It was, in fact, seven minutes before Rutledge was ready to leave. He felt as if he were moving in treacle, every task seeming to require more effort than he could muster.
Rutledge drove, and Burns sat silently beside him like a waxwork figure. Rutledge found himself thinking that he would be asleep before he reached the Yard. In an effort to keep himself alert, he said, “How long have you been waiting, Constable?”
“Two hours, sir. A little over.”
“At least it was a pleasant night.”
“Yes, sir.”
Was I ever that green? Rutledge found himself wondering. It seemed a long time ago that he’d been a constable. Centuries. Eons. But it hadn’t been ten years.
They arrived at the Yard, and Burns waited while Rutledge saw to the motorcar, then accompanied him inside and to the door of the Chief Superintendent’s office, as if half afraid his quarry would bolt if left alone.
Rutledge knocked, and then entered at Bowles’s curt command.
Burns disappeared down the shadowy passage, duty done.
Rutledge shut the door and faced his superior.
Bowles was in a subdued mood. Instead of what Rutledge expected to hear from him—“It took you long enough to get here!”—the Chief Superintendent said, “I want you to leave tonight for Berkshire, if you will. Your destination is half a dozen houses not far from Uffington. They’re called the Tomlin Cottages. Hardly enough of them to dignify the name hamlet, but there you are. You’ve a watching brief, nothing more.”
“Why not use a local man?” Rutledge asked.
“It’s not something for the local people to worry themselves about. The War Office has misplaced one of its own, and they don’t want him to get the wind up, thinking they’re watching him. But the fact is, they are. Rather an odd sort, I’m told, tends to do things his way, disappears sometimes, and for all I know gets roaring drunk and alarms the neighbors. A routine look-in was unsatisfactory, and in the event he’s got himself into trouble, they want it dealt with quickly and efficiently, to avoid gossip.”
“But the Yard—”
“Isn’t in the business of minding fools. My view as well. But when you’ve been asked nicely, you do as you’re told.” He turned to look out the window. “They were impressed, they said, with the way you handled matters in Warwickshire last June. See that you don’t disappoint them now.” It was grudging, as if the words were forced out of him. Or required of him?
“What excuse do I have for being there?”
“There’s that damned great white horse on the hillside.” Bowles turned back to the room. “Done in chalk. People come to stare at it, and strangers are taken for granted. Not liked, mind you, but for the most part ignored.”
The damned great white horse was a chalk figure from the prehistoric past, and of all the chalk figures, possibly Rutledge’s favorite. He’d been taken to see it as a child and allowed to walk the bounds.
“Who is the man I’m to watch? How will I know him?”
“It’s Partridge, of all the bloody names. Gaylord Partridge. The cottage with the white gate. He matters to the War Office, and that’s what you’re to keep in mind at all times.” He passed a sheet of paper to Rutledge.
Not even on official stationery, he thought, scanning it. A name, a direction. Nothing more. Spoken rather than written instructions. Sydney Riley, the infamous spy, could have done no better in the cloak-and-dagger world.
Rutledge left soon afterward, not happy about the long drive that lay ahead, but in other ways glad to be out of London. The daffodils would be rioting among the hedgerows, and the air was sweet in the countryside.
Hamish reminded him, “There’s yon Simon Barrington,” as Rutledge put the kettle on and then went to pack his valise.
“He’ll still be in London when I return. It can wait.” But Frances’s face when she’d come to ask him to take her to dinner with Maryanne Browning was before him, even as he answered Hamish aloud.
He could hardly pound Barrington into admitting he’d lied to Frances, or arrest him for cruelty to his sister. And there was always the possibility that perhaps it was Frances who lied about Scotland, to keep herself from blurting out the truth—that something had gone wrong between the two of them.
“It can wait,” he said again to Hamish as much as to himself. “It might work out better without my meddling.”
Hamish said derisively, “Aye, that’s a comfort.”
Rutledge filled his Thermos with tea, then turned out the lamps. He paused there in the darkness, wondering again if he should leave a message for his sister, then thought better of it. A letter was no way to deliver bad news, if she truly didn’t know where Simon was. And it was always possible that he had dined with the Douglases and then traveled north with them.
Cutting across London, Rutledge set out in the direction of Uffington, and drove through the darkness, stopping only to stretch his legs when he felt himself drowsing at the wheel and to drink from the Thermos.
It was a remarkably soft night, one of those April evenings when the world seemed pleased with itself. When he’d left the busy towns ringing London behind, he could sometimes smell plowed earth and, once or twice, the wafting fragrance of fruit trees in bloom. The road emptied as the night moved on toward the early hours of morning, a handful of lorries making their way to the east and the occasional motorcar passing him. At one point he smelled wood smoke, and wondered if gypsies were camping in a copse of trees in the middle of nowhere. The policeman’s instinct was to stop and investigate, but he drove on, ignoring it.
Around two in the morning, he pulled into a small clearing and slept, awaking to the dampness of an early dew. For several seconds he was disoriented, not sure where he was, in France or in England, but then his mind cleared and he got out to walk again and to finish his tea.
It was just getting light when he drove past his destination, a cluster of nine cottages that seemed to stand in the middle of nowhere, much of a sameness in design as if they were built to match. Stone and thatch, they seemed out of place here. He saw that one a little to itself boasted a white gate in a low stone wall.
On the hillside above him was the White Horse, pale in the morning light, an early mist hiding its feet, giving it the appearance of floating across the ground, silent and mysterious.
He stopped the motorcar in the middle of the road, swept by such an intense emotion that he could feel his heart thudding heavily in his chest.
The mist, moving gently, blotted out everything else until it was all he could see.
Gas. Floating across the battlefield, and the shout going up, Masks!
He was back in France, the tension and fear spreading around him as he and his men watched the slow-moving cloud, fumbling to put on their gas masks, hastily making sure not an inch of skin showed. He thrust his hands in his pockets, unable to find his gloves, digging them deep until he could feel his knuckles hard against the fabric. And Hamish saying in his ear—
“Are you lost, then?”
He came back to the present with a jolt, staring at what appeared to be a giant of a man standing at his elbow.
For the life of him, he couldn’t have told how long the man had been there or what he’d been saying.
“I—Admiring the horse,” he managed, trying to bring it into focus against the backdrop of his slip into the past.
The young man turned to look at it. “Impressive, right enough. I like it best at moonrise. But you’re blocking the road.”
Rutledge glanced in his mirror and saw a large wagon behind him and a patient horse between the shafts. On the wagon was a harrow.
“Sorry.”
He let in the clutch and drove on, still lost in that nightmare world that all too often shared his real one.