A Pale Horse Part 28

He waited, slowly dropping until he was squatting and no longer a silhouette against the sky.

There it was again. A figure in black. He couldn't tell if it was male or female. Only that it was as quiet as a carving, its shape altered by arms wrapped around its body, giving it a bulkier outline.

In the day of the White Horse, he'd have believed in ghosts or totems of a clan, he told himself. But this was human, this figure, and tiring.

After a bit, it seemed to lengthen, as if it too had been squatting or bent over, peering toward the cottages.

And then it began to move, away from Rutledge, back to the far side of the horse, and toward a clump of trees that grew across the road. He rose slowly to his feet, and followed in its wake.

He was closer now, and he'd been right. The figure was bent over, as if in pain, and its arms were wrapped tightly around its body.

Hamish said, "Yon motorcar."

Indeed there was one, left in the dark shadows cast by the trees.

A sound drifted back to him, human and grieving. A sob, he thought, that rose in spite of intense self-control and for an instant broke free before being smothered again.

He was closer still, the figure never turning to look back, never dreaming that someone followed it.

It reached the motorcar and leaned against a wing, as if struggling with some emotion, then it went forward to the grill and reached for the crank.

As the engine fired, Rutledge broke from the side of the hill and raced forward, catching the figure just as it turned toward the driver's door.

It fought, with tooth and nail and shoe, but he was stronger, saying over the sound of the engine, "I'm not going to harm you. I'll let you go, if you don't cry out. Neither one of us wants to be heard over there at the cottages."

There was a stillness, and then a nod. He stepped back, ready to move again if it was a trick.

He knew who his prisoner was. A woman. Rebecca Parkinson. And yet what he found almost incomprehensible was the pain he'd sensed in someone who had clearly hated her father and reveled in his death.

"What do you want?" The voice was husky in the darkness. "Who are you?" And there was fear in that question as well.

"My name is Rutledge, Miss Parkinson. You know me. We talked at your home."

"You're lying."

"No, truly, I was at Pockets-"

She threw her head back, and said, "I don't live at Pockets."

So the housekeeper was right about children. Here was the sister to Rebecca.

"I'm sorry. If you aren't Rebecca, what's your given name, Miss Parkinson."

"It's Sarah." Grudgingly spoken, he noted.

"Where do you live?"

"Near Porton Down. In one of the old cottages. What possessed you to attack me in that outrageous way?"

"I'm from Scotland Yard. I've been trying to speak to your sister, and she's done her best to avoid me. It's about your father."

She was still for an instant, and then she said, "My father's dead. At least to me he is, as he has been for the past two years."

"Yet you come here, to where he lived." He hazarded a guess. "And someone saw you here once before, knocking at his door. Then sometime later, sitting in what must have been this motorcar, alone and crying."

She appeared to be shaken by his knowledge of her movements. "Have you been watching me?" she demanded. "What is this? I don't understand why the Yard would take any interest in my father."

"He hasn't been seen for some time. We think he's dead, and that he may have been murdered."

He could hear the quick drawn breath, as the shock of his words. .h.i.t her.

"I don't believe you."

"Nevertheless. His body has been found in Yorks.h.i.+re."

She broke down then, turning away from him and burying her face in her hands. He let her cry, standing patiently behind her until she was calmer.

"I hated him," she said after a time.

"I think you must have loved him as well."

"How could I, after what he'd done to my mother? She killed herself, no matter how hard they tried to put a better face on it. She killed herself! She killed herself! Do you know what it is to come home from a party and find the police in your house, and everything at sixes and sevens, and then you're asked to look at your mother's dead face and tell the police that you recognize her? Rebecca and I said good-bye to her, and she was smiling, she was Do you know what it is to come home from a party and find the police in your house, and everything at sixes and sevens, and then you're asked to look at your mother's dead face and tell the police that you recognize her? Rebecca and I said good-bye to her, and she was smiling, she was smiling, smiling, and she insisted on kissing us, for luck she said. And we went blithely away, waving to her, looking forward to the party, and it never struck us, either of us, that she was different somehow. That perhaps she was saying good-bye in a very different way." and she insisted on kissing us, for luck she said. And we went blithely away, waving to her, looking forward to the party, and it never struck us, either of us, that she was different somehow. That perhaps she was saying good-bye in a very different way."

He said, "Where was your father when she died? At the house?"

"No, no, he was at the laboratory. He was always in the laboratory, looking for a way to stabilize a gas so that it could be used in a sh.e.l.l or trying to make it more potent, longer lasting, more dependable in delivery. Everyone thought he was the cleverest man, a practical scientist. He not only could devise gases, he could take them to the battlefield. I heard them say so once, when they didn't know I was there in the cottage he sometimes used, and they were waiting for him to arrive. Practical, Practical, as if this horrid way of maiming and killing soldiers was something to be studied for the most economical or useful way of doing murder." as if this horrid way of maiming and killing soldiers was something to be studied for the most economical or useful way of doing murder."

"The Germans used it first."

"What does it matter? It was inhumane. Oh, I'm sick sick of this business. If you have nothing more to say to me, I'm going home." of this business. If you have nothing more to say to me, I'm going home."

"You haven't told me why you came here to see your father. Why you were standing there on the hill tonight. If you hate him so much, why do you torment yourself like this?"

"I don't know," she said wearily. "I remember sometimes the man who set me on his shoulders to see the Queen's carriage pa.s.s during Victoria's Jubilee. Or held me on my first pony, until I stopped being afraid of falling off and could take the reins myself. Or bringing me chocolates on my birthday when I was twelve, and telling me they had come all the way from Belgium. Little things that had nothing to do with ga.s.sing soldiers or killing the cows by accident, or spending more and more time in his laboratory, lost in the things he could create there."

She caught her breath on a sob, then cleared her throat.

"There was something new he was working on, some terrible new possibility, that's why he wasn't there with us that night. Mother died, and he walked away from us and came to live here. Alone. I told myself it was recognizing what he'd done to her and to us. But later, I thought perhaps he was afraid to go back because in her will she'd asked that her ashes be scattered in the gardens under their bedroom windows."

18.

If she had intended to shock him, Sarah Parkinson succeeded.

Rutledge had walked in those gardens, admiring them. He had seen how carefully they were maintained, and never guessed that they were, in effect, Mrs. Parkinson's memorial.

He said, "Is that why neither you nor your sister live at Partridge Fields?"

"Would you?" she demanded. "If every time you looked out at the gardens, you felt her presence? I thought it might be comforting, somehow, but it isn't. She's a restless, unhappy ghost, and we're afraid of her."

"Yet you or your sister-or both of you-keep the gardens the way they must have been when she was alive."

He could see her bite her lip. "I hate it. She's there, scattered about the beds, and we're caught up in her revenge. If we let the gardens go to seed, if they're overgrown and ugly, we're desecrating her grave. If we dig and plant and weed, we're touching her ashes. It's as if the flowers draw their strength from her bones and morbidly flourish. My father left it to us to decide what to do about the grounds. And it was the cruelest thing he did."

She walked to the door of the motorcar. "I'm tired, I want to go home. I've talked too much as it is."

"You must decide, between you, who will come to Yorks.h.i.+re with me and bring your father's body back to Wilts.h.i.+re."

"No. I'll have no part in any such thing. Let him stay where he is, unloved and unwanted."

She hadn't asked why her father had gone to Yorks.h.i.+re, or had died there.

Hamish said, "It would ha' been easy for them to kill him. If he was lured to the house."

Were either of the women capable of murder? He rather thought that Rebecca Parkinson was. Her hatred was still white-hot and ran deep. There was grief mixed into Sarah's emotions. But she would surely have supported her sister after Parkinson had been killed. The only other choice would have been to refuse, then see Rebecca caught, convicted, and hanged.

But if the sisters had killed their father, why do it in Yorks.h.i.+re?

Or had he got away the first time they'd tried, and they had gone after him?

A chilling thought.

The question was, how was he going to go about proving it?

"Did your father have enemies, anyone who would have liked to see him dead?" It was the standard question to put to survivors.

"Not that I know of. Although there was one man in London whom my father didn't trust. He told my mother once that he'd been invited to bring us up to London to dine with this man, and my father didn't want us to go. I only remember because Becky and I were so disappointed. But my father said that London was quite dull because of the war, and it wouldn't have been as exciting as we'd thought."

"What was this man's name?" Rutledge asked, although he had a very good idea.

"I don't think I ever heard it. My father referred to him as the Dreadnought. But that was the name of a s.h.i.+p, wasn't it?"

Deloran?

In the end he let Sarah Parkinson go, after asking how to find her if he needed her to answer more questions. He had no grounds on which to keep her.

But then as she put the motorcar in gear, Rutledge put a hand on her door. "There's been a murder in the cottages. A man called Willingham. Did he know your father, by any chance?"

"A murder? How dreadful." She shook her head. "I don't think my father would have come here to live if he had known any of his neighbors. He was running away. From the house, from Mother's ghost, from us-from the army. Possibly even from himself. Who knows? For that matter, who cares? It was selfish, whatever his excuse was."

Watching her motorcar out of sight, Rutledge found himself pitying the unwanted, still nameless body in Yorks.h.i.+re.

Hamish said, "He made his own grave whilst he was still living."

And it was true, in many ways. But in the end, Rebecca and Sarah Parkinson would have no choice but to bring their father home.

If Mrs. Parkinson still haunted the house where she'd died, Parkinson would be satisfied to lie in the churchyard, far from the flower beds at Partridge Fields. But which name would be engraved on the stone over him?

If Rebecca and Sarah Parkinson denied that he was their father, Deloran would be only too pleased to add his own statement that the murder victim was an unknown unhappy man named Partridge, dead at the hands of person or persons unknown. And in a year or two all of this would be forgotten.

Brady might be brought in to testify, and disclaim any knowledge of an a.s.signment to watch a scientist who had resigned prematurely from Porton Down. He was merely an ex-soldier, down on his luck and trying to sober up.

And Rutledge would be left looking a fool.

He walked back to the inn and retrieved his motorcar. It was late to be driving to Partridge Fields, but the roads were fairly empty and he made good time, keeping awake through sheer physical effort by the time he was twenty miles away.

He opened the gates and drove through them, leaving the car near the shed.

The house was dark, the gardens black in the moonlight, the brash colors of spring disguised as varying shades of gray.

The kitchen door, as he'd thought, was unlocked.

This was the country. No one came to rob the house, there was no need to lock doors.

Carrying his torch, he walked through the kitchen quarters and then through the formal rooms of the house.

The glancing beam of his torch illumined the brilliant colors of draperies and carpets and upholstery, the gold filigree around a mirror, the rich tones of polished walnut and mahogany, the s.h.i.+mmer of silk wallpaper and cut gla.s.s in the chandeliers.

Someone had had money. Mrs. Parkinson's dowry? Parkinson's wages from the government? A family inheritance? Enough at least for a comfortable life and a well-appointed home.

He moved quietly in the silent house, and avoided windows. Portraits watched him as he pa.s.sed, and once a mouse scurried out of the wainscoting and across the floor, squeaking as it dived into the cold hearth.

Like the gardens, the house was meticulously maintained.

Even without Hamish's harsh reminder, Rutledge was well aware that he had no authority to open doors, look in drawers, and investigate the contents of desks, but he rather thought he would find nothing, even if he did.

Even so, he saw no trace of Parkinson here, although there were several photographs of a fair woman with two fair and pretty daughters set in silver frames. Looking at them, he could almost see the girls grow from room to room as the array of photographs marked the changes of years.

He studied Mrs. Parkinson's likeness. She was slim, very pretty, and her eyes reminded him of a doe, sensitive and vulnerable. She should have married a country squire, he thought, not a man whose training in chemistry had taken a far different turn from anything either of them could foresee.

Rutledge broke his own rule only once, looking in the wardrobe in what appeared to be the master bedroom. As he'd expected, it held only a woman's clothing, as if Parkinson had taken everything of his with him, leaving nothing behind because he never intended to come home again.

And reciprocally, his daughters had banned him from the house by carrying out their mother's wishes. He was shut out, lock, stock, and photographs. There were none that included him. Was that why the one on his desk was so precious to him?

"Taken the day we climbed the white horse..."

Rutledge inspected the lamps in the master bedroom, and turned the key gently, listening to the soft hiss of gas wafting into the room before shutting it off again. It would be a simple matter to close the doors and windows and lie there in bed, waiting to fall asleep and die. But then Mrs. Parkinson had been ready to die.

Had Parkinson been asked to come here for a reconciliation, and then drugged enough to keep him from waking up when someone slipped in, turned on the gas, and laid towels outside the doors? Retribution without pity, but without having to watch a father die.

Hamish said, "Aye, but no' in this room, and no' in this house. He wouldna' sleep here."

Which might explain why the body had been discovered in Yorks.h.i.+re; but even if Parkinson had somehow been lured there, where was the gas jet that killed him? Even two young women would have a problem dragging a dead man out of a hotel without being noticed.