A Pale Horse

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge waited until the battered valise was closed, then took up the dog in the motorcar with them, to leave with a neighbor while Shoreham was away.

  Then they turned toward England.

  It was a silent drive. Only once did Shoreham break the silence. And that was to say, “Who’s the dead man, then?”

  Rutledge answered, “A man who also lost his way, I expect.”

  Rutledge drove straight through to Elthorpe, fighting drowsiness and an ache across his shoulders as he took the most direct route back—Shrewsbury to Manchester, Leeds, and then Harrogate. Rutted roads, slow-moving drays, overladen lorries, and the occasional wandering livestock made the journey feel longer than it was. Outside Shrewsbury he waited impatiently for cows to make their way along the road for morning milking, and in Cheshire, the Royal Mail had come to grief in a ditch, where heavy rains had made a bend tricky. A farm cart and a half-dozen burly men were doing their best to pull it out again.

  Hamish said, “They willna’ manage without help.”

  Rutledge caught himself just before he answered aloud, then called to the driver to offer his services. He gratefully accepted, and in short order the Royal Mail was on the road again.

  They stopped for food and petrol and sometimes to stretch their legs.

  Shoreham was quiet, resigned now, though Rutledge kept an eye on him throughout to gauge his mood.

  One act of drunken unruliness, unintended yet preventable, had altered the direction of Henry Shoreham’s life. And Crowell’s forgiveness, well meant, had only driven the guilt deeper, without hope of expiation. It had become, in a way, retribution.

  It was possible he’d change his mind at some stage of the journey to Yorkshire, preferring to take his chances alone and nearly penniless rather than revisit his nightmare.

  And in truth, if he did change his mind, there was no legal way to stop him. The need to identify a stranger had brought him back to his own personal hell, and indeed, the closer they got to Elthorpe, the more noticeably anxious Shoreham got.

  Still, he said nothing, and the silence was a strain on both men. Hamish filled it instead, his voice alternately hostile and questioning.

  At one point Rutledge asked, just to silence it, “Shoreham. Do you know a Gerald Parkinson? Or Gaylord Partridge?”

  “No. Should I? Is this another test?”

  “Not at all.”

  And the silence reigned once more.

  When the motorcar pulled at last into Elthorpe in the late afternoon, a cold rain was falling and the streets were empty. In the teashop they passed, the tables were filled and steam clouded the windows. The pub was dark, but there was a motorcar in front of the hotel, two men descending and walking briskly through the door.

  Shoreham said, “Peter Littleton lied as well. But for my sake. Don’t punish him for my sins.”

  Rutledge didn’t answer.

  Inspector Madsen had gone home for his tea. Elthorpe was tranquil once more and no murderers wandered in the ruins of an abbey, or anywhere else. He could afford to take his time.

  Rutledge sent the constable on duty for the inspector, and it was with studied reluctance that the man did as he was asked.

  In short order, Inspector Madsen came striding in, confident and in good spirits. His gaze swept over the stranger and moved on to Rutledge.

  “Well, then, what brings you north again? Track down Littleton, did you? Fool’s errand, I could have told you as much, but there you are.”

  “Not quite,” Rutledge replied. “Don’t you recognize this man?”

  Madsen turned his attention to Shoreham’s face, and he frowned. “The Welshman, is it? What possessed you to bring him back with you?” Some of the confidence in his face faltered.

  “His real name is Henry Shoreham, not Llewellyn Williams.”

  Madsen laughed. “I daresay you could find a dozen Henry Shorehams across the breadth of England, if you set your mind to it.” But the laugh rang hollow.

  “You found Littleton, I grant you, and Shoreham had stayed with him for some time. But it was two years ago, not two weeks, when Shoreham left to take up a cousin’s farm in Wales. Littleton was clever, he saw a chance to bury his cousin, and the two of them were convincing.”

  “You’re mad!”

  “Hardly that. Bring out Crowell, if you will, and see what he has to say.”

  “Of course he’ll identify your man as Shoreham. He’s no fool.”

  Shoreham said, his voice not quite steady, “They will know me in Whitby. You’ve only to take me there, to the police. I don’t want to see Crowell. Or his wife.”

  Madsen was staring at him with a hard expression on his face now, convinced against his will, and yet unwilling to admit to it, he was wishing Shoreham at the very devil.

  Rutledge said into the silence, “He’s right.”

  “Then who is the dead man from the abbey? Answer me that, if you’re so damned clever.”

  “It is my belief he’s one Gerald Parkinson, of Wiltshire.”

  “Wiltshire, is it? And what was he doing in Yorkshire?”

  “I’m not sure. But there was this business of Shoreham to settle once and for all. You’ll have to let Crowell go, you know.”

  “Maybe he mistook this Parkinson for Shoreham,” Madsen snapped.

  “Do they look that much alike to you?” Rutledge countered. “Generally, of course, in coloring and height. The same could be said of your constable, there by the door. But there’s no question about the features. They aren’t the same.”

  Madsen said, “Bring me Parkinson’s murderer and I’ll let Crowell go. Not before.”

  But it was bravado. They had only to look at Shoreham, standing there with his eyes downcast and his face pale, the strain evident, to know that Rutledge had found his man.

  “All the same, I’ll take him to Whitby,” Madsen went on.

  “At your expense. And after that, he’s free to return to Wales. Agreed? I’ll leave you the money to pay for his journey.”

  “Agreed.” It was reluctantly promised, but Madsen knew he had lost his gambit. He’d been wrong about Crowell. If in fact he had ever truly believed that the schoolmaster was a killer. And now it was time to save face and back out with as much grace as he could muster.

  Rutledge took Shoreham to the hotel across from the police station and found rooms for them. He said to Shoreham as they turned toward the stairs, “You couldn’t have hidden forever. You couldn’t have lived with the lie.”

  Shoreham stared at him for a moment, then said, “Yes, I could have done that, if you hadn’t come to my door. I could have ignored the truth and told myself the man was dead, and there was no harm in giving him a name—my name. He didn’t have one of his own, did he? But when you stopped in my yard, it was different, somehow. I couldn’t pretend after that. I’d lost the chance.” He held out his hand for his key and added, “You told me you’d pay for my way back to Wales.”

  “The money will be waiting at Inspector Madsen’s office, when he’s finished with you.”

  Shoreham grimaced. “I wasn’t going to run.” And then he was gone, the door shut behind him.

  After four hours’ sleep, Rutledge left Elthorpe and turned south. He took with him the words that Madsen had said to him when he brought the money for Shoreham’s journey home.

  “It must be nice to sleep at night, knowing you’re always right.”

  “I wasn’t blinded by wishful thinking, Madsen. There’s the difference.”

  “Still and all,” the inspector told him bluntly, “I wish you’d never come here. We’d have managed very well without you.”

  “Let go, man, before you destroy your career.”

  “It’ud been worth it. I’ll say that to you and no one else. I don’t know which of them I wanted to hurt more. Him or her. It wouldn’t have changed anything, but it might have taken away a little of the pain on my side.”

  It was something Rutledge was to remember in the days ahead.

&n
bsp; 14

  Rutledge put in a call to Bowles when he stopped for the night in Lincoln.

  Chief Superintendent Bowles wasn’t there, he was told. But Sergeant Gibson had a message for Inspector Rutledge.

  There was a delay while the sergeant was located and brought to the telephone.

  He was gruff. “You’re to come directly to London, sir.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “I’m not to say, sir. It’s a family matter. Your sister will be waiting for you at your flat.”

  If she was waiting there, she must be all right. But she wouldn’t have had the Yard pass on a message if it were only another snag in her relationship with Simon Barrington. He could feel his mind searching for a solution, and finding none.

  “Very well. Thank you, Gibson. I’ll be at the Yard in the afternoon.”

  “Yes, sir.” He sounded doubtful, but then Gibson was not known for his cheerfulness.

  Rutledge put up the receiver and turned around, on his way out of the small room where the hotel telephone had been installed. As he opened the door, he was surprised to see Simon Barrington walking into the hotel dining room, a woman on his arm. Rutledge could see only the back of her head, dark hair and a slim figure.

  He decided on the spot to find somewhere else to dine. He had no wish to come face-to-face with the pair.

  But what was Barrington doing here in Lincoln?

  Hamish said, “Ye’re too weary to go on to London. It would be foolish.”

  He had read Rutledge’s mind.

  The policeman, however, walked briskly to Reception and turned the book toward him to see who had registered with Barrington.

  There were two names. Separate rooms. S. Barrington and J. Fellowes. Barrington had given his address as London, but Fellowes had listed Boston.

  The clerk saw what Rutledge was doing and came out of the office. “Here—”

  “Police business,” Rutledge said curtly, and went out to find his dinner.

  He reached London in the late afternoon, stopping twice on the road for a brief respite.

  Hamish had rumbled through the night, as he’d often done in the trenches, and the soft Scots voice had brought tension with it.

  Rutledge went straight to his flat, and he found Frances waiting as promised, her face filled with concern. He knew at once that someone was dead.

  “Who is it?” he asked, bracing himself. “Not Melinda—”

  Melinda Trent, the intriguing elderly woman who’d lived through the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857, had been a friend of his family for as long as he could remember, and cared for him as well. He returned that love in full measure, leavened by a strong suspicion that she saw through him more often than not. If she’d found Hamish in his shadows, she had spoken of that only obliquely. Her home was in Kent, and he promised himself he would find a way to go on there tonight, taking Frances with him.

  “No.” She crossed the room to greet him, hands on his shoulders, and said, “Oh, my dear, I don’t know how to tell you.”

  “Quickly would be best,” he replied tightly.

  “It’s Jean,” she told him then. “She’s dead.”

  “Jean—”

  The woman he should—would—have married, if there had been no war.

  He had got over her, he had told himself that often enough through a long dark year. Now it struck him that he had never said good-bye. That day in the clinic when he’d broken off their engagement so that she wouldn’t have to ask him to set her free, letting her go because it was what she desperately wanted and didn’t know how to tell him, she had walked out of his room promising to come again as soon as she could. But she never had. He had known she wouldn’t be able to brace herself for another visit.

  Dead—

  He could feel Frances’s hands on his shoulders, hear her voice, and knew that she was there.

  “Who told you?” he asked hoarsely. “How did you find out?”

  “Melinda telephoned to me. A friend of hers had sent her a cable from Canada. It was in the papers in Toronto.”

  That too was a blow. That Jean had died and he had felt nothing.

  “How did it happen?”

  “Complications of pregnancy. She lost her child—a miscarriage—and infection set in afterward. They did all that was possible to save her.”

  Women died in childbirth every day. Only he hadn’t expected one of them to be Jean.

  “Is she coming back to England?”

  “The obituary says she’ll be buried in Canada. Her husband is still serving there.”

  And so he would never say good-bye. Not now.

  The last time he’d seen her, she was coming out of St. Margaret’s Church, where she was soon to be married. A cluster of her friends surrounded her, their voices traveling to him where he stood. Her face was shining with happiness and excitement as she discussed flowers and candles and ribbons. It had broken his heart—and yet he had never hated her for leaving him. He had known what sort of husband he would have made. She was better off without him.

  Still, he felt a surge of guilt for letting her go.

  If she had stayed in England—

  But that was pointless.

  Rutledge set Frances aside and went to the window to look out on the street, not seeing it.

  She went away, and came back presently with a cup of tea.

  Rutledge drank it, the hot strong liquid cutting through the shock of Frances’s news.

  There was nothing he could do. No word of comfort for the bereaved husband—who probably had never known Rutledge existed—and no flowers for the raw earth of the grave.

  He finished his tea and said, “I need to walk. Will you wait?”

  “Of course.”

  He had never taken off his coat. He just went out the door.

  An hour later, he saw that there was a church on the next corner, smoke-stained stone, with a spire that gleamed in the sun.

  The door was unlocked and he went inside into the silent dimness. His footsteps echoed against the stone walls, and he got as far as the first row of chairs. There he sat down. It wasn’t the comfort of God he sought so much as the need to be alone. And Hamish, mercifully, was quiet.

  He hadn’t expected it. That was the problem. The loss was emotional, sharp.

  Their engagement had not been spent growing closer to each other, settling into a warm and responsive companionship that would carry them into old age, as it should have been. Four years of war had seen to that and changed them both. She was another man’s wife, now. Not his, never his. And while he grieved for the girl he had asked to marry him in 1914, she had left a long time ago.

  He rose after a while and walked back the way he’d come.

  Hamish, at his shoulder, said only, “It was verra’ different with my Fiona. I should ha’ come home to her, and left you dead in France. Your Jean wouldna’ have missed you…”

  The voice was sad, as if half convincing himself that this was true.

  Together the two men, one of whom didn’t exist, went back to the flat.

  15

  Frances was waiting, as she’d promised.

  She said as he came through the door, “The Yard sent someone. You are to come at once.”

  Rutledge swore silently. There was never any time…

  “Yes, I’ll go. Shall I give you a lift home?”

  “As far as Trafalgar Square, if you don’t mind. Ian—are you all right? Do you want me to call the Yard and ask them to give you an hour or two?”

  “Work,” he said bitterly, “is its own panacea. But thanks.”

  He stopped long enough to change clothes. And then he shut the flat door behind them as he led the way to his motorcar. He couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before he crossed his threshold again without remembering the news that had been waiting here today.

  Frances kept him busy with trivial gossip until he put her down in the square, and she leaned across to kiss him before she got out.

&nbs
p; He watched her walk briskly in the direction of St. Martin’s in the Fields, and then turned toward the Yard. He hadn’t mentioned seeing Simon Barrington. It hadn’t seemed the right moment, and then too important to be a parting remark.

  It was Simon’s business and none of his, after all. As long as Frances wasn’t hurt. But he thought she was going to be.

  His eye was caught by a familiar figure walking toward him along the street. It was Meredith Channing, dressed in a becoming dark red coat and matching hat. She didn’t look his way, but he could have sworn she had seen his motorcar and recognized it as quickly as he had recognized her.

  Bowles was waiting for him at the Yard and almost as he walked in the door asked abruptly for his report.

  “There’s no time to write it out, but I want to know what’s going on.”

  Rutledge gave it orally, as Bowles stood fuming by the window.

  When he’d finished, Bowles grunted, and Rutledge couldn’t tell whether he was satisfied or still irritated. It was often difficult to read the man’s moods.

  “Stepping on toes is never prudent. I want you back in Berkshire tonight. I want to see the end of this business with Partridge or Parkinson or whatever his name is. Finish it as fast as you can, and report to me. Yorkshire is complaining we’re playing merry hell with their inquiry, and giving them damn all in return. They still have that godforsaken body, and don’t know what to do with it.”

  Rutledge was as eager to leave London as Bowles was to send him away. But he said, “If I get too close to the truth, Deloran will be knocking at your door, complaining.”

  “And that’s when I’ll know you’re doing your job. Get on with it.”

  Rutledge had been driving for three days, but he said only, “I’ll be leaving within the hour.”

  Somehow the road west seemed longer this time. But in the end Rutledge saw the familiar shape of the White Horse galloping silently across its grassy hillside. He drove on, passing it, then stopped in the darkness to look up at it.

  What had it seen, this chalk horse? Why had it brought Parkinson here, and why had he died in Yorkshire, and not in Berkshire?