A Pale Horse Part 18

"No opportunity."

"If my mother hadn't taught me my manners, I'd wonder aloud what a man of your stripe is doing here at The Smith's Arms."

"It's convenient."

"To what?"

"To nowhere."

The man smiled. "I know when to stop. She taught me that as well."

"I came here to solve a riddle," Rutledge said. "And it's not likely to be solved as easily as I'd hoped."

"About the White Horse? There's a legend, you know. That on certain nights it comes down to the Smithy to be shod."

"Indeed."

"There's more than a few say they've seen it. But I reckon they were not as sober as they claimed to be. Are you here to keep an eye on us? The lorry drivers?"

Rutledge laughed. "Hardly that. Should I be?"

"A man gets an itch between his shoulder blades sometimes and looks around to see who might be watching."

"Watching for what? Surely you can't be smuggling this far inland?"

"Smuggling? No. The war put an end to that, as a matter of fact. s.h.i.+ps couldn't put in to a small cove and off-load goods there. Likely to find a submarine staring back at them as they up-anch.o.r.ed. Or a coastal warden coming to see what they were up to."

He finished his tea and prepared to go. "I'm off."

"Ever see anything strange here at the White Horse? On nights you or your mates were driving through?"

Will grinned. "Like seeing it come down to be shod?"

"No, more human agency than spectral."

He shook his head. "It's quiet through here, which is why some of us choose this way. Better time, with the roads so empty." He walked to the door, then paused. "I was told not long ago that a fair woman in a motorcar was stopped at the side of the road, and she was crying. Close by Wayland's Smithy. The driver drew up alongside her motorcar and asked if there was aught wrong. And she said no, she was fine. He drove on, but he told me later he'd seen that motorcar before, and it wasn't a woman driving then."

"Where had he seen it?"

"Here. Outside the inn."

"How long ago did this happen?"

The driver shrugged. "A fortnight? More or less."

"Interesting story."

"I think it must be true. He's not the sort given to lying. He said she didn't look like a wh.o.r.e. Who knows? Since the war, they're bolder, aren't they? Not enough men to go around, like."

And he was gone, his lorry roaring into life and rolling down the road, spray from the tires throwing up mud and muck like a brown bow wave.

Rutledge watched him out of sight.

Now he had a second report of a fair-haired woman in the vicinity of the Tomlin Cottages. Difficult to connect this one with the woman who had knocked at Parkinson's door. Still-it could mean that she'd come back to try again and encountered him along the road, where no one else saw the meeting. And the interview hadn't gone well.

Any query through Sergeant Gibson at the Yard about Parkinson's family would surely jangle tins on the wires that directly or indirectly reached Deloran. And then Deloran would have Rutledge back in London and on the carpet.

It was one thing to pursue a man who didn't exist. Quite another to look into the past of one who not only existed but was also safely dead.

What, then, were his choices?

Hamish said, "Return to London."

That made sense. He hadn't been able to contact Sergeant Gibson to see what had turned up about Henry Sh.o.r.eham. And there was still the nameless victim on Inspector Madsen's hands to be officially identified. Not to mention the mystery of why Partridge or Parkinson had died in Yorks.h.i.+re. The best place to draw these threads together was in London.

Hamish said, "A man could bribe a lorry driver to take away a body. It wouldna' be the first time sich a thing was done."

"If Partridge had been found by the road, I'd agree. But what lorry driver would risk carrying a dead man deep into Fountains Abbey's ruins, and setting him down by a cloister wall?"

"Ye ken, it would depend on how much the man was offered to take sich a risk."

And if that was the case, the driver had long since vanished into a new life.

"There has to be some trace. Somewhere."

He hadn't been aware he'd spoken aloud. Mrs. Smith stuck her head around the door and said, "More toast, sir?"

"Thanks, no. I'll be leaving in two hours. But first there's something I must do."

"I'll have the accounting ready for you when you come back."

"Thank you." He folded his serviette and set it beside his plate. Where to begin? Where to begin? That was always the policeman's dilemma. It could spoil chances as well as open doors. That was always the policeman's dilemma. It could spoil chances as well as open doors.

He went up to his room, packed his valise, and then left it on the bed.

The rain was heavier now, and he could feel it across his shoulders, through the wool of his coat. He thought of the old cliche about April showers. Last April he had hardly known who he was or where he was. Had he come this far in only a year? If it had rained at all last April, he couldn't remember it. At the clinic the days ran into one another, and the nights were torments.

The cries of other disturbed patients in the darkness, nothing to distract his churning mind, no routine to force him to shut down his memories, nothing between him and a fear so great he couldn't close his eyes. That was before he learned that Hamish couldn't follow him into sleep. And so he had fought sleep, he had paced the floor of his room until his feet were numb and his legs ached, and still he walked. Anything to stave off sleep. He'd even pinched his arms until they bled, to keep himself awake. And then, at dawn, he would fall into a stupor and sit in his chair staring at the wall, a sleep of sorts, but never deep enough to dream.

Night after night. And in the rooms around his, other men suffered as well, banging on their walls, crying out for something to stop the anguish-a true madhouse of fear that was worse than anything found in an asylum.

The doctors had had to keep him drugged to let him sleep, and if he could have found the powders the sisters brought him, he would have swallowed them all, to end it. Not a bad way to die, a way where dreams couldn't follow him.

He cranked the motorcar and got in, sitting there shaking. It had nothing to do with the rain.

Hamish said roughly, "Aye, that was the heart of it. You wanted to die. I wanted to live. And we neither of us got our wish."

"And so we're d.a.m.ned, both of us, because G.o.d got it wrong. I wish you had lived and I had died. I would have come to haunt you, and when you married your Fiona, I would have been the skeleton at the feast."

"No," Hamish said, his voice cold. "I would ha' forgotten you, and left you rotting in France."

12.

Rutledge wasn't sure how he had driven to the Tomlin Cottages. When his mind cleared, he was there, the motor still ticking over quietly and the White Horse washed clean in the rain.

He got out and walked to one cottage he hadn't called on yet. He knocked on the door and waited.

It was opened finally by a broad-shouldered man whose prematurely white hair was brushed back from a young face. It was hard to judge his age, but when he spoke, it was clear that he was of a cla.s.s that possessed Victorian manners.

"Good morning. Are you lost?"

Rutledge introduced himself. "I'd like to ask you a few questions," he went on. "Mainly about one of your neighbors, Mr. Partridge."

"Silly name," the man said. "I should think he dreamed it up. We're not a friendly community, you see. I've often wondered how many of us use the name we were born with. Come in out of the rain, man."

He stepped aside and allowed Rutledge to enter the main room of the cottage. It was a parlor, with a Georgian desk in one corner and a tall shelf of books along the inner wall.

"Singleton is the name," he continued. "Tell me why you've been looking for Partridge."

"You know he was away, then?" Rutledge asked, taking the chair offered him. "His friends have been anxious about him."

"Were they indeed? I shouldn't have thought he had many friends. No one ever comes to call." He smiled, the austerity of his face relaxing. "I can see the horse from my desk, and his cottage as well. We have very little to occupy us, you see, and while none of us is anxious to have his own business bruited about, we are curious about our neighbors to the point of nosiness."

"There was, I understand, a young woman who came to his door."

"Yes, I remember. But she wasn't admitted, and I found myself thinking that she had stopped to ask directions. She never came again, you see."

It was a possibility that Rutledge hadn't considered.

In the pause, Singleton asked, "In the war, were you?"

"France," Rutledge answered.

"Then you were lucky to survive. I salute you. It was quite different in my war. Skirmishes in the Empire mostly, though some of them turned nasty of course. For the most part we played polo, set a good example, and dined rather well."

"India?"

"For the last ten years. I spent some time at the Khyber Pa.s.s, for my sins. The tribesmen were a wretched lot, troublesome in the extreme, and knew the country far better than we did. Keeping them bottled up was a b.l.o.o.d.y business, any way you looked at it."

Rutledge gestured to the cottage. "This is not the England you fought for."

It was a statement.

Singleton shook his head. "Sadly, no. It's far from that. We learn to cope, you know, it's what we're trained to do. I'm writing about my experiences. Not for publication, you understand, but for my own satisfaction. We're too busy living to fully understand our lives, you see. Where we came from, where we were going. What went wrong. It's a way of making sense of the past." As if he'd said enough about himself, he changed the subject. "Is there anything else I can tell you about Partridge? We spoke, the usual plat.i.tudes-'good morning, lovely weather we're having, I see your hollyhocks were knocked about by the wind last night, yes, a pity isn't it, cold enough to be thinking about a fire again, heavy mist this morning, wasn't it.' Nothing of consequence."

"Was he interested in the chalk horse on the hill?"

"Strange that you should ask that. I sometimes saw him standing in front of his door, staring up at it at odd times of the day. Or by those trees just down the lane, where he could see the beast at night. It has an ambient glow, you know. Starlight, I suppose. I'm sure most of us have noticed that. Slater, the young smith, is fascinated by it as well. I expect we are all aware of the horse in one way or another, living here. But some more than others."

"I'm told Partridge left a time or two, for several days. Did you see him leave? Or return?"

"I don't think he wanted us to know when he went away. The chap in Number Nine takes care of the cat when it comes to him for food, but there's no formal announcement about leaving. He's there and he's not there."

"Any idea where he might have gone on these occasions?"

"Good Lord, no. We don't pry. Not in that way. If it can't be seen at a distance, then we leave it alone."

"That makes for good neighbors," Rutledge said dryly.

"Actually it doesn't. One of us could die here and no one would wonder, until the smell reached him. Have you spoken to the man in Number Four? He seems to spend an inordinate amount of time studying Partridge's cottage. I've seen him at his window, using field gla.s.ses."

Number 4 was Brady's cottage. Deloran's man.

"No, I haven't. I've just stopped at the cottages closest to Partridge's."

"Yes, we've all seen you coming round. I had wondered when it would be my turn."

Rutledge smiled. "I've called on a few of the residents, yes. Quincy, Slater, Mrs. Cathcart, Willingham-"

"He gave you short shrift, didn't he? I think I've spoken to him fewer times than I spoke to Partridge."

"-and there's Brady. Who are the other two?"

"There's Miller in Number Seven, just up from Mrs. Cathcart. He's a curmudgeon by nature and we leave him alone. I'd go to anyone else before him if I needed help. And the last of our happy little family is Allen. My neighbor in Number Six. He would have made our dear patroness proud. I'm told he's dying of tuberculosis. Sometimes of a summer's evening, one can hear him cough. Not precisely leprosy, but a wasting disease, nonetheless."

"I appreciate your time, Mr. Singleton," Rutledge said, rising. "And I'll be on my way. I have business to attend to in London. But I expect to be back before long. If you see anyone at Mr. Partridge's door, make a note of it."

"I shall, if the occasion arises." Singleton saw Rutledge to the door and added, "I hope you conclude your business with us shortly. We've all secrets here, and none of us enjoys the attention of strangers."

"I'll bear that in mind," Rutledge replied, and before he was five paces down the path, the door behind him was quietly closed.

Hamish said, "We're no' what you'd call sociable in the Highlands, but we're no' sae unfriendly as this lot."

"As he said, they have secrets. Not necessarily murder, but to them just as important."

"Aye. Important enough to kill for?"

It was a thought that had already occurred to Rutledge, sitting in Singleton's tidy parlor.

But how would any of these eight householders manage to take a body to Yorks.h.i.+re?

"Partridge has a motorcar."