Charles Todd - A False Mirror

They walked through the house in silence. Then, at the door, Mallory asked Rutledge quietly, making certain that his voice didn’t carry up the stairs or into the drawing room, “Are you keeping something from me? Did he say anything?”

“Why should I lie to you? He was in no state to answer questions. But we can hope that by tomorrow the news is better. Mallory, listen to me, encourage Mrs. Hamilton to remember the names of wedding guests and friends she and Hamilton visited in London. It could be your salvation if Reston is in the clear.”

With that he stepped outside and walked on, without turning back.

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-