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.”