A Pale Horse

by Charles Todd

  “And Albert forgave him, you say? In public or private?”

  “Both. He was—” She stopped, horrified. “You aren’t thinking—? This man they found dead—it couldn’t have been the one in Whitby, could it? Is that why Inspector Madsen has gone back to Dilby so many times?”

  Rutledge answered, “Early days yet, but I’ll take the sketch to Mrs. Crowell and ask her. She won’t have forgotten what he looked like.”

  “But that will just bring it all back again.”

  “Did you see the man, could you identify him instead?”

  “I wasn’t engaged to Julian then. I knew about the incident, of course. It happened just before the war. Early July, I think. Julian and I weren’t engaged until August. It wasn’t—I wasn’t involved. Ask Albert. He’ll be able to tell you.”

  “He’s already told the police that he can’t identify the dead man. I have no choice, you see, but to speak to Mrs. Crowell.”

  She came out from behind the desk, her face set. “I’m going with you, Inspector. Let me find someone to mind the desk while I’m gone.”

  “No, I think it best—”

  “It isn’t a question of what you think, Inspector. I won’t have Alice upset about this business. I’m coming to be certain she isn’t. A woman ought to be there with her.”

  7

  Ten minutes later Miss Norton climbed into Rutledge’s motorcar and settled herself. “The quickest way is as the crow flies, of course. But as we aren’t crows—” She began to direct him, out of Elthorpe, then around the skirts of the estate on whose grounds the great abbey ruins took pride of place, and down an unmade road that wandered for several miles before dividing. The right branch continued to the west, while the left turned more to the south.

  “To your right,” Miss Norton said. “It’s only another mile or two.”

  They soon came into a small village clinging to the road. “There’s the school,” she said. “Alice should be upstairs. Alone, I hope.”

  He passed the row of shops, a tiny lending library, a church more the size of a chapel, and came to a house a little larger than the others he’d passed, the front façade softened by stonework around the windows and above the door.

  “It was a prosperous merchant’s home,” Miss Norton was saying, her nervousness showing in the tenseness of her voice. “And left to the village some sixty years ago to be used as a school. I wish I’d never mentioned Alice,” she went on. “How did you trick me into saying anything about her?”

  “It wasn’t a trick,” he replied, drawing up in front of the school. “You were telling me about your fiancé. Julian.”

  “Yes, and somehow—”

  He got down and went around to her door as she added, “You won’t tell Inspector Madsen about this foolishness, will you? He’s already brought Albert in for questioning four times now. It will only make him more anxious to prove something.”

  “If Mrs. Crowell identifies this man from the sketch, then I’ve no choice.”

  “Oh, blast the sketch,” she said furiously, slamming her door behind her. “I wish I’d never seen you.”

  She marched ahead of him, back ramrod straight, her face closed. She went directly into the school, leaving him to follow or not, as he pleased.

  There was a central hall with stairs leading up to the first floor. The building was quiet, the students gone home at the end of the day. The sign over the nearest door read SCHOOL OFFICE.

  Miss Norton passed it by and was already halfway up the stairs.

  An echo of voices, a child’s and a woman’s, reached them, disappearing down the passage ahead of them.

  “Alice?” Miss Norton called.

  “Yes? Mary? Is that you?” Mrs. Crowell turned to stare. “What on earth brings you here at this time of day? Who’s minding the hotel?”

  “I asked Velma to step in for me.” As they came closer, Mary Norton indicated the man behind her. “Alice—this is Inspector Rutledge from London. Scotland Yard.” Her words seemed to fill the passage, floating ahead of her, echoing behind her.

  To his surprise as he caught up with the two women, Mrs. Crowell turned warmly to him, extending her hand.

  He took it as she said, “How nice of you to come!” as if she’d been expecting him.

  A classroom door opened farther down the passage, and a head popped out, vanishing again just as quickly. Rutledge glimpsed a pale, startled boy’s face. Then it was gone.

  He followed the two women into a tidy office, and Mrs. Crowell shut her door.

  “I’m so glad you came to see me first,” she went on, speaking directly to Rutledge, “because it’s important to know the facts behind my concerns. There is a history of sorts between my husband and Inspector Madsen.” She was intense, earnest, as if she had rehearsed the manner of her presentation many times over. “This may well explain why he’s so anxious to prove that my husband is guilty of murder. But he isn’t—truly he isn’t. I can think of no reason in this world why he should kill a stranger. I can’t explain how my husband’s book got to the ruins either, but if you think about it, is it likely that he’d take such a silly thing with him if he were intent on murder?”

  Rutledge could see the scar clearly now, running across her face from the corner of her left eye to the line of her jaw on the right, near her ear. It had healed smoothly without pulling at the flesh around it, but it was still ugly, marring the rather classical features of straight nose, square jaw, and well-set gray eyes. She had not been strictly beautiful, but was certainly a very attractive woman, before the wound. He couldn’t tell if she was still self-conscious about it or had grown used to it.

  Hamish said, “She doesna’ look in the mirror verra’ often.”

  Before Rutledge could answer Mrs. Crowell, Mary Norton said quickly, “He’s brought a sketch to show you, my dear. Will you look at it and tell me if you recognize this man?”

  “The dead man?” Alice Crowell paused as she was about to take her chair behind the desk. “But—” she faltered. “Why—I mean why should I wish to see it?”

  “Because—well, to assure the police that Albert is telling the truth when he says he never saw this person before.” Mary’s words were hurried, as if to break the worst news quickly and avoid any mention of the man who had scarred Mrs. Crowell’s face.

  “Oh. Very well.” Alice reluctantly held out her hand for the folder that Rutledge was carrying. “He isn’t—I shan’t have nightmares, shall I?” she asked as he passed the folder to her.

  “It’s merely a man’s face. Nothing more frightening than that.”

  As the two bent over the sketch he’d brought, Mary’s dark head close to Alice’s fair one, Rutledge wondered how he would have felt about someone who did such injury to Jean. Or to Frances, for that matter. If he could have forgiven the drunken man with such apparent grace. Or perhaps Crowell had seen the change in his wife’s appearance as a way of keeping her here in this small, dingy school when it was clear that she wasn’t from this part of the country. Her accent, like Rutledge’s own, spoke of good schooling and a wider circle. Righteous men, he thought, often feel the need to serve in the most forbidding places.

  He watched Mrs. Crowell’s expression as she examined the sketch, but all he could read there was puzzlement.

  “I don’t think he’s anyone I know,” she said doubtfully, still bending over the drawing. “Should I recognize him?”

  “It was important to ask, on the off chance you did,” Rutledge told her.

  Mary Norton bit her lip. He could almost read the thought in her eyes. Better with you here than with Inspector Madsen…finish it now.

  Before he could stop her, she said, “Think back, Alice. To Whitby. Could this be the man who knocked you down and hurt you? You told me once you’d never forget his face.” Mary spoke urgently, trying to protect and going the wrong way about it. “Could it be he?”

  “Oh, my God,” Alice Crowell said softly, her shock apparent even to Rutledge. “Do you think
—? But no, it couldn’t have been this man. I know his name. Henry Shoreham, that was the man’s name.”

  Mary Norton said triumphantly to Rutledge, “It’s not the man.” And then to Alice she went on. “Be quite sure! And we needn’t speak of it again. To Inspector Madsen or Albert or anyone else. Ever.”

  It was almost as if Mary Norton’s anxiety sent the wrong message to Mrs. Crowell, twisting her promise into a warning.

  Rutledge leaned forward and took Miss Norton by the arm. “Let Mrs. Crowell take her time and look at the drawing in her own fashion,” he said gently, drawing her out from behind the desk to one of the chairs in front of it. “Don’t put words into her mouth.”

  “But I’m not—” Mary Norton protested.

  He cut off her indignation. “Please. Give her time to think.”

  Mary Norton sat down, body stiff and still resisting.

  Alice Crowell looked from one of them to the other. “Are you saying you believe this was Henry Shoreham? I can’t believe it is. It just doesn’t look—”

  There was a tap at the door, and one of the schoolboys stuck his head in.

  “Mrs. Crowell?”

  She straightened up. “Yes, Hugh, what do you want? I have visitors.”

  “Oh, sorry, Mrs. Crowell. It’s Johnnie, he’s been sick, Mrs. Crowell. All over the floor.” His face was tight with worry. “Can I take him home, then? We’ve almost finished cleaning the desks—please can I go?”

  “I’ll be there shortly, Hugh—”

  “He’ll not make it, it’s all I could do to keep him from being sick in the passage. He’s at the door now, waiting for me.”

  “Yes, very well,” Alice Crowell said impatiently. “But I’ll speak with you both tomorrow. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Crowell, thank you, Mrs. Crowell.” And he was gone, shutting the door quickly behind him.

  Mary Norton had risen again to look out the window. “Should you see to them, Alice? There’s a boy out there, doubled up. He doesn’t look as if he’ll make it home.”

  But Alice Crowell was saying, “There’s been a rash of suspicious sickness among that lot. One of the younger boys is at home and hasn’t come to school this week. His mother thinks he’s malingering, but he’s in bed crying and begging her to look at his tongue. His brother was sick two days ago, and now Johnnie.” She turned back to the sketch but the uncertainty of a moment ago was gone. “This isn’t the man. He was larger, for one thing, and I remember his chin, it had a cleft in it. I remember that very well.” She shivered, and turned away from the desk. “He bent over me, and that was all I could see, and his breath—”

  “There’s no cleft here,” Mary Norton began, looking across at Rutledge. “Are you satisfied now?”

  Rutledge ignored her. “Please take your time, Mrs. Crowell. We need to be certain.”

  She shook her head. “No. I will swear to it.”

  “Thank God,” Mary Norton said, her breath catching. “You don’t know how worried—”

  Mrs. Crowell was considering Rutledge. “You’ve only come because of the sketch? To see if I’d remember the face, because of Henry Shoreham? But I thought—I thought Mary said you’d come from London?”

  She seemed to be waiting for him to say something, to confirm that something else had brought him here.

  “I was sent from London to look into the matter here,” Rutledge replied, choosing his words. “It was only after I’d spoken to Miss Norton that I felt it was important to ask you if you knew this man.”

  “I see.” Her gaze went back to Mary Norton. “Why on earth were you telling him about that, Mary? How could it have come up?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said, her face flushing. “Mr. Rutledge spoke to me after Mark Benson sketched the man, and I was saying something about the war, somehow, and then Julian, and somehow the conversation came round to you.”

  Rutledge stepped in. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Crowell, but it’s essential to look at all the possibilities, even the far-fetched ones. Do you know, by chance, what this man Shoreham did for a living?”

  “He was a clerk in a bank, as I remember. He’d been passed over for a promotion. He claimed.”

  The door opened and a young man stepped in, his eyes going straight to his wife.

  “Am I missing something?”

  She quickly got herself in hand and said, “This is Mr. Rutledge—from Scotland Yard. He’s come to look into what happened in the abbey. He asked me to look at a sketch of the dead man that a Mr. Benson made for him. But I don’t know him—the victim.”

  “That wasn’t very pleasant for you, my dear,” Crowell said, then turned to Rutledge, offering his hand. “You should have spoken to me first, before disturbing my wife.”

  “Would you have preferred that I take her into Elthorpe to see this man for herself?”

  “Doubting my word?” It was a challenge.

  “No. Verifying it, so that the police can get on with this case. We’ve lost enough time, chasing wild geese in the wrong direction.”

  “I see.” He moved around the desk to look at the sketch Mrs. Crowell was still holding. “This is well done, a good likeness. But no more familiar than the man himself was, when I first saw him.”

  “Then I needn’t trouble you further,” Rutledge replied, taking the measure of Crowell. Irritated and sensitive from his previous encounters with Madsen, if he was any judge. And this wasn’t the time to press. “Thank you, Mrs. Crowell. I am grateful for your help.”

  He turned to go. Mary looked at him, something in her expression that warned him what to do next.

  “Miss Norton, I’ve kept you long enough. I’ll be happy to take you back to the hotel.”

  She appeared reluctant, saying at first, “I really should stay—”

  But Alice Crowell broke in. “Nonsense. Mr. Dunn won’t care to have you away too long. Go with Mr. Rutledge, Mary. I’ll see you at the weekend.”

  Mary went to the door with Rutledge. “Albert—”

  He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll sit with her for a bit.”

  And then she was in the corridor with Rutledge, casting him a grateful glance.

  Outside, Rutledge looked up and down the street, but there was no sign of Hugh and his classmate.

  When they were back in the motorcar, Rutledge asked, “What were you afraid of? Does Crowell have a temper?”

  “No. Not a temper. He—sometimes I just feel as if it would be better if he did explode into anger. He’s so—so controlled. I don’t know why Alice fell in love with him. And not Julian.”

  “It’s not a matter for the head but for the heart,” he replied, turning the motorcar to go back the way he’d come.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw something among the trees in the churchyard. The boys who had asked permission to leave while he was interviewing Mrs. Crowell.

  He pulled the motorcar to the verge and said to Miss Norton, “I’ll just be a moment.”

  He walked briskly across the churchyard, and the two boys, who had ducked behind the apse of the chapel, turned wide-eyed as he came round the corner. There was no time to run. And nowhere to run to. They stood their ground of necessity.

  The other boy, the one Hugh claimed was sick, looked it, his face pale and his eyes red. Even Hugh was drawn and wretched, his gaze dropping to his shoes after that one wild glance at Rutledge.

  “We couldn’t make it home,” Hugh said finally. “You can see, he’s been sick all down his front.”

  “I was worried,” Rutledge said. “Can I offer you a lift?”

  “Oh, no,” the other boy—Johnnie, was it?—began.

  Hugh said quickly, “If he’s quiet a bit, he’ll be all right.”

  Rutledge considered them. “If you’re sure?”

  “Yes, sir.” It was a fervent chorus.

  He turned to leave, then stopped. “What do you know of this business the police have been speaking to your schoolmaster about?”

  Children heard their
elders talk and were sometimes better at putting two and two together than adults.

  But Hugh’s reaction was unexpected. Like a cornered animal, he backed against the stone wall of the chapel and seemed to have lost his tongue.

  Johnnie was sick again, dry heaves jerking his body.

  Rutledge waited until the worst had passed, then handed him a handkerchief.

  Hamish said, “Ye can see he’s in no case to answer ye.”

  Johnnie, looking as if he wanted nothing more than his bed at home, leaned against the nearest tombstone.

  Rutledge persisted, speaking mainly to Hugh but keeping his eye on Johnnie. “Did you see something the night when someone was killed near Elthorpe? Did you see Mr. Crowell leave the school where he was working that evening, and go to meet someone?”

  Hugh took a deep breath. “We were home in bed, weren’t we, Johnnie? There was nothing for us to see.”

  It was the truth. Even Hamish could read that in the boy’s fervent manner.

  And yet it wasn’t the whole truth.

  “Who did you see leave the village?” Rutledge persisted.

  “Nobody!” they exclaimed loudly, in unison.

  “You needn’t be afraid. If there’s something you want to tell me, I’ll see that no harm comes to you.”

  The boys stood there, hangdog but refusing to budge.

  Hamish said, “Ye havena’ found the key.”

  Rutledge changed direction. “Do you like Mr. Crowell? Is he a good master?”

  They nodded vigorously. Reassuring him, proving that they had no reason to step forward, no reason to be afraid.