A Pale Horse

by Charles Todd

  Mark smiled at Rutledge. “Lucky man, you have no wife to make your decisions for you.” And then he too remembered Jean and looked away.

  Rutledge said only, “I don’t know if it’s luck or a curse. My sister keeps me in line.”

  Freddy said, thoughtfully, “I saw Frances some ten days back, walking along Bond Street with Simon Barrington. Good man, Simon.” As if to say he’d seen which way the wind blew there. And as if to reassure Rutledge that she might make a worse choice.

  “He’s in Scotland at the moment,” Rutledge answered.

  “Scotland?” Mark was surprised. “He dined with the Douglases last night. I’m sure of it.”

  Rutledge heard him, but managed to say, “I must be wrong, then. I may not have a wife, but I know how to listen with half an ear.”

  That brought a round of laughter, and they said their good nights.

  Driving to his flat, Rutledge tried to recall some of the evening’s conversation, but it was a blur, already fading. All he could hear was Hadley’s voice: He dined with the Douglases last night. I’m sure of it.

  Tomorrow he would make it his business to find out what had happened between Frances and Simon Barrington. It had been a long day, and a good night’s sleep would show him how best to go about it.

  A night’s sleep he was not to have. There was a constable on his doorstep, standing there with the stoic air of a man prepared to remain at his post until Doomsday, if that was required of him.

  When he saw Rutledge step out of his motorcar, he waited until his quarry turned toward him to say, “Evening, sir. Chief Superintendent Bowles’s compliments, sir, and will you come to the Yard at once.”

  Rutledge doubted that the chief superintendent had said anything about compliments. But he nodded and replied, “Come in, while I change.”

  “I’m to bring you as soon as I find you, begging your pardon, sir.”

  “Constable Burns, isn’t it? Well, Constable, I am not appearing at the Yard in evening dress, and there’s an end of it. Another five minutes won’t matter.” He unlocked the door to his flat and added with more humor than he felt, “I won’t tell him if you don’t.”

  “No, sir. Yes, sir,” Burns replied woodenly, and followed him into the flat as if expecting him to escape through a back window.

  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 sec
onds 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.

  The cottages were behind him, and ahead lay Wayland’s Smithy in a copse of beech trees. He could make it out clearly, an arrangement of great stones that encompassed a small space with a narrow opening. It had probably been a Stone Age tomb, not a blacksmith’s shop. Still, legend maintained that if a man left his horse there overnight to be shod, and a coin to pay for the work, the animal would be waiting for him in the morning. More likely, local smiths had discovered a way to expand their trade. For centuries fire and those who used it to work metal were held in high regard, and sometimes feared as well.

  A few miles along, he found a small inn by the road, lorries in the yard and a motorcar or two as well.

  He stopped to ask if they were serving at this hour, and inside saw a pot of tea standing on a small table near the door, a stack of mugs beside it, sugar and a pitcher of lukewarm milk just behind it.

  He poured himself a cup, wandered into the tiny reception area, and sat down by the window overlooking the road.

  It was two hours later that he opened his eyes again.

  A woman was clearing away the tea things, and she smiled as he stirred and then straightened up in his chair.

  “You’re not the first to nod off in that chair,” she said, her eyes merry, “nor the last. That your motorcar by the lilacs?”

  “I’m afraid so. When do you begin serving breakfast?”

  “Lord love you, we closed the kitchen more than an hour ago. Most of the lorry drivers have moved on. I’d have thought their racket would’ve wakened the dead.”

  “Not this dead,” he said, standing and stretching his shoulders. “Do you by any chance have rooms here?”

  “We keep a half-dozen beds for travelers. Clean sheets and good food, as well as good cheer. That’s what we offer. And all we offer.” She considered him. “It’s not very posh—”

  Rutledge smiled. “Still, I’d like a room for tonight, if you have one. I’m here to see the horse.”

  “Oh, yes? It’s early for the day-trippers, but I expect you aren’t the usual visitor. What are you, then?”

  Her face was red with the morning’s rush, her hair pinned back out of her way, and her clothing sober, as if she worked hard and had no time to worry about how she looked.

  He hadn’t been prepared to deal with questions of this sort.

  “I was tired of London, and I drove all night.” Following her into the dining room, he added, “I needed to see something besides walls and pavement and people.”

  “Disappointed in love, are you?”

  He was on the point of vigorously denying it when he realized that she was teasing him. And he must have looked the picture of the rejected lover, unshaven, his clothes unpressed, his face marked with fatigue.

  “No. Foolish in the extreme.”

  She laughed. “Sit down over there in the corner—that cloth’s clean—and I’ll bring you whatever’s left from breakfast. There’s usually cold bacon, bread, and hard-boiled eggs in the cupboard. There’s coffee as well as tea. Some of the lorry drivers prefer it to keep them awake.”

  “I’ll stay with tea.”

  When she brought his plate it was large as a charger, and as promised there were rashers of bacon, eggs, toasted bread, and pots of butter and jam. Rutledge thanked her and added, “I’ve just come past those cottages not far from the spot where you can look up and see the White Horse. Odd place to put them, I should think, unless they’re intended for viewers to stop in.” He couldn’t remember seeing them there when he’d come to Uffington as a boy, but then the horse had been all that mattered, firing his imagination.

  “Well, I hope you’re not thinking of wanting one. They’re taken, the lot of them. They were put up near the beginning of the late Queen’s reign, leper houses they were. But no lepers came, and then they were let to anyone who was willing to live there. The local people don’t much care for them, but there’s no dearth of people who do.”

  “Why leper houses? Was leprosy a problem here?”

  She paused on her way back to the kitchen. “It was a Miss Tomlin, they say, who was set on them, having been a missionary and seen her share of suffering. And there’s a leper in the Bible, you know. I expect that was what put her in mind of doing something for them. She sold off another parcel of land her grandfather had left her and sent for a builder to make cottages where the poor things could live without being tormented. But she never found any ‘children of God’ as she called them, and she died not long after.”

  “At least she cared enough to try.”

  “Well, there’s that, I expect. Or a guilty conscience. The fact is, she could have done more good with her money in other directions, in my opinion. A touch of the sun, it’s what my granddad always said. Too much sun and too long in heathen lands. She’d lost sight of what truly needed doing in England. And I’ve dishes to see to. My husband’s gone to market, and the girl who dries for me has a bad thumb, so I’m on my own. Give me half an hour, and there’ll be a room for you.”

  She was gone, leaving him to the hearty breakfast.

  Afterward she showed him to a small room that seemed Lilliputian, and he remembered the young man on the road. He’d have played the very devil getting himself into this box, he thought.

  And the cramped space sent his claustrophobia reeling. The first order of business was to open the only window, which looked out on the road. He stood there breathing in the morning air and fighting an urge to run back down the stairs after Mrs. Smith, begging for something larger. But there weren’t any larger rooms, given the size of the building.

  Fatigue overtook him after a few minutes, and he lay down on the narrow bed, asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. The fragrance of sun-dried sheets folded with lavender was the last thing he remembered.

  It was late morning when he drove back to the White Horse and climbed the hill. His legs were longer than they had been at age nine, and h
e made short work of it now. As a child he’d huffed and puffed in his father’s wake, trying to keep pace but stumbling as he tried to see everything at once.

  Hamish, unhappy with this heathen horse, kept him company with a vigorous objection to having any part of it.

  When one stood on the crest of the hill looking down at the figure, it was difficult to pick out what the expanse of white chalk represented. Aware of what the design was, it was possible to identify the flowing tail, the legs stretched in a gallop, the reared head. But the ancient people who had cut the turf here to create the figure must have had someone standing on the ground below, guiding them.

  As, he realized, someone was standing now, looking up at him.

  He began to walk back the way he’d come, and the man stayed where he was. It wasn’t the young giant from early this morning, but an older man with gray in his hair and a lined face. His eyes, when Rutledge was near enough to see them, were brown but the whites were yellow.

  Malaria.

  Rutledge had seen troops from the Commonwealth, especially India, with just such yellowing.

  “Good morning,” he said to the man, for all the world a traveler taken with the local sight. “It’s quite a piece of work, isn’t it? I expect it was dug with wooden mattocks or antler horn. I wonder how long it took to create the full figure.”

  “Don’t ask me, I don’t know a damned thing about it. And care less. Is that what brought you here, the horse?”

  Warily, Rutledge said, “Should there be another reason?”

  “Well, Partridge has gone missing again. There’s generally someone from London looking in on him or waiting for him to come back when he’s on one of his walkabouts.”

  It was an Australian term, and the man seemed to use it as if from habit.

  “How do you know he’s—er—gone missing?”

  “I feed his cat, don’t I? When he’s not to home, she comes to my door. That’s the arrangement we have. And I don’t mind, she’s a good mouser.”

  Rutledge held out his hand and introduced himself.

  “Quincy,” the other man said, briefly. “Well, since you’re down, you’ll want to come for a spot of tea.”