It was depressing to think about.
There was always a new weapon, something to kill greater numbers of the enemy than the enemy could hope to kill on one’s own side. Parkinson must have been more than a pair of hands in the work he was doing on poisonous gases. Men like Deloran wouldn’t have wasted an hour’s thought on the whereabouts of a minor chemist who carried out tests and wrote reports. The housekeeper had said that Parkinson was pleased with something new that would help end the war sooner. Had he left with that work unfinished or at a critical stage?
If that had been the case, someone would have moved heaven and earth to get Parkinson back into the laboratory as quickly as possible.
Had he discovered a conscience when his wife died and decided that he was finished with what had always been his life’s work? Had he been frightened by the man he’d become, and walked away?
Rutledge brought to mind the face in the sketch, and tried to probe behind it.
All he could find was an ordinary man, despite what he had done in his laboratories, nothing in his features to mark him, nothing that could have caught one’s eye on the streets of London or Canterbury, nothing that would reflect what this person had chosen to do with his life. Neither evil nor good, just a man with no calluses on his hands and no scars, no means of telling him from a half-dozen others his size and weight and coloring.
Then what had happened to him if he was so ordinary?
Rutledge turned back toward the inn and asked Mrs. Smith if he could have his dinner brought to his room. After eating it by the window, he went on sitting there in the darkness even after the yard was silent and the road in front was empty.
Trying to picture Jean’s face, the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand, he found it was difficult. He had loved her, or believed he had, and grieved for what might have been when the engagement ended.
Now, with her death, a door had closed. She was the last link with the bright summer of 1914, and happiness, and a world that was going to be his to grasp.
After a while he got up and readied himself for bed without lighting the lamp.
He had expected to lie there awake, listening to Hamish in his head. In the morning, he would go to the cottages and find out who might have wanted the death of one Gerald Parkinson, or if they had wanted to kill Gaylord Partridge.
Instead he’d drifted into sleep without dreams.
Best-laid plans have a way of going astray.
Someone was knocking on his door before the first light of dawn had penetrated his room, summoning him urgently.
He fought his way back from a deep sleep and answered.
Smith said, his voice husky, “There’s been trouble at the Tomlin Cottages. You’d best come.”
16
Rutledge dressed swiftly, asking questions as he worked. But Smith knew nothing more.
In the lobby he found Slater standing there, pale and agitated.
“What kind of trouble?” he asked the smith.
“I don’t know. I heard a cry. And after that, nothing.”
“From the Partridge cottage?”
“There? No. Please hurry!”
Rutledge went at once into the yard and Slater followed, going to the bonnet and bending to turn the crank with his massive hand.
Smith was calling after them, “Shall I come as well?”
“Not yet. You may be needed later.”
He got behind the wheel, and Slater slid into the other seat, a hulking shadow in the light of the innkeeper’s lamp.
“Which cottage?” Rutledge asked.
“Mr. Willingham’s. Number Three, just above Mr. Partridge.”
The old man, then.
They drove the short distance to the cottages in silence, but Rutledge could feel the anxiety in the man at his side, and reaction setting in.
“I didn’t investigate,” Slater said as the cottages came into view. “I’ve never heard anything like that. I fear there’s murder done, Mr. Rutledge. Sure as God’s above.”
“Can you be certain he wasn’t calling for help? Taken ill suddenly in the night—a fall?”
But he knew it must be more than that, to frighten Slater so badly. Slater walked the night and was of a size that brooked no interference. It wasn’t fear that had shaken him, it was something closer to a primordial response to horror.
Slater said nothing, hunched in his seat, willing the motorcar to move faster.
They arrived at the cottages soon enough, and Rutledge left his motorcar beside the smith’s door, rather than destroy any tracks or other evidence nearer Willingham’s.
He reached for his torch, closing his eyes from habit because it was in the rear where Hamish sat. Groping he found nothing, and then suddenly his hand touched the torch, as if Hamish had pushed it nearer. He flinched, then gripped the cold metal, turning toward the cottage.
The windows were dark, the door closed, nothing to mark forced entry, but the question was, did Willingham lock his doors of a night or leave them off the latch?
Rutledge started toward it, and Slater made to follow him. Rutledge held up a hand. “No. Wait until I call you.”
Slater argued, “You may need help. I’m stronger than you.”
Rutledge said, “Then better to be outside than in.”
The door was indeed unlocked. Inside, Rutledge’s torch seemed to pierce the darkness like a spear. He moved it without moving himself, until he had a feeling for the furnishings and the shape of the room. It was very similar to other cottages he’d been in, but the placement of chairs and tables was different.
The sitting room just beyond the door showed no signs of disturbance. A rug before the hearth, a chair to one side, a shelf of books on the other. A small table by the window, with two smaller chairs, and a footstool by the winged chair under the lamp. An empty glass rested on the stand next to it, with a book open beside it.
The kitchen, tiny even by cottage standards, was tidy, but a stack of plates and cups stood waiting to be washed, while pans soaked in the sink. Guests for dinner, or was Willingham in the habit of washing up once a day?
The bedroom lay above the kitchen, and on the threshold Rutledge found splotches of blood, black in his torch’s beam.
He stopped, flicking his light around the room.
Beyond, between the tall chest and the bed, Willingham lay on his side on the bare wood of the floor. His eyes were wide and empty, reflecting the light. Rutledge didn’t need to cross the room to know that he was dead.
The bedroom still held a presence, malice and fear, as if the strength of the emotions that had ended in death still lingered. But there was no one else there.
Rutledge, used to scenes of violent death, quickly surveyed the bedroom, digesting what there was to see.
There had been a struggle—bedclothes pulled free and left trailing across the floor, the lamp broken and the oil spilling into a chair, soaking darkly into the green brocade upholstery. The nightstand was overturned as well.
Angered to find an intruder beside his bed, Willingham had apparently been galvanized to put up an energetic defense.
Walking into the room, Rutledge could see a slash on the left wrist and a knife, of the kind used to joint chickens, deep in Willingham’s chest.
Stubborn and cantankerous to the end, Willingham had not died easily, and the killer must have suffered a shock.