Rutledge was as eager to leave London as Bowles was to send him away. But he said, “If I get too close to the truth, Deloran will be knocking at your door, complaining.”
“And that’s when I’ll know you’re doing your job. Get on with it.”
Rutledge had been driving for three days, but he said only, “I’ll be leaving within the hour.”
Somehow the road west seemed longer this time. But in the end Rutledge saw the familiar shape of the White Horse galloping silently across its grassy hillside. He drove on, passing it, then stopped in the darkness to look up at it.
What had it seen, this chalk horse? Why had it brought Parkinson here, and why had he died in Yorkshire, and not in Berkshire?
He got out and walked a little way up the hill. Somehow it seemed peaceful and comforting. The horse had been there since time out of mind. Rutledge squatted in the dew-wet grass and studied the dark, silent cottages.
Hamish said, “No one wants this dead man.”
“Except to use him,” Rutledge answered aloud. “A convenience. Sad, isn’t it? The cottages are the end of the road for most of the people down there. A place to grow old and die without fuss. Did death come looking for Parkinson, or did he go out to find it?”
“It’s a long way to Yorkshire fra’ here.”
There was movement below. Rutledge could just make out the smith coming home. He slowed for an instant, as if he sensed being watched, then walked on toward his door.
A curtain twitched in Brady’s cottage, a sliver of lamp light flashing briefly and then vanishing. The lane was quiet again.
Rutledge was content to sit here on the hill and listen to sounds of the night. His mind was tired, and even the puzzle of Parkinson’s life and death failed to interest him. It could wait until tomorrow.
A cat—Dublin?—trotted across the open space between Quincy’s cottage and Mrs. Cathcart’s. A dog barked in a farmyard a long way off, the sound carrying without urgency.
For a moment Rutledge wondered why he had ever chosen to become a policeman and deal so closely with death. And he knew the answer even as he posed the question. It was still the same as it had been at eighteen, when he’d told his father that he intended to join the metropolitan force when he came down from Oxford. Tired he might be of death, yet he was still here to speak for the dead. Only it was proving more difficult to speak for Parkinson. It was possible, he thought, that Parkinson didn’t want anyone to learn the truth about him. That he would be glad to lie in an unmarked grave and be forgotten.
Then, without warning, as if it had been busy this last quarter hour without his knowing it, his mind offered Rutledge a solution to the puzzle of Gerald Parkinson.
He had been working on the theory that the man had had something to hide, like the other residents of the Tomlin Cottages. And perhaps it was true. But the overriding factor behind what had brought Parkinson here was guilt. A strong sense of guilt.
And that was where to begin, if Rutledge expected to unravel the puzzle of this man’s life and his death.
Rutledge stood up and walked back down the hill, cranked the motorcar, and drove on to The Smith’s Arms. It took him several minutes to wake Mr. Smith and bring him down to unlock the door.
“Back again, are you? Your room’s empty, if you want it. We’ll settle on that tomorrow.”
“Fair enough.” Rutledge thanked him and followed him up the stairs in the wake of his flickering lamp. As he opened his door, the room smelled of lavender and fresh air, as if the sheets had dried in the sun.
He undressed in the dark and went to bed.
Tomorrow he’d find out why guilt had changed Partridge’s life.
After breakfast, Rutledge drove on to Wiltshire, a good two hours one way, then found again the turning for Partridge Fields, the house where Parkinson had lived.
Once more there appeared to be no one about as he walked through the gate, leaving his motorcar in the lane.
The sun was slanting through the trees beyond the house and long shafts of golden light barred the lawns and gardens. It was a tranquil scene, and he wondered again why Parkinson had preferred the cottages to this place.
He went around the house, through the gardens and the shrubbery that shut off the kitchen yard, listening to a silence broken only by a bird calling from the miniature dovecote birdhouse in the kitchen garden. Was no one ever here?
Moving on, he was just on the point of taking the stone path through to the far side of the house, when a shrill voice stopped him in his tracks.
Hamish said, “’Ware!” in warning, and Rutledge turned slowly.
“Here! What are you about?”
A plump woman wearing an apron was standing in the door to the yard, arms akimbo and a frown on her face.
“I didn’t think anyone was at home,” he said in apology, “or I would have knocked. My name is Rutledge, and I’ve come down from London—”
“I couldn’t care less where you’re from. What are you doing here?”
“Looking, I think, for Mr. Parkinson.”
“You’re not one of them people from the newspaper, are you?” There was a challenge now in her tone. “I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, he’s not here, nor will he be here any time soon, and you might as well march yourself back the way you’ve come and leave the premises. Close the gate behind you or I’ll see the police have a word with you for trespassing.”
She was about to shut the door in his face, and he said quickly, “I’m from the police. Scotland Yard.”
Her face altered, the hostility giving way to concern mixed with irritation. “The police, is it? What are you here for? Is there bad news you’re bringing?”
Rutledge was walking back toward her now, and she stood her ground with the ferocity of an old and trusted servant.
“Here, you’re not coming in this house, policeman or no!”
“I’m trying to locate Mr. Parkinson,” he replied, his tone indicating a need for help rather than ulterior motive. “It’s a police inquiry, you see, and I should like to ask his assistance.” He’d left the sketch in his valise at the inn, and swore to himself. She would surely have recognized it.
“Well, you won’t be finding it here—he’s not in residence, and that’s a fact.” She looked Rutledge up and down. “You’d think a London policeman would know that.”
He said, drawing on his experience dealing with watchdog servants, “My superiors don’t always tell me everything they know. Much to my regret. How long has he been away? Surely he must have told you where to send along his mail.”
“He doesn’t receive any. None, that is, I’m aware of. And he left just a week after his wife died in the spring of 1918. Here, are you certain you aren’t from the London papers?”
Rutledge showed her his identity card, and she studied it with suspicion, as if certain it was counterfeit.
“I don’t understand why the newspapers should be interested in Mr. Parkinson,” he went on in a conversational tone. “Or disturb him. Perhaps the police ought to have been called sooner.”
“They were, and they did nothing.” Her sense of grievance went deeper than her circumspection. “It was on account of his poor wife, of course. Like vultures they came here, battering the door, upsetting the household. It was shameful, that’s what it was. No respect for the dead.”
“Was she well known in London circles? Was that their interest?”
“It was the way she died. She left the gas open by mistake, and they tried to say it was suicide, but of course it wasn’t. She was a good and kind lady, she would never kill herself. But they told poor Mr. Parkinson it was on purpose, and he believed them.”
It was the same way Parkinson himself had died. To follow her? But then how did he come to be in Yorkshire?