A chance encounter, a remembered name and face, a chatty reference in a conversation, and somehow the news had reached Deloran’s ears.
Hamish said, “Ye ken, Parkinson knew as soon as the watcher came, but didna’ understand how it was that he’d been found.”
“I’m sure of it.”
He stopped to tap at Miller’s door in Number 7.
This time to his surprise it opened. “The police have been and gone. I’ve nothing to say to you.”
Rutledge said, “I happened to call on Miss Chandler, and she asked to be remembered to you and to Mr. Allen.”
“Kind of you. Good day.”
But Rutledge had his hand on the door to prevent it from closing. “I’ve also come to ask if you knew Mr. Partridge well.”
“No one here knows anyone well. I thought you’d have learned that by now.”
Rutledge studied the man. A thin face, hair graying early, a sturdy build. He could have been the conductor on a streetcar or a clerk in a shop. Middle-class with an accent that didn’t betray his roots, one cultivated to win him a better position in the marketplace, but not completely natural to him. It was his eyes that were interesting. They were what many would call hazel, but the dominant color was a golden green and oddly feral. And they were guarded, as if someone else stood behind them, a very different man from the one the world saw at first glance.
Inmates of prisons sometimes had that shuttered look, surviving as best they could in a place where they were afraid.
Rutledge said, “Every cottage has windows. And there’s nothing to see except the horse on the hill and the comings and goings of your neighbors.”
“I don’t watch from my windows.”
But he had, like the others, and now he denied it, as the others had done. What was his secret?
Had he embezzled funds at his place of business? Or been passed over for promotion and lost his temper? Allen had called him a timid man, and Slater had said he was evil.
There was something here, something that Rutledge, an experienced police officer, could feel in the air.
“You saw nothing the night that Willingham was killed? Or on the night when Brady must have disposed of Partridge’s body?”
“I didn’t see anything when Willingham was killed. Thank God I was asleep. As for Partridge, I don’t even know what night that was. But I can tell you that it was about three days since I’d seen him—he used to walk over to where the trees start and stand there looking up at the horse—when I heard the motorcar come back. It was close on three in the morning, and I was having trouble sleeping. I got up, thinking I might have a cigarette, and I stood there at the window watching someone open the shed door and then drive the motorcar inside. As a rule, Partridge shuts it straightaway, but this time I didn’t see him walk around to the door as he usually did. The shed door stayed open.”
“And in the morning?”
“The shed door was shut and all was quiet. I thought perhaps he’d slept in, after a long drive. I never saw him again.”
When Rutledge didn’t comment, Miller hesitated and then added, “The next night Brady went there to Partridge’s door, knocked, and went inside. He stayed nearly an hour, and then hurried back to his own cottage. My guess at the time was that Partridge had been taken ill, but nothing came of Brady’s visit.”
Rutledge said, “No one else has given me this information.”
Miller laughed harshly. “Even Quincy must sleep sometimes. I seldom sleep the night through. It’s become a habit with me now.”
Hamish said, “The truth? Or what ye want to hear?”
Rutledge considered his answer, both to Hamish and to Miller.
Miller added to the silence, hurrying to fill it again, “As far as I know, Mr. Brady didn’t have anything with him when he left the cottage.”
“And you’d be willing to swear to this under oath at the inquest, Mr. Miller? I wish I’d been told earlier, while Brady was alive.”
A flicker of emotion passed across Miller’s face. “You never came to ask.”
“I was here several times. You failed to answer your door.”
“Yes, well, these things happen.” He waited with expectancy, as if he thought this time the man from London might leave.
Rutledge thanked him and went back to his motorcar.
To Hamish he said, “It’s hard to say what Mr. Miller’s motive was in telling me what he just did. Unless it was to speed the police in finishing their business here sooner than later. Offering us lies we want to hear.”
He had caught that slight movement when he’d asked Miller about appearing at the inquest for Brady’s death.
Miller hadn’t expected his admission to be taken any further than a statement. Certainly not to be sworn to under oath and in public. And that rather reinforced the possibility that he hadn’t told the truth.
Rutledge thought he understood now why Slater had called Miller an evil man. Those arresting eyes, coupled with an unfriendly nature and impatience or outright antagonism toward a man with a simple view of the world, must make the smith very uncomfortable in Miller’s presence.
Hamish said, “It’s no’ likely that he showed you the same face he showed the ithers.”
Rutledge had just reached his motorcar when Hill came down the road toward him and waved him to wait.
He got out of his motorcar and came across to Rutledge, his face sober. He said without preamble, “We managed to get our hands on something Brady wrote before he moved to the cottage. It was a list of what he wanted to bring with him. Somehow it had fallen behind the desk and out of sight. But it was enough for us to compare handwriting. If Brady wrote that list—and there’s every reason to believe he did—then he didn’t write the suicide note we found, confessing to the murder of Willingham and Partridge.”
He held out a sheet of paper, and Rutledge took it.
The list wasn’t long. But there were references to “my green folder,” and later “my black coat” as well as clothing, books, and personal items. It ended with “the file MD gave me.”
Martin Deloran…
“I wasn’t completely convinced—” Rutledge began, but Hill interrupted him.
“That’s as may be. The question is, what are we going to do about this? And I’ve brought two constables with me. They’ll take turn about, watching the cottages day and night. Until we get to the bottom of it.”
Two middle-aged men in uniform had stepped out of the motorcar behind him and were walking up the lane. They went into Brady’s cottage and shut the door behind them.
“The list of suspects isn’t long,” Rutledge said, thinking about what Allen had said to him. “Quincy. Allen. Slater. Miller. Singleton.”
“You’ve left out the woman.”
“Do you really believe she could have wielded that knife?”
“I doubt it very much. But I’m not taking any chances.” He marched off after his men, head down and mouth a tight line.
Rutledge turned the motorcar in the middle of the road and drove back to Partridge Fields.
It had represented many things in Gerald Parkinson’s life.
A happy childhood for two young girls. A mother’s illness. A father’s obsession with his work. A death by suicide, and then a house left to stand empty.
But not abandoned. Rebecca Parkinson may have seen to the flower beds, but it was her father who made certain that the lawns were well kept, and someone was paid to clean and polish and see that the rooms stayed fresh.
Parkinson had even used the name Partridge, after the name of his house. Gaylord Partridge.
The gate was always closed and today was no exception. But he let himself in and walked around to the kitchen. He was in luck. The housekeeper was there—a dust pan and brush stood beside a mop and a pail of old cloths just outside the door. And from the kitchen he could hear a woman humming to herself as she worked.