hand can’t be more than three or four years older than Mrs. Hamilton. The rest is plain as the nose on your face, isn’t it? She wouldn’t be the first woman to see a young sweetheart off to war, and then have second thoughts about waiting for him. Especially when her head’s turned by the attentions of someone of Hamilton’s standing. It explains why, when young Mallory is mustered out, he comes straight to Hampton Regis to live, not all that long after the Hamiltons take Casa Miranda. He’s got no family here, nor any connections that we know of. What else could have brought him?”
“Mallory returned to England in 1916.”
“Did he, now? Then where’s he been since then?” Bennett shook his head. “I don’t see how it matters either way. He’s in love with her, that’s clear enough, whenever it was he came to know her. Why else was he in such a hurry to see her, once he knew he was caught out?”
“Why, indeed?”
“Where there’s smoke, there’s bound to be fire.”
The road was quiet, the town dark, asleep.
“And so Hamilton was struck down, beaten, and left to drown. But no one saw the attack.”
“No one has stepped forward.”
“I’d like to look in on Matthew Hamilton,” Rutledge said.
“It’s well after midnight, man. You can’t go dragging the doctor out of his bed at this hour.”
“I doubt he’s in his bed.”
“Oh, very well.” Bennett gestured toward the first turning as they reached the Mole. “Down that street to the next corner. The house with the delicate iron fencing along the back garden.”
But the doctor’s house was dark, and although Rutledge went to tap lightly on the surgery door, no one came to answer his summons. He tested the handle, and it turned in his hand. Did no one in the country lock their doors?
He stood in the opening, listening intently. But the dark passage before him was silent, and he could feel Inspector Bennett’s eyes boring into the back of his head.
If the doctor wasn’t sitting up with his patient, it was very likely a good sign that he was not expected to die this night.
They drove back to the Mole, where the sea beyond the harbor wall was a black presence, restless and whispering as the wind picked up. There they took the second turning, and Bennett pointed out a small inn set back from the street, a black and white Elizabethan building with a slate roof where once there must have been thatch, and outbuildings in the yard behind it. A small garden had replaced the yard in front, and daffodils were already in bloom in sheltered patches. This morning would be the first day of March, Rutledge reminded himself. The winter had seemed endless, unrelenting.
“That’s the Duke of Monmouth Inn,” Bennett told Rutledge. “I’ve taken the liberty of putting you up there. But I’d be obliged if you’ll drive me as far as my house, which is down the end of the street and on the next corner. Damned foot!”
Rutledge went past the inn and on down the street. “You believe that Mallory ran from you because he’s guilty. Why didn’t he keep going, either into Devon or toward the port towns? It would have been a smarter move on his part.”
Bennett said, “I told you, it was a matter of jealousy. What’s the sense in killing the husband if you don’t succeed in getting the wife to yourself?”
“Hardly to himself, if the hangman’s knocking at the door.”
“Yes, well, I don’t suppose he’d expected to find himself the prime suspect so quickly. Nor her so hesitant about running off with him while her husband was still alive. If the sea had taken the body, it’ud been a different story.” Bennett hesitated and then added, “I’d led Mallory to believe Hamilton was dead. It seemed best at the time. He must have been shocked when he learned his victim was still with us.”
“And that’s my point,” Rutledge countered, pulling up before the small house that Bennett was indicating. “You’re looking at the connection between Mallory and Mrs. Hamilton as a strong motive. Instead, Mallory might have gone to her for fear he would be blamed. You’ve told me of no direct evidence linking him to what happened.”
“Except that he ran,” Bennett answered simply, reaching into the back of the motorcar for his crutch. “Add to that, he had no compunction about killing me as well. And now he’s holding those two women at the point of a gun. Does that cry innocence to you?”
Rutledge found he was holding his breath. The rear seat of the motorcar belonged to Hamish-
But Bennett’s fumbling was successful, and he retrieved the crutch, nearly striking Rutledge in the face with the rubber tip.
“I’d not heard it myself,” Bennett repeated, swinging the crutch out into the road and gingerly lowering his bad foot after it. “The worst of the gossip, I mean. But one of my men, Coxe by name, brought it to my attention. He’s cousin to the housemaid, Nan Weekes. Just as well he told me. That gave me a jump on Mallory, or so I’d thought. Nearly had the bastard. But I’ll have him yet.”
With that he hobbled up to his door and went in without looking back.
Rutledge waited to see Bennett safely inside, and then, easing his stiff shoulders, he turned the motorcar toward the hotel. Even Hamish was ready to call it a night, his presence heavily silent in the rear seat.
The Duke of Monmouth Inn was named for the illegitimate but favored son of Charles II, and there had been many people when Charles died who preferred him over the Catholic Prince James, the king’s younger brother. A short but bloody rebellion centered mostly in the West Country had come to grief on the scaffold at the hands of Bloody Jeffreys, the hanging judge of the Bloody Assizes, and that was the end of the duke.
And so history had taken a different turn. The intolerant James had assumed the crown, only to face his own trouble in less than three years. That had swept in his daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William. There were not many inns named for him, Rutledge thought, making the turning.
The building appeared to have been a coaching inn during the early 1800s, hardly the duke’s era. Still, there was a portrait of him in velvets, a wig, and a plumed hat on the sign hanging from an iron frame above the door. If the artist was to be believed, Monmouth had been a rather handsome young man who bore no resemblance to the long-faced Stuarts.
The sign creaked on its hinges as Rutledge walked around to the door after leaving his motorcar in the yard behind the inn. He could feel the sea’s breath, salty and damp, as he lifted the latch and stepped into the dark lobby.
A lamp bloomed from the door into the office, and a sleepy night porter stepped out, wary but curious.
“Inspector Rutledge,” he said to the man, setting down his valise and moving to the desk. “Inspector Bennett has taken a room for me.”
The night porter reached inside a drawer and handed him a key. “First floor, to your left. Number fifteen.”
Rutledge took the key, retrieved his case, and went up the shadowy stairs.
Hamish said, as they made their way down an even darker passage, “I wouldna’ be astonished to see a ghost outside yon door.”
“As long as he doesn’t rattle chains as I sleep, I’ve no quarrel with him.”
Hamish chuckled derisively. There were other things Rutledge feared in his dreams. The rattle of machine-gun fire…
He opened the door to number 15, and discovered that it was large enough and pleasant enough, with a view toward the sea through rows of chimney pots. But standing at the glass, careful not to place himself where he could see his own reflection-or Hamish’s behind him-he could just make out the rooftop of Hamilton’s house on its gentle rise above the harbor and the sweep of the drive as it reached the gates and turned in.
And it intrigued him that the house, sheltered in its garden, was so visible from this angle. It would be easy to wait here and watch the comings and goings to the door. He made a mental note tomorrow to look in the other rooms on this side of the inn, to see if the view was as clear.