A Pale Horse

by Charles Todd

  “Thank you, Mr. Quincy.”

  “No, just Quincy,” he retorted, turning on his heel to lead the way to the cottage across from the one with the white gate.

  Rutledge bent his head to follow his host inside. The rooms were small but of a size for one man to manage well enough. Or one woman. He’d glimpsed a woman’s face peering out at him from her windows as he had turned from the road into the lane that linked the cottages.

  “That chair’s got better springs,” Quincy said, pointing it out.

  Rutledge sat down and looked around. From the sitting room/ parlor, he could see a kitchen in the back where Quincy was busy, a second room across the entry from this one, its door shut, and in the middle of the house, stairs up to a loft.

  “Quite comfortable here, are you?” Rutledge asked.

  “If you like small places,” Quincy answered, putting on the kettle. “I’ve had to store some of my belongings under the bed upstairs. Where did you drive from?”

  “London,” Rutledge answered and they talked until the kettle whistled about the city, which Quincy seemed to know, although his information was often more than a little out of date as if he hadn’t been there for some time.

  The closed door creaked, a paw came out and around it, followed by a long gray cat with orange eyes. Behind her, Rutledge could see a burst of color in the room, as if tins of paint had been splattered everywhere.

  “Dublin!” Quincy, catching sight of the cat, swore and came to scoop her up to put her outside. But first he’d shut the inner door quickly as if not wishing Rutledge to know what was in the room beyond.

  But Rutledge had already guessed. Birds, in every hue, every size, all naturally posed. And all quite dead.

  He said nothing, accepting the cup of tea he was offered. “These cottages are interesting. What’s their history?”

  “Not much,” Quincy told him bluntly. “Built at a guess some fifty years ago by a woman who had more money than sense. Comfortable enough, but I need a bicycle to go anywhere. It’s out back.”

  “And how did Partridge get around?”

  “He had a motorcar. It’s in the shed behind his house. I expect he wasn’t going far and left it in favor of his own bicycle.”

  “Does he usually wander off like this?”

  “He’s mad as a hatter,” Quincy responded sourly. “Goes where the wind blows.”

  “And who comes here looking for him?”

  “Business associates. So they tell me. It seems he worked for a firm in London before he was put to pasture, and apparently someone there still cares what becomes of him.”

  “That’s thoughtful,” Rutledge answered.

  “Not thoughtful, careful. I expect he was someone important enough that they didn’t want the world and its brother knowing he’s gone balmy.”

  “When was the last time he left?”

  “February, it was. The man here when Partridge came back told me he’d been spotted on a street corner in Birmingham, preaching peace and harmony to the world.”

  “That’s cold work in February.”

  “Yes, well, I don’t think he cares. I don’t think he cares for anything except Dublin, the cat. A young woman came here once and he wouldn’t let her in. I expect it was his daughter. There was a resemblance, at least.”

  “His wandering off must worry her.”

  “Most of the time it’s only a day, a day and a half that he’s away. Occasionally it’s a longer period of time. Someone told me, I forget who it was, that he must have another house elsewhere. That that’s where he goes. But he’s never spoken of it, so my guess is that it isn’t true. Gossip is not always reliable. And in his case, not always helpful.”

  “And his daughter never came back?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “A pity. It sounds as if Partridge needs her.”

  “He doesn’t need anyone when he’s right in his head. Which is most of the time. You’re very interested in him, for a passerby.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve time on my hands. And people intrigue me. Partridge’s walkabouts as you call them. Your birds.” As a diversion, it worked beautifully.

  “Seen them, did you? Well, there’s no law broken in having them.”

  “None that I know of.”

  Rutledge had finished his tea, and stood up. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  “If you’re needful of seeing in the cottage, Partridge never locked it.”

  Surprised, Rutledge said, “I have no right to trespass on his privacy.”

  “The other watchers weren’t so particular about that.”

  “Yes, well, as it happens, I’m not one of the other watchers. Thank you again, Quincy.”

  “I’ll see you about. Watcher or not.”

  Rutledge left. The woman who had been peering out her window at him was in her back garden, hanging a morning’s wash on the line. He wondered if it was to see who he was and what he did next. A better vantage point than the window.

  He walked back to his motorcar to find the young man he’d met earlier with his head deep in the bonnet.

  He jerked it out as he heard Rutledge approaching, and said, “I like mechanical things. Engines. Whatever. Do you mind?”

  “Not at all. The name’s Rutledge.”

  The other man held out his hand, saw that it was filthy and drew it back again. “Andrew, Andrew Slater.”

  “I’ve been admiring the White Horse,” Rutledge said as Slater dove back into the inner workings of the engine.

  “I saw you this morning. Asleep on the road.”

  “Yes—” He let it go at that.

  “We don’t get many visitors this time of year,” Slater went on, voice muffled. “The horse is most popular in the summer. People bring baskets and spread out a cloth and have their lunch or their tea there. I don’t think the horse much cares for that.”

  “I needed to get away from London,” Rutledge said. “This was as good a place as any. Why should the horse care?”

  “Someone put him there, a long time ago. He was a god, then. But we’ve forgotten why today. And so to most he’s only a chalk figure.”

  Slater withdrew his head and folded the bonnet back in its place. “She runs sweetly, your motorcar.”

  “Thank you.” Rutledge looked at the filthy hands, the black ground into the creases and whorls of the skin. “A smith, are you?”

  Slater grinned widely. “Yes. Or to say it another way, I was. Until the war came and took away the horses. I work with motors now, and mend things. My dad didn’t have the knack of that, but I do. Do you want to see?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he led Rutledge to one of the cottages, the outer one in the half circle they formed.

  Slater dwarfed it just walking through the door, and Rutledge felt a spasm of claustrophobia when he went in and was asked to shut the door behind him.

  The house was surprisingly tidy. On a table under the back window, an array of work was set out.

  “I don’t keep such things at the forge,” Slater was saying as he gestured shyly to the table. “Don’t want anyone walking off with them. They do, thinking I won’t notice.”

  Rutledge saw a set of hinges in wrought iron, with matching knobs in the shape of a beaver, and the cabinet for them on the floor next to a table leg. They were beautifully done, as was the butterfly hook for hanging a plant by a door and a set of fire irons, shaped like deer, with the basket made to look like entwined antlers.

  It was remarkable workmanship.

  To one side stood a lovely Georgian teapot, where Slater was in the process of setting the handle back in place.

  He saw Rutledge’s glance and said proudly, “That’s from St. Margaret’s, part of the tea service, and the handle had worn right off. They’ll never know it’s been repaired when I finish with it.”

  “You’re very good with your hands,” Rutledge told him. “It’s fine work.”

  Slater seemed to expand with the praise. “It’s a gi
ft. I was given it. Do you know those great stones in the beech grove farther along this road? The ones they call Wayland’s Smithy?”

  It was the prehistoric tomb. “Yes, I do.”

  “I slept there one night. As a boy. And I was given the gift. Even my father had to admit to it. He could shoe horses and mend wagon tongues and put a latch on a barn, whatever needed doing. But this work—” Slater swept his hand above the table. “He couldn’t do it. Even he said as much.”

  “He must have been very proud of you.”

  A rueful smile dimmed the brightness in his face. “He told me I was dreaming, thinking the smithy had anything to do with gifts. Foolishness, he called it.”

  “What do your neighbors think of your work?”

  “I don’t show most people. I don’t know why I showed you.” He seemed to consider that for a moment. “You have a way of listening. Most people don’t hear what I say to them. It’s always been like that.”

  “How well do you know your neighbors?” Rutledge persisted.

  Slater shrugged. “I see them from time to time. Mr. Partridge stands in the dark and looks up at the White Horse. I’ve lost count of the evenings I walk by him and he never speaks. I’m one to like walking in the dark, I go to the Smithy if there’s moonlight. But he just stands there. And the lady—she’s quite strange, you know. I think she’s afraid of the dark. House is shut up tight long before sunset, and stays that way until full light in the morning.” He frowned. “We’re outcasts, if you ask me. That’s why we live here. Nobody else would have us. I was always the biggest in my school, bigger than many of the older boys. And the parents, they was always protecting their little ones from me, thinking I’d do them a harm.” He looked down at his hands, huge and strong. “I’ve never hurt a thing, not so much as a butterfly. But I wasn’t allowed to play with the other children, and they laughed at me sometimes. Gullible, they called me, after a giant in a book. I learned soon enough to stay away from them.”

  Rutledge could see the hurt in the big man’s face. “I expect they didn’t understand that giants could be—gentle.”

  “They never tried to know.” Slater took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to trouble you with my life.”

  “People are people,” Rutledge said. “Each one interesting in his or her own way. Good or bad, mean or generous, helpful or not, they make up the human race. You must take them as you find them, because few of them ever really change.”

  “I’ve been happy here, going in to the forge when I have heavy work to do, staying clear of them all when I can. But it’s lonely, all the same.” He studied Rutledge’s face. “Did you fight in France?”

  “Yes, I did.” He answered the question simply, wondering where it was going.

  “Aye, I thought as much. You brought it home with you. And you aren’t the first I’ve met with such a look. No offense meant, it’s there for anyone to see. The army wouldn’t take me. I told them I was strong, but they told me I wasn’t up to the work. I told them I could shoe the horses and keep the wagons and caissons moving, but they didn’t believe me.” He shook his head, the disappointment still raw. “I don’t read very well. But what’s that got to say to what I can do with my hands?”

  “Very little,” Rutledge answered and turned toward the door. “All the same, you were lucky. It was not a war you’d have liked.”

  “What does liking have to do with it?”

  He followed Rutledge out into the sunshine again, and noticed when Rutledge took a deep breath, almost unwittingly. “You don’t like small spaces. I’d not sleep in the Smithy, if I were you.” He stood there on his threshold, looking up at the sky.

  “Ever think about the old gods?” Slater asked. “The ones before we was all Christians?”

  Rutledge remembered a woman named Maggie in Westmorland, who knew the Viking gods in her own fashion. “Sometimes,” he answered.

  “They’re still out there, aren’t they? Displaced, but still there, waiting to come back. And they will, one day, and catch us all off our guard. That will be a day of reckoning, when it comes.”

  He nodded to Rutledge and went back inside, shutting the door quietly.

  5

  Walking back to his motorcar, Rutledge tried to see if Partridge’s own motor was still in the shed by the house, but it was impossible, given the direction of the sun, to judge if the light struck metal.

  Hamish said, “If ye’re here to see yon horse, ye’ve done precious little to show an interest.”

  “I thought you didn’t like the horse.”

  “Oh, aye, it’s a wicked beast, but it wasna’ me who told the world and his brother it’s the thing that brought ye here.”

  “I could hardly explain that I was looking for Partridge.”

  “They ken you arena’ a day-tripper wi’ a taste for what’s cut into the chalk. If ye stay anither day, they’ll no’ need to be told the truth.”

  “Then let’s hope Partridge comes home before that.”

  Hamish said, “I dona’ think he will.”

  “Why?”

  “Ye ken, this time they sent a policeman.”

  Rutledge climbed the hill again and walked to the head of the great horse. There he stood and looked across the valley. There was another hill here where Saint George slew the dragon—Dragon Hill, as he remembered it was called. One of many places where the militant saint was said to have encountered dragons. Rutledge recalled a page in one of his mother’s books where Saint George on his white horse—this one?—quelled the dozen-headed, fire-breathing beast with a single spear. Gilt edged and delicately painted, the scene was taken from a plate in an ancient manuscript, and the artist had captured the quality of the original work. Saint George was handsomely robed in crimson and sapphire velvet, no workaday dented armor for him.

  He turned to study the cottages. Nine of them. It would have been more efficient if the War Office had given him the names of the other residents here. He had met two of them, seen a third, and Partridge made a fourth. Where had the other five inhabitants been as he wandered about, walking into Quincy’s house like a welcomed guest, and then into Slater’s?

  He drew himself a mental map of the cottages. They were set out like a horseshoe, appropriate enough here. Four to a side and one at the top of the bend. A lane ran between them, cutting the horseshoe in half, and from the lane paths led to each door.

  Slater lived in Number 1 on the left, then Partridge at Number 2, his white gate distinctive, as if shutting out his neighbors. Quincy was the first cottage on the right-hand side, Number 9 on the map, and the woman with the wash hanging on the line lived in Number 8.

  Someone opened the door of Number 4 and stepped out into the sunshine, shading his hand to see better as he scanned the cottages and then turned slightly to stare up at the horse. Even at that distance, his eyes seemed to meet Rutledge’s, and he stood there, not moving, for a dozen seconds more. Then he turned his back and stepped inside, shutting his door firmly behind him.

  That accounted for five of the residents. And this hadn’t been a casual interest shown by a curious resident. There was more to it. Not a challenge precisely, but an acknowledgment.

  “Anither watcher?” Hamish said.

  Rutledge wouldn’t have been surprised. Someone who knew that Rutledge would be coming and while having no intention of working with him, at least wanted it to be known that he was present as well.

  The government kept an eye on certain people. Quietly and unobtrusively as a rule.

  What had Partridge done to excite interest? Knowing that might make a difference in deciding where to look for him.

  His only choice now was to wait for dark and then search Partridge’s cottage. He could come to it by a roundabout way, passing unseen. He’d been told this was merely a watching brief. But if Hamish was right and Partridge wasn’t coming back, there could be an advantage in knowing what the man was up to.

  Rutledge left the hill of the White Horse half an hour later and went
back to The Smith’s Arms, where he had taken a room. He found he was in time for luncheon served both in the dining room and at a handful of tables that had been set up outside with benches round them for the lorry drivers.

  It was a rough crowd. Men who drove long distances for a living were often footloose by nature and had more in common with one another than with families left behind. They’d cast glances in Rutledge’s direction when he drove up and walked into the inn, curious and suspicious. Then conversation had picked up again when he disappeared from view.

  The innkeeper’s wife—Mrs. Smith—greeted him with a harried nod and went on serving tables with quick efficiency and a laugh that kept the men jolly and at arm’s length. Rutledge glimpsed Mr. Smith; the swinging doors into the nether regions showed him briefly. He was the cook here, not his wife.

  Rutledge wondered if their name was Smith or if they enjoyed the play on words as well as their anonymity. It would explain why they kept their inn for transient custom and showed no ambition to cater to a different clientele.

  Mrs. Smith reappeared from the kitchen with a tray for Rutledge. “If you won’t mind eating it upstairs,” she said apologetically. “There’s not a table to spare for a single.”

  He took the tray and thanked her. In his room he looked under the serviette that covered it and found generous sandwiches of beef and pork, a pickle, a small dish of tinned fruit, and a glass of beer.

  Sitting by the window he ate with an appetite, listening to the voices rising from the tables below. Someone had started a political argument and found himself shouted down by his comrades good-naturedly calling him a fool. But he stuck to his guns, clearly possessed of a grievance against a proposed tax on goods shipped to France or the Low Countries.

  “It’ul put me out of business, I tell you, and you as well,” he said gruffly. “Wait and see.”

  “Rumor,” another voice replied. “It’ul never happen, see if I’m not right.”

  They moved away, still talking, and then it was quiet for a moment before lorry engines roared into life and began to roll out of the yard.