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 grass 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 lass herself murdered him."
That had to be taken into account as well.
Except that the body had been found in Yorkshire…
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 Willing- ham. 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 Rut- ledge'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?" Rut- ledge had promised Inspector Hill to stay out of the case, but Slater had come to him.
"God 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 damn 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 friendship? 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 willies, 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 cashiered 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 fishing 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 dashing 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 anticipated, she had foxed him again and disappeared.
Rutledge drove back to Berkshire, 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 cashiered 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 scrape 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, shimmering 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.
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 hit her.
"I don't believe you."
"Nevertheless. His body has been found in Yorkshire."
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! 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, 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 shell 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, 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 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 pass 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 gassing 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." i8 I f she had intended to shock him, Sarah Parkinson succeeded. JL 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 Yorkshire with me and bring your father's body back to Wiltshire."
"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 Yorkshire, 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 Yorkshire?
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 ship, 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 Will- ingham. 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 Yorkshire.
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 assignment 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 shimmer of silk wallpaper and cut glass 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 passed, 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 Yorkshire; 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.
Hamish said, "Ye ken, it may ha' been one of Deloran's men who lured him to where he was killed."
Counting on the fact that the newspapers wouldn't concern themselves with a nobody's unfortunate death? Then why dress the body in mask and cloak, attracting attention to it?
Hard to believe that Deloran would stoop to murder, but then Rutledge was still in the dark about why precisely the man cared what happened to either Gaylord Partridge or Gerald Parkinson. It would be easier, surely, to discredit him than to murder him.
Aloud Rutledge said, "Then why send the Yard here, when Parkinson went missing? Drawing attention to him. Why not leave well enough alone?"
"To wash his hands. There's the watcher. He could ha' sworn that nobody knew where Partridge had gone, just as nobody kenned where he'd vanished before."
"Yes, well, I think tomorrow it's time to speak to Mr. Brady. Drunk or sober."
Keeping his torch from striking the glass, he went to the window and looked down on the dark gardens. Clouds were moving across the face of the moon as it set, and he could almost imagine something out there as the shadows shifted. Very likely the horse fountain, showing itself in ghostly white fragments as the shrubs moved in the wind. But add a little guilt to that, and he could understand how the family must have felt about this room and the gardens.
In the passage leading to the stairs, Rutledge paused to consider the nature of the silence around him. The ashes in the garden must have been the last straw, not the first. He had a strong feeling that this family had broken apart long before Mrs. Parkinson's suicide. What had really brought her to the brink of despair? It must have gone far beyond her belief that her husband was squandering his gifts and talents on work that he loved and she hated.
He reached the kitchen, made certain that he'd not tracked mud from the yard onto the stone flags by the door, and left the house exactly as he'd found it. Standing for a moment in the night's darkness until his eyes adjusted, he thought he heard an owl call from the trees beyond. Then he walked to the motorcar without looking back.
Hamish remarked, "It wasna' wise to come here."
"It could do no harm," Rutledge answered, going down the drive without his headlamps, and turning the bonnet toward Berkshire.
"Aye, so ye may think now. And later live to regret it."
In fact, Hamish was right. Rutledge was eating a late breakfast at
The Smith's Arms when the door opened and Rebecca Parkinson strode in.
"What the devil did you think you were doing," she asked harshly, "when you went to my mother's house in the night?"
Rutledge, caught off guard, said, "If there are no servants in the house to protect it, if doors are left unlocked, anyone can walk in. How many times did your father go back to that house without your knowledge? Or for that matter, the man he called Dreadnought?"
She opened her mouth to say something, and then shut it smartly. After a moment she asked, "What could you possibly know about Dreadnought?"
"His real name."
That took her aback. In the silence that followed, she tried to absorb the implications of what he'd said.
"My father disliked him intensely. It was personal and professional. He told me once that the name suited the man-he feared nothing and he used people for his own ends. If you've been sent here by Dreadnought, I'm not surprised that you would stoop to anything."
"I told you, I'm from Scotland Yard. But I have met the man. Now, why should you think that someone had been in the house at Partridge Fields? "
Returning to the grievance that had brought her here, she said, "The gardener at one of the houses down the road was coming home late last night from a wedding, and he saw lights moving from room to room. He's known my family for ages, my mother and he often exchanged plants. He came to find me this morning, to tell me that something was wrong. Something about the lights troubled him, and he was afraid to investigate. He's an old man and he may have thought it was my mother's spirit. But I knew better. It wasn't my mother's poor ghost, it was you. When you couldn't badger me, you went to the house on your own, thinking no one would learn of it."
He had been careful not to show a light. And he remembered the flicker of movement he imagined he'd seen in the shadows near the horse fountain. Had someone else been there after he left? Deloran might have had reasons of his own for taking the risk of searching the empty house. If so, what was he looking for?
"He wouldna' go himself, ye ken," Hamish remarked. "His hands are clean."
Rutledge said to Miss Parkinson, "But you yourself couldn't see evidence of someone there?"
"Of course not. You're a London policeman, you aren't going to leave muddy footprints in the passages. What I want to know is what you took away?"
"If I was there, it was without any legal right to take anything from the house."
"I should have known you wouldn't have the decency to tell me the truth."
Rutledge smiled faintly. "Yes, all right, I was there. But I touched nothing. I wanted to see what drove your father away from his home-why he chose to live where he did. I was hoping that if I could understand that, I could explain some of the other things I don't understand. Please, sit down, and let Mrs. Smith bring you a cup of tea. I have a few questions to ask you and we might as well get them over with."
She was still angry. "You went into my mother's room. Where she died. Why should I want to talk to you? I wouldn't give you that satisfaction."
When she had first confronted him, he'd noted how much like her mother she looked, but in the course of their conversation Rutledge could see how much stronger she was than her mother must have been. Her spirit, he thought, must have come from her father. However much she would fiercely deny it.
Before she could turn and stalk out of the inn, he said, "I can arrange to have you taken into custody to help us with our inquiries if you prefer that."
"On what charges?" she demanded. "I've done nothing except refuse to speak to you. And I can't be forced to speak, as you well know."
"On the charge that you murdered your father."
Rebecca Parkinson sat down. "That's utter rubbish."
"Yes, but I rather think I could prove it. It might be worth a cup of tea to find out what I know."
"I don't want tea. Whatever you have to say, it had better be said quickly, or I'm leaving."
"I told you the first time we met. We've found your father's body." It was blunt and intended to be.
Her angry flush faded. "He's alive and well, and living in those wretched cottages under the White Horse." Her denial wasn't completely convincing. As if she knew her father was dead but must keep up the pretense that it was a lie. Her vehemence on their first meeting had been stronger.
"But he went missing, you see. And now his body is lying unclaimed in a Yorkshire village. Doesn't that mean anything to you? Or the fact that he might have been murdered?"
"It has nothing to do with me." The line of her jaw was defiant.
"He didn't die where we found him. That's why we have to suspect murder. I'm here to make sense of what little we do know, and that means I have to follow him if I can every step of the way from those cottages to Yorkshire. To do that, I need information about his life, his family, his friends, his enemies. Whether you like it or not."
She said, "Make sense of whatever you like. Just leave me out of it."
"Do you hate your father so much that you'd prefer to see his killer go free?"
She glanced down, so that he couldn't see her eyes. "I've told you, I don't really care."
"Did you know that one of the other people in those cottages was murdered last night? A Mr. Willingham. I need to know what connection he might have had with your father."
She looked up then, startled. "I don't believe you."
"Ask Inspector Hill, in Uffington. He's handling that case."
Leaning back in her chair, she considered him, her mind working. "I don't know anyone named Willingham. A coincidence. It must be."
"That's possible, of course. But in such a small community two murders in a few weeks has to be regarded with suspicion. I'm forced to wonder what Mr. Willingham might have known about your father's disappearance. If he saw someone come for your father and take him away. The bicycle your father sometimes rode and his motorcar were both where he kept them. Surely your father didn't walk all the way to Yorkshire."
He thought her mouth was dry. She ran her tongue over her lips and said, "If you'll summon Mrs. Smith, I believe I'll have that tea now."
It was a surprising change of heart. Rutledge was wary.
He went to find Mrs. Smith, though Hamish warned him that Rebecca Parkinson would be gone when he returned. It was a risk he had to take.
He was relieved when he came back, tray in hand, to find she was still at his table.
Rutledge passed her the fresh cup, waited until she had added milk and sugar, then taken the first sip.
"I spoke to your sister last night."
She nearly choked. "I don't believe you. You don't even know where to find her."
"She'd come to stand on the hill by the White Horse. I don't know what it was she was thinking. But I distinctly heard her crying."
"Sarah has always had a soft heart. She's like my mother, taking in lost kittens and stray dogs, worrying about young men we knew who went to France and stayed there in unmarked graves."
"Still, I had the strongest feeling that she must know more about your father's death than she's comfortable with, and her conscience is tormenting her. It's rather too much of a coincidence, isn't it, that she came to grieve the night after Willingham died."
Rebecca Parkinson stood up so quickly she knocked over her cup and tea splashed onto the skirt of her dress.
"You leave my sister alone, do you hear me? Don't go near her again. Or I shall have you up for harassment. Do you understand me?"
"What are you afraid of, Miss Parkinson? That she'll break before you do? Murder doesn't always sit easily on one's conscience. But sometimes a second killing is necessary to protect the secrets of the first. The police may consider that possibility, you see, in investigating Willingham's. Whatever part she played in your father's death will eventually drive her to confess. What will you do to stop her?"
Rebecca Parkinson leaned forward, and with all the strength of her shoulder behind the blow, slapped Rutledge as hard as she could across the face. "Leave my sister alone!"
And then she was gone, slamming the door hard behind her.
Mrs. Smith came hurrying from the kitchen. "I heard such a noise-and look at the tea, spilled all over my clean floor! What happened?"
"I'm afraid the young woman who was here has a chink in her armor," he said. "And I've just found it."
Rutledge walked down to the cottages and tapped lightly on the smith's door.
Slater, looking as if he hadn't slept, opened it and said, "I don't think Inspector Hill wants you to talk to me."
"Not about Willingham, no," Rutledge said, stepping inside before Slater could shut his door. "I'm here to talk about Mr. Partridge. Did you know that he had two daughters?"
"No, of course I didn't. He never talked about his family. I thought he must not have any. No one came to spend a Sunday afternoon with him, that sort of thing. It was just a guess that the girl who knocked at his door was his daughter. Mrs. Cathcart likes happy endings. For all we know, she might well have been the daughter of a friend. You would think, wouldn't you, that being alone would make the cottages a friendlier place, but it doesn't work that way."
"Is Hill still giving you trouble over Willingham's death?"
"He's told me I'll be taken in to sign my statement. I don't know when that will be. Or if he'll keep me once he has me there." He was morose. "I've not done anything wrong. But the sexton has said I'm a liar and a cheat. I don't see that that leads a man to murder, but Inspector Hill seems to believe it does."
"For what it's worth, I don't think he actually believes that you did this. But he has to look at all the possibilities. Did you know Willing- ham before he moved here?"
"I didn't know any of these people. Including Mr. Partridge."
"And what do the other inhabitants of the Tomlin Cottages have to say about the murder?"
"They aren't saying anything. No one works in their garden, even as warm as it is this morning. No one answers the door. You'd think we collaborated on the murder, drawing straws to see who did the actual stabbing. Like Julius Caesar, in Shakespeare's play, when everyone turns against him. I remember reading that, and thinking he should have known the Ides of March meant trouble. But I suppose there wouldn't have been a play at all, if he'd listened to his wife in the first place."
Rutledge smiled. "You cut through the chaff to the kernel." The smile faded. "Are you all right, Slater?"
"As best as I can be. But I'm too anxious to work. And if I can't work, in the end I won't eat either. No one will bring business to me if I'm under a cloud of suspicion."
"I must go to Brady's cottage," he said, "but if there's anything you need, let me know."
"How? If they take me away, there's nothing you can do."
"I can try," Rutledge replied simply.
He left the smith's cottage and walked on down the lane to Brady's. There was no answer to his knock, and he'd expected none. A stranger arriving here would have sworn that all the cottages were empty, their inhabitants fled. But behind the shut doors and the drawn shades of the windows, there were people who had nowhere else to turn.
Dublin came to greet him as he returned to his motorcar, rubbing herself against his ankles, and he bent down to pet her just as a sparrow flitted by and she turned to give chase.
What did Dublin know about the murder of Willingham? She prowled the cottages, looking for mice. Had she been outside Willing- ham's two nights ago when a murderer came to call?
Hamish said irritably, "It wouldna' matter if she did. She's no' able to tell ye what she saw."
He climbed to the muzzle of the horse and sat there, watching scudding clouds cross the sky. It would rain before long, and he'd be wet if he didn't leave while he could. But still he sat there, waiting for someone to stir. He could feel the eyes watching for him, wondering where he might turn up next, and whether or not he was doing his own work or Hill's.
And then Mr. Allen stepped out of his door. Rutledge could hear him coughing, the sound captured and bounced up the hill to where he sat. Allen puttered a little in his front garden, casting wary eyes toward his neighbors.
Cabin fever, Rutledge thought, watching him. And a small defiance in the face of death. I'm alive, you haven't gathered me in yet…
Or was it because they all knew that Rutledge was sitting here, watching, that they felt free to move about.
Quincy opened his door and set a bowl of water down for Dublin, and looked up at the building clouds.
Mrs. Cathcart timidly crept out, and moved a flower pot to where it better caught the waning sun.
Miller was next, putting something in the dust bin by the corner of his house, and then looking fixedly at Rutledge. As if to ask why he was still here, when it was clear that Partridge wasn't coming back.
Rutledge hadn't met the man, but it wouldn't do any good to hurry down to the lane. Miller would be inside long before that.
They were all accounted for, except for Brady. But he was the watcher, accustomed to peering between his curtains and not showing his face. Rutledge found it interesting that Brady was still here, when Deloran knew perfectly well that Partridge was never coming back. Just as Gerald Parkinson would never return.
It was, Rutledge thought, a fanciful public fa?ade, Deloran keeping his watcher there to report to him and to make it appear that he himself believed Partridge was coming back. Or perhaps Brady had already been put out to pasture, and lived on here because it was his home. Rutledge expected the man would claim that, if he were questioned.
Rutledge sat there, listening to Hamish in his head, for another quarter of an hour. He hadn't seen so much as the corner of a curtain twitch in Brady's cottage. No sign of life that would attract Rutledge's attention and bring him down the hill to knock again.
A crow came to perch on Brady's chimneytop, scolding Dublin as she made her rounds. Mrs. Cathcart, seeing it, went quickly back inside. Quincy called to the cat, then shut his own door. Allen, still in the garden in front of his house, looked up at the sound of Quincy's door closing. And after a few minutes, his defiance turning practical as the first drops of rain danced on the flagstones that made up his garden path, he disappeared as well.
Rutledge came down the hill, feeling the heavy drops strike his shoulders with some force. They were only the forerunners of the storm, but the clouds had thickened to the west and rain would come in earnest in the next ten minutes or so.
Rutledge went up the lane between the cottages and knocked again on Brady's door, calling to him when it remained shut.
There was no answer.
Feeling a stirring of his intuition, Rutledge put his hand on the latch and lifted it.
The door wasn't locked.
He pushed it open, calling, "Brady, I know you're in there. I want to talk to you."
The crow flew away, cawing as he went, shattering the silence that sometimes foretells a storm.
Rutledge stood there, waiting. But there was no response from Brady.
He stepped inside, Hamish loud in his ears, and looked at the untidy room, dishes left on a table, books and papers scattered about, a pair of field glasses standing on the shelf under the window. From his vantage point Brady had a sweeping view toward the hill of the White Horse, and also of Partridge's cottage.
For an instant Rutledge wondered if Deloran was mad enough to send Brady to do his dirty work for him at Partridge Fields, then laughed at the thought. A man who drank as Brady was said to do couldn't be trusted with murder…
And then as his eyes adjusted to the storm-induced gloom of the sitting room, he saw Brady staring back at him, as if accusing him of trespassing.
But Brady was not accusing anyone of anything.
A knife protruded from his chest, and both his hands were wrapped around the hilt, frozen there by death.