A Pale Horse Part 27

"Well, then, he's in h.e.l.l, where he deserves to be. Go look for him there." And she shut the door with some force.

He stood there, on the tiny porch, and waited, thinking that she might be curious enough to want to know more.

But apparently she had meant what she said, and after a moment, he went back to the motorcar.

He had just reached for the crank when he thought he heard raised voices from the house. Only for an instant, and even then he wasn't certain whether Miss Parkinson was arguing with someone or venting her own anger-or her grief.

17.

Rutledge found a telephone in a small hotel along the road back to Uffington, and put in a call to the Yard. Gibson couldn't be found right away, and it was a good quarter of an hour before the telephone rang and Gibson was on the line.

Rutledge gave him a list of names and asked him to learn what he could about each.

Gibson said, "It will take a while."

"I've got all the time in the world," Rutledge said with irony and told the sergeant when he expected to call the Yard again.

He ate his lunch at the hotel, and then traveled back to The Smith's Arms. There he found Smith eager to hear what had transpired at the cottages.

Rutledge said only, "Inspector Hill is dealing with it. Willingham is dead, that's all I can tell you."

"Willingham?" Smith seemed surprised. "I thought perhaps you'd found Mr. Partridge."

Rutledge let it go. But Smith was starved for information and said, "But how did he die? His heart, was it?"

"You must ask Inspector Hill."

"Pshaw, his like never show up here, at the Arms. I'll ask Andrew, when he comes for a pint. Care for a late lunch, Mr. Rutledge?"

Rutledge refused, thanking him, and went up to his room. Taking out paper and pen, he sat down and wrote an account of what he'd seen and done that morning at the Willingham cottage, signed it, and set it aside.

After that he went to stand by the window, looking out across the yard and the road, watching the wind dancing through the high gra.s.s there.

There was a letter, only just begun, that he'd found in the basket beside Parkinson's desk.

"My dear" was as far as he'd got before crumpling it up.

Had that been written to his daughter? Apologizing for whatever he'd done to make her hate him with such venom? Trying in some small way to make amends for the loss of her mother? Or asking her forgiveness for whatever role she felt he'd played in his wife's death?

And yet Parkinson had died as his wife had died, using gas. That would seem a bitter irony to Rebecca Parkinson, when she learned what had become of her father.

"Unless," Hamish pointed out, "the la.s.s herself murdered him."

That had to be taken into account as well.

Except that the body had been found in Yorks.h.i.+re...

Hamish said, "'Ware!"

And Rutledge turned to see Andrew Slater walking up the road toward The Smith's Arms.

Minutes later, Slater was mounting the stairs.

Rutledge had the door open, ready for him.

"Why did you leave?" the smith asked, aggrieved. "You left us to the mercy of Inspector Hill. He's half convinced that I killed Willingham. I ask you, why would I come and tell you I'd heard a cry, if I'd done the deed myself? It doesn't make any sense to me."

"Hill is doing his duty. And he'll begin by taking a long hard look at the dead man's neighbors. If you've done nothing wrong, if your conscience is clear, you'll see that's true."

"Yes, well," the smith said, gingerly lowering himself down in Rutledge's chair. It groaned under his weight. "If I survive, I'll applaud myself for my clear conscience."

"Who do you think might have wanted Willingham dead?" Rutledge had promised Inspector Hill to stay out of the case, but Slater had come to him.

"G.o.d knows. We didn't much care for him, and if we didn't, who did? He'd never spoken of a family. Who's to mourn him, then?"

"A good question," Rutledge answered.

"I can tell you Mrs. Cathcart is taking it hard. And so is Mr. Allen. Death came too close last night for his comfort."

"And the others?"

"Miller doesn't give a d.a.m.n about any of it. If we all dropped dead in our shoes, he'd probably be pleased. Mr. Brady is trying to make himself very inconspicuous. He was drunk as a lord before he went to bed last night, and I doubt he'd have heard the angels' chorus after that. But he doesn't want it known to the world."

"Did Mr. Partridge have better luck with Willingham? Did they talk, do you think?"

Slater shook his head. "Where's a beginning for friends.h.i.+p? I expect I spoke with more of my neighbors than anyone else. I'm too thick to notice when I'm being ignored. Besides, I'm lonely sometimes."

"No one ever came to call on Willingham?"

"If they did, I never saw them. Mrs. Cathcart is afraid someone might visit her. That's sad." He looked down at his large hands, lying idle on his knees. "I wish I hadn't grown so. But there's nothing I can do about it. Just as she can't help being afraid. And I don't know if Quincy is his first name or his last. I never feel right, calling him 'Quincy.' Mr. Allen is dying, and there's no one to comfort him. I expect he doesn't want to be comforted. There's something stoic in that. Mr. Partridge had demons, and didn't know how to rid himself of them. And Singleton wants to be a soldier still. You have only to look at his carriage and how tidy he is. Hair clipped short, clothes immaculate. Mr. Brady is tormented too, because this isn't where he most wants to be. And Mr. Miller is the strangest of the lot, because I think he wants to be here."

It was an intriguing summation of the inhabitants of the leper cottages. Sometimes, Rutledge thought, a simple man saw more directly into the heart than one who was burdened with the sophistication of social behavior.

Slater got to his feet. "You won't let them arrest me, will you? I don't want to be taken into Uffington and put in a cell, with everyone staring at me. I think I'd go mad, locked up, and tell the police anything just to be let go. Even lies."

He went back down the stairs heavily, like a man carrying an enormous burden. Outside he turned to the Smithy, not back the way he'd come. It was odd how he seemed to find comfort and even acceptance there.

Slater hadn't been gone five minutes when Hill came looking for Rutledge.

He said, seeing the door open into Rutledge's room, "I'd like to have your statement now, if you please."

Rutledge turned to the desk and picked it up. "It's ready. I wanted to put it on paper while my memory of events was still sharp."

Hill took it and scanned it. "Fair enough. Any thoughts on who might have done this murder?"

"I leave that to you. But I will say, if I were in your shoes I'd be no closer to an answer."

"You were right, they're a stubborn lot. Won't come to the door, won't say more than yes or no when they do, and no one has seen anything. Granted, it was in the middle of the night, but I have the feeling that not much happens in those cottages that the rest of them don't know. I could feel the window curtains twitching like a palsy, eyes watching every move I make. Fairly gave me the w.i.l.l.i.e.s, I can tell you. But if I had to pick one of that lot, it would either be the smith or the ex-soldier. Did you know he'd been cas.h.i.+ered from his regiment for dereliction of duty? Some years ago. That's the story I was given, anyway."

"By whom?"

"One of my men had seen him about and heard something of the sort. I'll look into it, find out if there's any truth in it. As far as I can tell, there's nothing missing from the dead man's cottage. So I have to rule out housebreaking. Although that might have been the original plan, come to think of it."

"Willingham's wrist was slashed," Rutledge said neutrally.

"Yes, probably while fighting off his killer. You saw for yourself how the room was wrecked."

"You don't think someone was trying to make the death appear to be a suicide?"

"No, no. Too preposterous. I talked to the man who calls himself Quincy. Seems a levelheaded sort. He thinks this murder is connected with Partridge's disappearance. He predicted they'd all be killed in their beds if I'm not quick."

"Willingham by all accounts was an unpleasant man who had probably made himself a pariah long before he came to the Tomlin Cottages. His murderer could have come from his past."

"I'd considered that too, and will be looking into it." He'd been standing leaning against the doorframe, nonchalant as if Rutledge's opinion carried no weight with him. He straightened, preparing to go.

But Hamish believed his coming to the inn was a fis.h.i.+ng expedition.

Rutledge tended to agree with that summation.

"You'll be returning to the Yard?" Hill asked from the head of the stairs. "I'm of the opinion your man Partridge is dead. That's Mr. Brady's view as well."

"I expect he may be right," Rutledge answered.

"Well, at least I have a body to be going on with. That's more than you can say-so far."

He turned and ran lightly down the stairs.

Rutledge watched Hill leave the inn and walk briskly back the way he'd come.

In the afternoon, he drove back to Pockets, to speak again to Rebecca Parkinson.

She was there, in the house. He could sense it. But she refused to answer his knock.

He tried to sense how she had responded to it-whether she was stock-still, waiting for him to go away, or hiding behind the stairs, where she couldn't be seen. Or lying on her bed, looking at the ceiling, telling herself that she didn't care.

And he found himself wondering if Meredith Channing, if she were standing next to him under the overhang of thatch, would have been able to tell him if he was right.

Unwilling to leave, Rutledge waited in his motorcar for over an hour outside the house. But it was a stalemate. He couldn't go in, and she couldn't come out.

Finally he gave up and drove away. The house at Partridge Fields drew him, and he went there to sit in the gardens for a time. This time the house felt empty, and he knew there was no one inside. He was about to leave when a motorcar turned in the gates and followed the drive round to the kitchen yard.

He realized it must be Rebecca Parkinson, and he walked swiftly toward the shrubbery, to catch her before she had gone inside.

But she must have seen him, or perhaps glimpsed his vehicle where he'd left it, behind a shed. She gunned the engine, swung the vehicle in a circle to turn it, tires spewing gravel and earth as they bit for a grip, and then sped away down the drive before he could stop her.

He stood there, winded from das.h.i.+ng after the motorcar, and swore.

It was useless, following her back to Pockets. By the time he retrieved his own motorcar and started after her, she would have a head start, enough to be safely inside again before he could get there.

But he was angry enough to try, and drove after her anyway, flying down the lane in her wake.

When he got to Pockets, there was no sign of the car or of Rebecca.

He realized that she must have expected him to follow her and instead of going directly home, as he'd antic.i.p.ated, she had foxed him again and disappeared.

Rutledge drove back to Berks.h.i.+re, his mood dark, and found the inn full of drivers stopping for dinner or the night.

Avoiding them, he went directly to his room. Tomorrow he would call Gibson again and see what, if any, information he'd come up with.

In the event, it was very little. Although Hill had been right about Singleton. He'd been cas.h.i.+ered from his regiment but not for dereliction of duty. He had lost his temper once too often, and been asked to resign after he'd struck a fellow officer.

The reason for the argument wasn't clear, but Gibson believed it was the excuse Singleton's commanding officer had been looking for.

Mrs. Cathcart's nasty divorce had been as bad or worse than she'd told Rutledge. Her husband, in Gibson's view, had set out to make her life wretched, and succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. After the divorce, he'd cut her off without a penny, and she had had to sc.r.a.pe a living as best she could. The rent at the cottages was cheap enough, and she had inherited just enough from an aunt to live there frugally.

Allen, who in fact was dying, had gone off like a wounded animal to spend his last days away from friends and family. The general belief was that he'd wanted nothing to do with surgery or cures, and expected to die within the first six months. He hadn't been that fortunate.

There was no information on the man who called himself Quincy, and none on Miller or Brady. Gibson suggested that Brady was using a name other than his own, and there were too many Millers to be sure which one was living in the shadow of the pale horse. And with only one name to go on, Quincy hadn't turned up in the files or memories of the policemen Gibson had spoken to. Rutledge found himself thinking that perhaps Quincy had spoken the truth, that he was a remittance man back in England and careful to conceal that fact.

Willingham had a rather sordid past, as it happened. He had been involved in dubious schemes designed to leave the investor poorer and himself richer. Skirting the law carefully, he had managed to avoid trouble, but in the end, bitter and running out of money, he'd come to a place where he felt safe from persecution as well as prosecution. Although a few of his former clients had threatened to sue him over the years, the general consensus had been that in doing so they would reveal their own avarice and their willingness to bend the rules to their own advantage. Still, more than one had voiced physical threats.

"He's been there for more than ten years, and the taste for revenge must have grown cold by now," Gibson concluded. "But then you never know."

"This didn't appear to be a case of revenge. As far as I can tell, the intent was to make his death appear to be a suicide. Not much satisfaction there."

"None," Gibson agreed. "On the other hand, it would confuse the police."

Rutledge thanked Gibson and put up the receiver. On his way back to the inn from Uffington, he wondered at what point Willingham's death would bring attention round to Parkinson's empty cottage. Until it did, he would leave Hill to it.

He stayed away from the cottages, but by nightfall he was restless. He could feel the tension building, and Hamish, in his mind, was a bleak shadow that threatened to break through his guard.

He walked to Wayland's Smithy, back again to the inn, and from the road watched the moon rise. After a time he strolled on toward the White Horse, revealing itself as he neared it, and felt the tug of its spell. The graceful gallop was marvelous, and he thought about the hand that had created it, guiding the men who dug the sod from the chalk with antler spades until its dimensions were revealed. What must it have felt like to see it complete for the first time, s.h.i.+mmering in the moonlight, magic in its own way?

He was suddenly distracted by something he could sense but not clearly see. Surely there was someone at the foot of the horse? And instead of looking up, whoever it was had his back to the horse.

Rutledge stood very still, letting all his faculties tell him what was there.

Hamish said, his voice soft in Rutledge's ear, "Whoever it is, it isna' stirring. Else I'd hear it."

Rutledge was thrown back to the trenches, and scanning No Man's Land in the dark for any activity. Scanning until his eyes ached, and he had to rub them with his fingers before opening them again. His men's lives had depended on his alertness, his ability to see a sniper crawling to a vantage point, or men changing the watch along the line of trenches opposite, sometimes even parties going out to look for their wounded. Once or twice he'd caught the faint sounds of fresh men settling at the machine gun far across the pitted landscape. Hamish had been better than any of them at the game, his ears attuned to sounds most couldn't hear.

The slightest movement caught Rutledge's attention, dragging him back to the figure. No sound, just a minute change in position as if someone had been standing there too long and was beginning to feel stiff or chilled in the night air.