Charles Todd - A False Mirror

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?”