It was unanswerable. Rutledge turned and walked back to his hotel, the moment broken.
The next morning, he drove on to Elthorpe, his mind already busy with what he could expect to find.
No one had given him either a description or a photograph of Gaylord Partridge, and he wasn’t certain what it was he was supposed to achieve when he arrived. But accustomed to the mysterious workings of the army, he wasn’t surprised.
He came into Elthorpe after lunch when the streets were relatively quiet and the April sun had vanished behind clouds.
Yorkshire’s landscape was varied—the rolling dales of the North Riding, a long shoreline to the east, and very fertile land along the rivers that flowed through the West Riding. It was small wonder that medieval monks established so many houses here, building abbeys by the handful. Their ruins, dramatic and quite beautiful, were reminders of a distant past. For someone who loved architecture, it was a feast for the mind and the eye.
Fountains stood on the plateau west of the city of York, and it was still sheep country, though on a smaller scale, feeding the looms and the mills nearer the coal deposits.
Elthorpe, small and tidy, stood upright in the sun, as if absorbing as much of its warmth into stone walls as the waning afternoon permitted. A wind had come up, promising a cool night, but the few people on the streets still wore only sweaters or coats against the chill.
Rutledge found a hotel close by the church, though its name, The Castle Arms, was far too elegant for what was on offer—a comfortable lobby, a lounge beyond an arch, and a desk manned by a very attractive woman about his own age.
She smiled at him in a way that offered no familiarity, merely an acknowledgment that he was custom newly arrived.
“I’m looking for a room for several nights,” he said, and she nodded, her eyes flicking to the book in front of her.
“There’s number ten, which should suit you. Would you care to see it, Mr….”
She paused, waiting for him to give her his name.
“Rutledge,” he replied pleasantly. “From London. Thank you, number ten will be fine.”
She nodded, and wrote his name in the hotel register, then handed him an ornate key on a knob that wouldn’t fit comfortably into a pocket. Embossed on the end of the knob was a brass inlay of the Great Tower at Richmond Castle. Behind her on a board were similar keys, and a quick glance showed him that there were three other guests at present.
“Shall I help you carry your luggage up the stairs?” she asked, but it was perfunctory, and she made no move to come round the desk.
“I should manage very well, thank you.”
He went back to his motorcar, smiling to himself. The people of Yorkshire were not unfriendly but their reserve was legendary. A man, he thought, might live here forty years before he was accepted in the inner circle. And perhaps not then, if there was any suspicion that he might not be deserving of it.
Two men some twenty yards from him were talking together, and Rutledge found himself listening to the local dialect. The English had such a variety of voices, and his, in this place, stood out as foreign. A stranger.
He wondered how he would be received by Inspector Madsen.
Oddly enough, it was with relief.
Madsen rose from behind his desk to shake hands, his face tired and his eyes troubled.
He launched into a brief report on the murder as if he had rehearsed it a dozen times that morning.
“We’ve got nowhere in this business. The schoolmaster is involved but we don’t know how—or why. It’s his book there at the dead man’s feet,” he said. “The book was dew damp, but hadn’t been there any longer than the body, judging by its condition.” He reached behind him for a book lying on a shelf and passed it to Rutledge.
“Alchemy,” Madsen went on. “Nonsense if there ever was one. But we’ve looked through the book with care, and there’s nothing to say it isn’t what it appears to be—a book wildly out of place. But if the schoolmaster, Crowell, brought it to the meeting, why? And why leave it where it was found? Does it say something about the dead man that we don’t understand? What’s in the blasted book that took it to a scene of violence?”
Rutledge opened the book and thumbed through it. A history of alchemy, the philosopher’s stone, the centuries-old search for a way to turn lead or other base metals into gold.
A good many famous men had dabbled in alchemy. A good many more had used it to cheat unsuspecting people out of their money. He’d heard a professor say that it was merely a forerunner, early attempts to explain chemistry. But there had been an overtone of other interests in the study of this quasi-science—a search for the elixir of life and for spells that forced the spirits of evil to obey commands and serve the alchemist. It had sometimes been called heresy and commerce with the Devil, and even witchcraft.
He scanned several of the purported incantations that had come down through the years, and they were laughable. The garish illustrations next to several of them showed someone very like Roger Bacon standing in a cavelike room, smoke circling his head, the fire at his back roaring up the chimney, and an array of vessels spread out on the table before him.
Hamish, who had been silent for some time, startled him by speaking so normally that he was sure the man across the desk heard the words.
“Yon man in the drawing is wearing a robe.”
Roger Bacon had been a monk. And his robe was very much like the description Madsen had just given Rutledge of the cloak the dead man had been wrapped in.
So perhaps there was a connection, though not the most obvious one. Not meddling with spirits but with something else.
“And still no word on the identity of the dead man?”
“None. If he’d dropped out of the sky, we’d have been no wiser.”
Rutledge said, “I’d like to see the victim for myself.”
Madsen considered him for a moment and then said, “He’s at the doctor’s surgery.”
“And the cloak, the respirator?”
“There as well.”
They walked down the street to the doctor’s surgery, and were admitted by a nurse who looked to be close to forty, trim and dark haired. Madsen asked to see the murder victim and was shown into the room where the body was being kept until the police were finished with it. Madsen nodded to the woman, and she left them.
Rutledge raised the sheet over the body. The man looked to be of good height, his shoulders broad and well muscled. Rutledge took a moment to look at his hands. Not those of a laborer—no calluses in the palms, the nails clean and well shaped. The face was not one that would stand out. The man could walk down any London street or one in Manchester and never attract attention. His hair was a light brown, showing gray strands throughout. Forty-five? Fifty? It was hard to tell. There were lines in his face that death hadn’t smoothed away, as if he had been ill or aged before his time.
“What about his clothing?”
“Good quality. They’re in the box, there.”
That matched the condition of the man’s hands. “London labels?”
“See for yourself.”
Rutledge squatted to examine the contents of the box. Madsen was right, the clothes were of good quality but had seen a great deal of use. As if the dead man had fallen on hard times or lost interest in what he wore. Even the shoes had seen hard use.
“Anything in the pockets?”
“Nothing. Not so much as a handkerchief.”
Rutledge stood up. “I’d like to see the cloak and the respirator.”
The cloak was of fine wool, well made, with a hood. Rutledge fingered it, felt the weight of it, and the thickness. Unlike the clothes, it appeared to be almost new. Because it wasn’t something that might be worn every day?