Charles Todd - A False Mirror

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.