Charles Todd - A False Mirror

“I was thinking of hiring you to row me out to where I could have a good look at the landslip this morning.”

“It’s a crazy thought. What for?”

“I’m sure it is. Nevertheless, I have a sound reason. We don’t know if anyone was in that cottage when it went over. And Dr. Granville is missing one of his patients.”

“He’d be a fool to take himself out to the cottage. It was derelict before, and will be matchwood now.”

“A policeman can’t write that in his report,” Rutledge answered.

“It’s Mr. Hamilton you’re looking for?”

He nodded.

“It’s not a thing he’d do. I don’t know him well, mind you. But we’ve talked a time or two. He was used to the sea, serving as he did on that island. Malta. He’d take a boat out of that harbor, just to see it from the sea and then sail back through. He said it was built by knights who knew what they were about, and even the Turks couldn’t take it by water.”

“I understand the fortifications are formidable,” Rutledge agreed. “Did you talk about anything else?”

“He said there were ruins there that were older than the Pyramids. I had a hard time believing it, but he said it was true. And I never knew him to be a liar.”

“Will you take me out today? If it isn’t safe, I won’t press. But I need to see for myself that there’s no one there.”

“There’ll be no one there now,” Perkins said darkly.

Rutledge waited.

After several minutes of silence had passed, Perkins nodded. “You’ll need rain gear, if you’re to stay dry.”

“Do you have any I could borrow?”

“You’re a fair bit taller than me, but my son’s things ought to fit. A little large, mind you, but they’ll keep you dry. Do you have Wellingtons, then?”

It was a small boat, her name boldly painted on the prow-Bella-the mast useless in such variable winds, but two men could just manage her, pulling out from the Mole against the drag of the current, then making for a point under the headland from which they could feel the tug of the current back to the shore.

Even from there they could see the raw spill of the landslip, its heavy soil flowing like a river to the water, taking with it clumps of grass, young trees, and what appeared to be a chimney sticking up at an odd angle among a scatter of bricks.

It was a hard run to get closer, and Rutledge was sweating heavily inside his rain gear by the time they got there. But the waves hitting them at the wrong angle left the bottom of the boat awash and his sleeves wet to the wrist, water spilling down his head and under his collar and reaching as far as his back as he twisted and turned for a better view and called instructions to Perkins.

In due course they were within good range of the clumped and riddled earth. It looked out of place reaching into the sea, as if it still belonged to the high reaches of land above and had lost its way. The eddies about it were muddy, sucking at this foreign bit of land as if hungry, then coming back for more, larger chunks sinking as he watched.

The cottage was a ruin, beams and walls only so much lumber now, without form or structure. A cabinet peeked from under an edge of roof, and a small tin washbasin was caught on a rake, banging like a cheap bell against the handle. A table leg floated out to them, and then was pushed forlornly back again. A lumpy pillow lay like a dead bird against part of a door, as if it had been caught in the storm and taken shelter there.

Only part of the chimney, surprisingly intact, spoke of what the debris had once been.

“Rotted wood to start with. It won’t last long out here,” Perkins told him, shouting over the noisy waves lashing at the coastline. “This is as near as I can go. Or we’ll be aground on what we can’t see. And there’s another squall on the horizon. Look there!”

Rutledge turned to see but calculated there was still time. “Is that ground firm enough for me to walk on? If it is, I need to go closer.”

“What for? You can’t tell floor from roof. And if there’s any man in there, he’s long since buried beneath whatever fell on top of him as the lot went over.”

It was true. It would take men digging with shovels to find Matthew Hamilton’s body in that morass. And even they couldn’t do it before the water took it away for good.

But he had to be sure. There would be doubts, uncertainties. No body to allow the police to prove Matthew Hamilton was dead. Or that murder had been done.

Clever barristers and clever doubts, carefully placed.

Unless his bones washed ashore somewhere and were found, then identified. They couldn’t wait for that.

Matthew Hamilton, victim and witness.

“Get me as close as you can, and hold her steady. I’ll give it a try.”

“Did living in London’s fogs turn your wits?” Perkins asked sharply. “I’m not about to risk my boat on a fool’s errand.”

“Look at the water, man. It’s clear just over there. If you can reach the foot of the cliff there, I can make it to that large rock, and then move across to firmer ground. Can you see where I’m pointing?”

Perkins growled deep in his throat, and Rutledge, startled at the similarity to the sound that Hamish made sometimes, turned quickly and almost swamped them.

“Here, you idiot, policeman or not, you’ll watch what you’re about,” Perkins told him harshly.

In the end, Rutledge got his way, at a price, and Perkins did what he could to hold the boat steady enough for him to reach the boulder and then claw himself up on the flat surface. It was slick underfoot, and he thought, I’ll never make it back to the boat.

Above him, the high rise of land loomed, and as he stepped across to the earth, he heard pebbles skittering down, like a warning that one false move could bring another twenty yards of solid ground down on his head, breaking up and burying him as it came crashing toward him.

But nothing happened, and he made the leap to the landslip, his feet sinking above the ankles in the soft, pliant earth. Laboring to bring one foot out and then another, he wallowed like a drunkard toward the first of the shards of lumber that littered the ground, many of the bits sticking straight out of the mud, others buried and only recognizable when his boots struck something solid underfoot.

It was a wild-goose chase, Hamish was telling him roundly. “And how ye’ll manage to clamber back into yon boat again, God alone kens!”

But he was here now, and the only thing to do was go forward. Casting a glance back at the squall line, he wondered if Perkins would abandon him if it came to a choice between the boat and the stubborn fool who had brought them out here.

He struggled on, searching with his eyes, his hands busy keeping his balance. The footing was so treacherous he found a length of door framing and tried to use it as a cane, only to find that it sank too deep and nearly had him stumbling in its wake.

Sticks of furniture, a rusted pot, a vase-miraculously in one piece, the lilacs on its surface a small bit of color in the shambles-lay among the ruins. As Perkins had predicted, Rutledge could barely tell what room or what part of the structure lay where, the whole smashed to nothing. Like an iceberg, the debris went deep, only a portion of it showing on the surface where he walked.

He rescued the small vase and tucked it in a coat pocket, intending to take it back to Perkins as a souvenir. Bending over invited disaster again, and he slipped and fell, swearing, against a protruding beam and part of the chimney corner. For an instant, he could feel the earth under his body shift, and he thought, This was not a very wise decision, with a fatalism born of long practice.

Hamish was after him, urging him back to the boat, telling him to take the warning seriously.