A Pale Horse

23

For a time Rutledge stood by the hearth in Allen’s cottage, listening to the ticking of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece.

The old man had been sitting in his chair when he realized that the end was near. A handful of papers had scattered across the floor as he struggled to his feet and dragged himself to the door to call for help. It must have taken enormous will to travel even that short distance. But he hadn’t died alone in an empty house. It was even possible that from his windows he’d seen Rutledge sitting by the horse, and held on until the man from London got to him.

Rutledge gathered up the papers to set them neatly on the table beside the chair.

They were mostly letters from Allen’s family, and he put them down without reading them. But among them he saw that Allen had begun his statement, writing out the first sentence in a trembling hand before realizing that his malaise that morning was the precursor to death.

The sheet below that one caught Rutledge’s eye, for it was a list of the occupants of the Tomlin Cottages. Partridge’s name had been struck off, and then Willingham’s and Brady’s. There was a question mark by Miller’s, and the notation “The likeliest choice, I think. Mostly because he doesn’t belong here.”

Allen had been playing at amateur detective.

Beside Quincy’s name was another notation. “Armstrong? Or perhaps Remington? Can’t be sure, must write to Halloran and see…”

Next to Slater’s name was an X as if Allen had crossed him off as a suspect. The notation beside it read, “He might manage one killing, but not a second. Not in his nature…”

And after Singleton’s, he’d written, “Soldier, trained to kill. Still—”

It appeared that he’d come to no particular conclusion.

The door opened and Inspector Hill walked in. “You’re sure Allen died of natural causes?”

Rutledge said, “Very likely. See for yourself.” And Hill went into the bedroom. Rutledge pocketed the list Allen had made, then looked in the desk. As Allen had told him, there was an envelope with the words “To be opened after my death” written in the same hand as the list. Rutledge took it out and set it against a lamp, where Hill would notice it.

Slater was still outside, his face pale. Rutledge went out to him. “I know. It was what he wanted, all the same.”

“What are we to do? I think these cottages are accursed. They shouldn’t have been put here in the first place. It was a desecration.”

“Slater. If I were you, I’d sleep at your smithy tonight, not in your cottage.”

“I’m not afraid, if that’s what you think.”

“If you aren’t here, you can’t be accused.”

The man’s eyes widened. “But what about Mr. Quincy, and Miller? And Singleton. You can’t leave them.”

Inspector Hill came out of the cottage and cast a glance in the direction of Brady’s where his men had been stationed. “Why the hell didn’t they come? Slater said you were here alone.”

“You’d better have a look.”

Hill gave him an odd glance, then set out for Brady’s cottage at a trot. He went through the door without knocking, and even from this distance, Rutledge could hear him shouting angrily at his men.

He came back, still furious, and said, “They thought it might be a trick. They were told to watch, and damn it, they watched, their eyes glued to the other cottages for any sign of trouble.”

“There wasn’t anything they could do.”

“No. All right then, I’ll take over here. Thanks.” And he turned to go back into the cottage.

Rutledge walked down the lane with Slater. “Will you leave?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good man.”

Quincy was standing in his doorway. “Allen, was it?”

“Yes,” Rutledge answered shortly. He was still angry with Quincy for not coming to the man’s aid.

“I’m glad you were there,” Quincy said, and went back inside.

Rutledge left then, knowing it was too late but driving anyway as fast as he dared toward Pockets, the house where Rebecca Parkinson lived.

When he got there, Sarah’s motorcar was gone. He wasn’t surprised, but she hadn’t passed him on the road, and he thought he knew where else she might have gone.

And he’d guessed right. She was at Partridge Fields, sitting in the motorcar just outside the gates, crying.

He pulled up behind her and got out. She looked up, and said, “You’ve done enough damage. Go away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. I went to Rebecca to ask what we were to do, she and I. And she said there was nothing we could do. If you arrested us, so be it.”

“A charge of murder is a very serious matter.”

He looked up. Rebecca Parkinson was peddling toward them on her bicycle. She hesitated when she saw Rutledge’s car pulled in behind her sister’s. And then she came on, resolute.

“Sarah? Are you all right? I was worried,” she said, ignoring Rutledge.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“Come inside. It’s one of Martha’s days. She may still be here. She can make us some tea.”

“I’m not sure I want to go in.”

“Then why did you come?”

“There was nowhere else to go.” It was said with great sadness.

“I know. Come along in, and it will be all right, I promise you.”

Sarah cast a glance in Rutledge’s direction. “What about him?” she asked her sister. “I don’t think I can bear any more.”

“If he comes after us, I’ll have him up on charges of trespassing.” Rebecca turned to Rutledge, challenging him to argue with her.

Leaving the motorcar where it stood in the middle of the road, Sarah opened her door and crossed to where her sister was still astride the bicycle.

Rutledge waited.

Sarah said, her back to him, “There’s something you’ve forgotten, Mr. Rutledge. In your concern for my father, and whatever justice it is you seem to want for him, you didn’t have to live in this house all your life. We did. Push too hard, and we could choose the way out that our mother chose, because right now there isn’t much left of our future. If you really want justice, what about a little for us? As for those men in the cottages, I’m sorry about them, but I didn’t know them, and neither did Rebecca. I won’t take their deaths on my soul.”

Rutledge said, “Your father is dead. He doesn’t care now what you think of him, what you owe him, or what he made you suffer. For all you know, his own life was as wretched as yours.”

Sarah started through the gate, still not looking at him. “Then we’re even, aren’t we, he and the two of us.”

Rebecca followed her, propping her bicycle just inside.

There was triumph now in the glance she cast over her shoulder toward Rutledge.

Hamish said, “She’s got her sister under her spell.”

And they were gone up the path, walking side by side in silence.

Rutledge swore. It was as if they drew their strength from each other, secure in the knowledge that if neither of them confessed what they knew, there was nothing the law could do to them.

Hamish reminded him that one of the lorry drivers had seen a woman alone and crying in a motorcar drawn to the side of the road, near Wayland’s Smith.

“I’ll give you odds,” he answered aloud, “that it was Sarah, while her sister returned their father’s motorcar to the shed. Waiting to take her back to Pockets when it was finished.”

The timing would be about right, although it would be hard to prove exactly which night that was. Or find the lorry driver who had seen her.

It was late, but there was still one thing he could do. He drove back to the crossroads and began searching for a doctor’s surgery. If Butler had been called to attend Mrs. Parkinson during her pregnancy, he must be near enough to summon at need. And whoever took over his practice might still have Butler’s records.

In a village not two miles distant to the west, he found the first of them, and then another just a little farther to the east. A third was due north. But none of them had treated the Parkinson family, or knew what had become of Dr. Butler’s records.

He kept moving, first down this road and then that, and as the sun began to set, he turned on his headlamps, determined to find what he was after.

Hamish said, “They had money, the Parkinsons. They would ha’ seen a London doctor.”

“Not for measles or a fall or a sore tooth. There would have been someone closer who could be called.”

“No’ for the lost child. For the despair that followed.”

Rutledge considered that possibility. But he’d got the impression that for many years Mrs. Parkinson had withdrawn into herself, shutting out her husband, and would never have been persuaded to see a London doctor of his choosing. It would have been an admission that they shared a grief. Mrs. Parkinson had hugged it to herself instead, and in the end, used her death as the ultimate punishment.

He gave up after another two hours. He was too far afield.

He was halfway back to Partridge Fields when he saw a house well off the road, sheltered by a small copse. Its lights were burning in the dark and a drive wandered in their direction. It was just outside the first village he’d tried.

What had caught his eye, in a flash of his headlamps, was not a doctor’s board but a small, elegant stone pillar at the end of the drive. He’d almost passed by it a second time when he realized that the scrolled name inset into the pillar was THE BUTLERS. He backed up and turned into the drive, pulling up by the door.

The knocker was a worn brass caduceus, and he felt his hopes soar.

A woman answered, her face framed in soft waves of reddish-brown hair, and behind her, peering around an inner door, was a girl of about twelve.

“Betsy, dear—”

She stopped when she saw a stranger standing on her threshold.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon. I was expecting a friend, and she’s late. Are you lost?”

“My name is Rutledge,” he said, offering her his identification. She peered shortsightedly at it.

“Scotland Yard? Oh, dear. Perhaps I ought to call my husband.” She turned to the girl. “Will you fetch Papa, darling? There’s someone here to see him.” She sounded uncertain.

The girl disappeared, and in a moment or two a man came to the entry. He was dressed in rough work clothes and there was paint on his hands and across his face.

“Sorry, we’re doing up my mother’s room. How can I help you, Mr.—er—Rutledge, is it?”

“Yes, from London. I’m looking for a Dr. Butler, who once practiced in these parts. Are you by chance related to him?”

“Good God, how did you ever find us? Yes, he was my father. Dead now, I’m afraid. I don’t think he practiced after 1910.”

“One of his patients was a woman named Parkinson. I’m trying to learn more about her, and the illness he treated. You don’t, by any chance, have his records?”

Butler brushed a hand across his forehead, pushing his light brown hair out of his eyes and leaving another streak of paint there. “I doubt they’d do you much good. But yes, we do. Somewhere. In the attic, at a guess. Well, not his records, actually, those went to the man who took over his practice. And he’s dead, as well, killed in the war, worst luck. I don’t know who might have taken over from him. But my father kept a series of diaries, and they’re boxed up just as he left them. Would that be of help?”

“If I’m lucky,” Rutledge said.

“Do you need them now?” It was clear Mr. Butler would have preferred another time. “We’ll be up all night with our painting. My mother arrives in the morning. This morning.”

“It would be best.”

“Let me clean up a bit first, then. Come in, man!”

Rutledge followed Butler into a sitting room and waited there for nearly three-quarters of an hour before Butler came back with a wooden box in his hand. Inside were rows of small leather-bound diaries, each with a year printed in gold on its spine.

Rutledge had been trying to calculate which year he was after, based on what Sarah Parkinson had told him about her holidays as a child. He pulled out a likely diary, but there was no mention of the Parkinsons at all save for a reference to a cough that had kept Sarah in bed for three weeks and a burn that the housekeeper, Martha Ingram, had sustained while cooking a Christmas goose.

Butler was sitting across from him, clearly anxious to get back to his painting, and Mrs. Butler, held by curiosity, sat quietly knitting and watching from across the room. The girl was nowhere in sight.

Rutledge had to go back two years before he found the diary entry he was after. There was a date, April 27, and then the notation “Mrs. Parkinson went into labor at two o’clock in the afternoon. All proceeding normally. Three weeks short of full term.”

Was that the reference he’d been after? The housekeeper had distinctly told him there was a miscarriage. This child was nearly full term.

“Yon housekeeper wasna’ there. She left to wed a scoundrel.”

On the twenty-eighth there was a second entry. “Eleven in the morning. Boy survived only an hour. Gave Mrs. Parkinson a strong sedative and told the housekeeper, Mrs. Fortner, to sit by her through the night, until I can arrange for a nurse. Four o’clock same day, set Robert Dunning’s leg after he was kicked by a horse. Five o’clock, Peggy Henderson brought in with a splinter in hand. Six-thirty, looked in on Mrs. Parkinson again. Sleeping. Nurse Meadows with her now, replacing Mrs. Fortner. Just as well, not impressed with housekeeper’s skills. Had long talk with Parkinson, explaining situation. Question about who should see to burial. He left arrangements with me. I did what I could. Sad day for that family.”

There was nothing else about treating Mrs. Parkinson, except for the daily visit to be sure she was recovering from the birth.

Rutledge scanned ahead.

Two months later there was a final entry. “Mrs. Parkinson refuses to leave her room. Have advised husband to let her mourn in her own fashion. Would have been easier if she hadn’t heard the child cry and knew it lived. Better to have told her it was stillborn. But it was out of my hands.”

The only other mention of the Parkinsons that year was a notation that Parkinson had come to Dr. Butler in July with cuts on his hands after an accident in his laboratory. “Self-inflicted” had been added to the terse notation. But Dr. Butler hadn’t seen fit to elaborate.

The heartbreaking loss of a son recorded in a few dozen words written in a cramped but clear hand.

Rutledge went through the next year to be sure, but there was no other mention of the child or how the family had learned to cope. Whatever role Dr. Butler had played in Mrs. Parkinson’s recovery was not given. These were reminders to himself, not a medical record.

He jotted down the dates and events, then closed the diary and thanked the Butlers. They were glad to see the back of him, he thought. Another woman had arrived with an armload of freshly ironed bed hangings, and Mrs. Butler had taken her directly upstairs.

He could hear her voice drifting down after her. “Betsy, you’re a good friend to pitch in like this. I’d never have got them ready in time. There’s just one wall left to paint—”

Butler followed Rutledge to the door, as politeness dictated, saying, “I don’t suppose you found what you were looking for. Sorry.”

“It was worth my time to read what was there.” Rutledge thanked him and went out to his motorcar.

It was after midnight, in fact closer to two o’clock. He could feel the long day in his shoulders, and in the tension in Hamish’s voice as they drove back to Berkshire.

There had been a living child. So much harder to forget, so much more of a tie for the grieving mother who had heard him cry.

It had been a wild-goose chase, as Hamish was pointing out, but Martha Ingram had been right in her supposition that while she was occupied with her short-lived marriage, there had been another child, a boy after two daughters. And when she returned to serve the family, Mrs. Parkinson had never told her the whole story.

He recalled the comment, “Had long talk with Parkinson, explaining situation.”

And later, Gerald Parkinson had smashed something in his laboratory, cutting himself badly.

Things had gone wrong for him as well.

When he reached the inn, Rutledge went up to his bed and fell asleep almost at once. Hamish, silent at last, waited as he always did for the dawn.

There were no alarms in the night, and Mrs. Cathcart announced over breakfast that she was ready to return to her cottage.

Rutledge took her back, and on the way told her that Allen had died. She cried for him.

“Poor man. But he knew it was coming. If I had anywhere else to go, I’d leave here. But there’s no hope of that and I mustn’t even dwell on it.”

He saw her safely inside, then stood there in the soft end of April morning light, looking up at the White Horse. There were workmen repairing the damage to Quincy’s door, the blows of their hammers echoing against the hill and rebounding.

Legend had it that if someone knew the secret, he could stand on the ground below the hill and make his voice appear to come from the horse. Rutledge’s father had told him that, but try as they would, they never found the spot. A priest or chieftain would have known where to look for it, and like the Delphic oracle, could have given his pronouncements the power of a god.

It was time to go back to London and report. But he was reluctant to leave until Inspector Hill had caught his murderer. What he would do about his own was another matter altogether. It hadn’t worked to turn one sister against the other.

Slater called to him as he was walking home from the village, and Rutledge went to meet him.

“You were wrong. Nothing happened last night.”

But Hill had left a message earlier at the inn for Rutledge, saying that he’d collected a sample of handwriting from each of the surviving inhabitants, and the results were unclear. The message ended with “Whoever wrote this confession must have tried to emulate Brady’s hand or, at the very least, tried to disguise his own. Hard to say which.”

“Nothing happened,” Rutledge agreed. “But why take the risk? I’m not convinced Brady killed anyone.”

Slater looked up at the horse. “I spent much of the night thinking about Mr. Brady. If he’d killed Mr. Willingham, he’d have tried to bluff his way out. He was that sort. Good at making excuses.”

“Perhaps the point was to kill Willingham, and see that Brady took the blame.”

“Willingham was free with his tongue, I grant you. And he never cared who he hurt,” Slater agreed. “And if that’s what’s behind this business, he invited his own death. He’s called me a simpleton and witless often enough. But I’m used to it. I’ve been called names all my life. I can’t kill every man or woman who hurts my feelings.”

“The attempt to burn down Quincy’s cottage was probably a sham, to throw us off the scent. The question is, did Quincy set that fire himself?”

Slater said, “They should all be burned down. They were never meant for us. But then I’d have nowhere to go.”

He went inside and shut his door, a lost and lonely man who would always draw spite because he was different.

Hill arrived just then, and said, “There’s been a development.”

“I got your message.”

“Yes, well, the doctor says now that Brady couldn’t have killed himself, no matter how it was made to look. The angle of the thrust is wrong. He conferred with a colleague.”

“So two murders, and an attempted one, if you count the fire at Quincy’s. I was just going up to speak to Miller. Would you like to join me?”

Hill shook his head. “It’s Slater I’m interested in. That man’s got the arm to wield a knife like that, and whatever he says, I think he was pushed over the edge.”

“I’d like to look through Willingham’s cottage.”

“My men have been thorough.”

“I’m sure they have. It won’t do any harm to add another pair of eyes.”

“Go ahead. All you’ll find will be the sketches. Constable Smith saw them before I did. Nasty piece of work, but it explains, doesn’t it, why we were so ready to believe that Brady had killed the man.”

“What sketches?”

Hill said with a grin, “Didn’t you know? He took aim at all his neighbors. Quite Hogarthian, really. Still, he knew his way around pen and paper—”

But Rutledge was already on his way, swearing under his breath.

Hamish was pointing out that it wasn’t his case.

Rutledge ignored him.

There had been a constable on duty the first day, but he was gone now. Rutledge let himself in, shutting the door behind him.

It wasn’t hard to locate the sketches. They were in the desk drawer in a folder tied by string.

He unwound the string and brought out a dozen or more pen-and-ink drawings that were as vicious as any he’d ever seen. Each one showed one of the residents involved in a scene that was often crude and at the same time close to the mark. Singleton as a soldier, Miller in the dock and later standing by the hangman, Mrs. Cathcart drunk in public, Allen craftily using his illness for pity, Quincy paying ragged children to bring him his birds, Slater creating teapots without handles, offering them for sale at a market fair, the sign below them reading STOLEN FROM CHURCHES.

Partridge was there, wearing a mask that was what the artist must have seen as his true self. It was goatlike, the real man cringing behind it. Scapegoat? Only Brady was missing from the collection, presumably because he would have taken his sketch when he killed Willingham. Only he hadn’t killed anyone.

Rutledge stood there studying them. Hill was right, the draftsmanship was excellent, the content exceedingly vicious, and most certainly the work of a man who cared nothing for the feelings of others.

He was a recluse by habit and inclination. Charles Dickens might have used him for the model of half a dozen unsavory characters. Whatever had embittered him in his youth, he had slowly become a man to avoid. A nasty piece of work, indeed.

But had he created these sketches?

There was an imagination at work here that didn’t fit Willingham as Rutledge had seen him. These had taken time to draw in such detail, and from Willingham Rutledge would have expected more dash and less drama. His temper flared too easily. These were secretive, closet vengeance, a pleasure taken in private, so that no one knew he’d been savaged on paper.

“A coward’s work,” Hamish said.

Quincy, for instance, could have taken pleasure in skewering himself and his neighbors. But there would have been more dark humor, Rutledge thought, not such earthy attacks, if it had been his hand holding the pen. There was no whimsy here.

Rutledge went on searching the desk, but couldn’t find more of the paper that the artist had used nor the nibs that were necessary to carry out the design.

He went back through the drawings, remembering how Mark Benson had worked on the face of a dead man, the strokes, the intensity of concentration. Mrs. Cathcart was too emotional. Allen couldn’t have killed either Willingham or Brady, no match for them physically. Slater worked with his hands, but not with ink or charcoal. It was a very different skill, a very different brain.

That left Singleton or Miller.

He considered the two men, then went back to the portrayal on paper. Miller in the dock. Yes, that went along with what Rutledge himself had suspected. It could be proved. The portrayal of Singleton was more like the recruiting posters Rutledge had seen at the start of the war—the Hun bayoneting innocent Belgian women and children and committing other atrocities. It had made excellent propaganda, men had volunteered in droves. And like most propaganda, there was not much basis in fact to support it. The emotional impact was all.

Hamish said, “He was trained to kill.”

“So he was. But why should he attack Willingham or Brady, suddenly and without apparent warning?”

Rutledge put the drawings back in their folder and shoved them out of sight in the desk.

“We’ll start with Mrs. Cathcart. Her cottage is near enough to have heard any exchanges.”

She was reluctant to talk to him about Willingham. “He’s dead, we should respect the dead.”

“He was murdered, Mrs. Cathcart. There’s a difference.”

“There’s that.” She took a deep breath, then answered with a self-deprecating gesture. “He would say the cruelest things. I tried not to listen. He told me once that I was a self-centered woman with nothing to offer any man. That was when he was very angry because I’d had someone come and repair my roof. It was a noisy business, and he shouted at them to stop.”

“And Quincy?”

“They got into a shouting match once, because Willingham called him a ne’er-do-well who had never worked a day in his life.”

“Who else took the brunt of his tongue?”

“Mr. Miller, of course. Willingham called him a liar and a scoundrel, and said he should be locked up.”

“What was that about?”

“I’m not really sure. Mr. Miller told Quincy it was because Willingham thought he’d seen Mr. Miller’s photograph in a London newspaper. Some scheme to defraud. It was Mr. Singleton he annoyed the most, called him a toy soldier, a disgrace to the uniform. Mr. Singleton ignored him, but I saw his face, sometimes, and it would be twisted with his fury.”

“Any truth to the charges?”

“I don’t know. It hurts most when they’re true, doesn’t it? Hearing them shouted about like the town crier. I don’t think anyone would have blamed Singleton if he’d taken on Willingham and beaten him until he took back every word.” She flushed at her own vehemence. “I’m sorry, I could never like the man, though I wouldn’t have wanted him killed.”

“It might have been the only way to stop him.”

“Yes, there’s that. A pity, wouldn’t you say? But I thought it was Mr. Brady who’d killed Willingham. Why are you interested in the rest of us?”

“Making sure we’ve got the right man,” he said, and thanked her.

Hill was waiting. “What was that all about?”

“Mrs. Cathcart had heard some of Willingham’s shouting matches. Did you find the Brady sketch in his cottage?”

“No, but then he’d have burned it, wouldn’t he? If he’d been guilty.”

“I don’t think Willingham drew any of them. There was no paper, no special ink, no pens in his desk. How had he done them without the proper tools?”

“Look, Rutledge, we’re doing our best. If you want to point a finger, then get on with it. If not, leave us to our work.”

“Start with Singleton. He and Brady were both in the army. There might have been something there. Singleton might not have known that in the beginning. Brady kept his past to himself, I should think. When the truth came out, Singleton might have thought that Brady knew more than he should.”

“Singleton makes no secret about being cashiered.”

“He didn’t, did he? Perhaps it was too late when he realized he’d been better off keeping his mouth shut.”

“Then why kill Willingham first?”

“Willingham irritated everybody. Kill two birds with one stone, and put the blame on Brady before setting up his death.”

Hill glared at him. “You’re not serious.”

“Do you have any better suggestion? Go talk to him, but watch your back if you’re going to make accusations.”

Hill looked at the cottages, the way they were set out, to give each one maximum privacy. “Willingham could have seen anyone going into Brady’s cottage, couldn’t he? A good soldier would have taken him out, then launched his main attack.”

Rutledge walked back to his motorcar and said as he took up the crank, “Good luck.”

Hill was dragging his feet. “I’ll ask the army for information,” he said. “I’ve been wrong once already. I don’t relish a second time.”

“Your decision,” Rutledge agreed, and drove off.

Hamish said, “He doesna’ believe you.”

Rutledge answered, “I think he does. He’s just covering his back.”

He turned the car and went to call on Sarah Parkinson, on his way back to London.