A Pale Horse

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge said, “No one else has given me this information.”

  Miller laughed harshly. “Even Quincy must sleep sometimes. I seldom sleep the night through. It’s become a habit with me now.”

  Hamish said, “The truth? Or what ye want to hear?”

  Rutledge considered his answer, both to Hamish and to Miller.

  Miller added to the silence, hurrying to fill it again, “As far as I know, Mr. Brady didn’t have anything with him when he left the cottage.”

  “And you’d be willing to swear to this under oath at the inquest, Mr. Miller? I wish I’d been told earlier, while Brady was alive.”

  A flicker of emotion passed across Miller’s face. “You never came to ask.”

  “I was here several times. You failed to answer your door.”

  “Yes, well, these things happen.” He waited with expectancy, as if he thought this time the man from London might leave.

  Rutledge thanked him and went back to his motorcar.

  To Hamish he said, “It’s hard to say what Mr. Miller’s motive was in telling me what he just did. Unless it was to speed the police in finishing their business here sooner than later. Offering us lies we want to hear.”

  He had caught that slight movement when he’d asked Miller about appearing at the inquest for Brady’s death.

  Miller hadn’t expected his admission to be taken any further than a statement. Certainly not to be sworn to under oath and in public. And that rather reinforced the possibility that he hadn’t told the truth.

  Rutledge thought he understood now why Slater had called Miller an evil man. Those arresting eyes, coupled with an unfriendly nature and impatience or outright antagonism toward a man with a simple view of the world, must make the smith very uncomfortable in Miller’s presence.

  Hamish said, “It’s no’ likely that he showed you the same face he showed the ithers.”

  Rutledge had just reached his motorcar when Hill came down the road toward him and waved him to wait.

  He got out of his motorcar and came across to Rutledge, his face sober. He said without preamble, “We managed to get our hands on something Brady wrote before he moved to the cottage. It was a list of what he wanted to bring with him. Somehow it had fallen behind the desk and out of sight. But it was enough for us to compare handwriting. If Brady wrote that list—and there’s every reason to believe he did—then he didn’t write the suicide note we found, confessing to the murder of Willingham and Partridge.”

  He held out a sheet of paper, and Rutledge took it.

  The list wasn’t long. But there were references to “my green folder,” and later “my black coat” as well as clothing, books, and personal items. It ended with “the file MD gave me.”

  Martin Deloran…

  “I wasn’t completely convinced—” Rutledge began, but Hill interrupted him.

  “That’s as may be. The question is, what are we going to do about this? And I’ve brought two constables with me. They’ll take turn about, watching the cottages day and night. Until we get to the bottom of it.”

  Two middle-aged men in uniform had stepped out of the motorcar behind him and were walking up the lane. They went into Brady’s cottage and shut the door behind them.

  “The list of suspects isn’t long,” Rutledge said, thinking about what Allen had said to him. “Quincy. Allen. Slater. Miller. Singleton.”

  “You’ve left out the woman.”

  “Do you really believe she could have wielded that knife?”

  “I doubt it very much. But I’m not taking any chances.” He marched off after his men, head down and mouth a tight line.

  Rutledge turned the motorcar in the middle of the road and drove back to Partridge Fields.

  It had represented many things in Gerald Parkinson’s life.

  A happy childhood for two young girls. A mother’s illness. A father’s obsession with his work. A death by suicide, and then a house left to stand empty.

  But not abandoned. Rebecca Parkinson may have seen to the flower beds, but it was her father who made certain that the lawns were well kept, and someone was paid to clean and polish and see that the rooms stayed fresh.

  Parkinson had even used the name Partridge, after the name of his house. Gaylord Partridge.

  The gate was always closed and today was no exception. But he let himself in and walked around to the kitchen. He was in luck. The housekeeper was there—a dust pan and brush stood beside a mop and a pail of old cloths just outside the door. And from the kitchen he could hear a woman humming to herself as she worked.

  He called to her, but she didn’t immediately answer. He stood there, his back to the house, looking past the kitchen garden to the small orchard on the left and the outbuildings just beyond. Shrubbery, tall with age, partly blocked his view, but there appeared to be a small stable for horses, a coop for chickens, and a longer building where everything from carriages to scythes, barrows, and other tools could be stored. Leading to the buildings was a cobbled walk, to keep boots out of the mud when it rained, and someone had put a tub of flowers to either side.

  He walked to the orchard, where plum and apple and pear grew cheek by jowl, and beyond there was another outbuilding, this one low, foursquare, and without grace. Apparently built for utility not beauty, it was one story so as not to be visible at the house over the tops of the orchard trees. A pair of windows was set either side of the door.

  Someone had tried to make it prettier, for it had been painted green and there was a lilac avenue leading up the walk to it, three to either side. A silk purse and a sow’s ear, Rutledge thought.

  Hamish, regarding it with dislike, said, “The laboratory.”

  Rutledge went up to the windows and looked inside.

  The workbenches in the center of the floor were too heavy to be overturned, but someone had taken an axe to them, and the rest of the room was littered with glass and twisted metal, broken chairs, and a scattering of tools and equipment. Someone had come in here and destroyed everything that could be destroyed, with a wild anger that hadn’t been satisfied by mere destruction. It had wanted to smash and hurt and torment.

  Who had done this?

  Gerald Parkinson’s late wife?

  Or his daughters, hungry for a revenge they couldn’t exact on their father?

  Hamish said, “The elder one.”

  It was true. Rebecca Parkinson was riven by an anger that went bone deep, unsatisfied and uncontrolled.

  But Sarah might have been jealous enough of her father’s passion to hate the laboratory just as much.

  He heard someone calling from the direction of the house and retraced his steps, coming out of the orchard to see the housekeeper standing in the doorway, a hand shading her eyes as she called.

  “I saw your motorcar from the windows. Where have you got to? There’s nobody here but me—” She broke off as she heard him approaching and turned his way.

  “You mustn’t wander about like this, it isn’t right,” she scolded him. “Policeman or no.”

  “I called to you. I could hear you humming in the kitchen,” he said lightly, shifting the blame for his walk squarely onto her for not answering him.

  “I was arranging fresh flowers for Mrs. Parkinson’s bedroom and taking them up. I do sometimes. It cheers me.”

  “A nice touch,” he said. “You must have been very fond of her.”

  “I was that, a lovely lady with gentle manners.” She sighed. “It seems to me sometimes that I can still hear her voice calling to me.” At his look of surprise she smiled wryly. “No, not her ghost, of course not. But her voice all the same, in my head, just as it used to be. ‘Martha, do come and see what I’ve done with the flowers.’ Or ‘Martha, I think I’ll take my luncheon in the gardens, if you don’t mind making up a tray.’ Little things I’d do for her and knew she’d appreciate. But that time’s long gone, and I don’t have anyone to spoil, not even Miss Rebecca or Miss Sarah.”

  “Do you recall when Mrs. Park
inson was ill—some years ago when her daughters were young?”

  “I’ve told you, it isn’t my place to gossip about the family.”

  “It isn’t gossip I’m looking for,” he said, “but something to explain what makes Gerald Parkinson’s daughters hate their father. It might be traced back to her illness, for all I know.”

  “I don’t think they hate him, exactly—”

  “What else would you call it? I’ve spoken to both of them, and I’d be deaf not to hear the way they felt about him.”

  “Yes, well, I expect there’s some hard feeling over poor Mrs. Parkinson’s sudden death.”

  “On the contrary, I think it went back longer than that. Sarah Parkinson remembers how happy she was before that illness. But she was too young to understand what the illness was. Or why it changed her parents.”

  “Come in, then, I was just about to put the kettle on. You might as well have a cup with me.”

  She led the way into the kitchen and set the kettle on the stove. He could see that it was already hot, and she said, “I like to cook sometimes when I’m working. Nothing but a bit of warmed-over soup and some tea, once in a while my bread baking for the week. This is a better oven than the one I have in my little house.”

  “No one objects, surely?”

  “No. At least they’ve never said anything. Once when I’d done some baking I came back and found half my lemon cake gone. It wasn’t all that long ago either. I expect Miss Rebecca was sharpish after working in the gardens.”

  “Mrs. Parkinson’s illness?” he reminded her.

  “I wasn’t here then, as it happened. I left service to go and marry a scoundrel, and when I came back, looking for work, she took me on again. The interim housekeeper had just left without giving notice.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I was told she hadn’t counted on being a nursemaid, but it was more than that, I think. Mr. and Mrs. Parkinson weren’t getting on. He was spending more and more time in that laboratory of his, and she didn’t leave her bed for a good two months after I came back. She’d lost her will to live, I thought, and I tried everything I could think of to bring her back to her old self. It wasn’t until Miss Sarah caught the scarlet fever that Mrs. Parkinson got herself up and dressed and stayed up night and day with the child. I think that was the saving of her, but Mr. Parkinson, when I mentioned it to him, said that even great sorrows don’t last forever. I took that to mean that Mrs. Parkinson had lost a child she was carrying. I don’t know why I thought that, except it was just the sort of thing that would break a woman’s heart. No one ever said, in so many words. But they’d have liked a son, I’m sure, to carry on the name.”

  Hamish said, “Truth or only wishful thinking?”

  It was something neither parent would discuss with a young girl, but a loss that would send the father to bury himself in his work and leave the mother to mourn for what might have been.

  “Do you know if the doctor who cared for Mrs. Parkinson is still in practice?”

  “My goodness, no, Dr. Butler died six years ago of a heart condition. His son was going to take over the practice, but then the war came along.”

  So much for verifying her supposition.

  He drank his tea as the housekeeper rattled on about her work and the family she had served, small anecdotes that she had taken pleasure in remembering through the years.

  “I don’t expect you’ve ever seen a photograph of her. When they was first married, Mr. Parkinson said he’d like to have her painted. She was such a pretty thing, Mrs. Parkinson. Fair hair and blue eyes, a real English rose, you might say. It was a pleasure to look at her when she was all dressed up for a party or to travel up to London. Blue was her color, it brought out the softness of her skin, but she could wear most anything. They made a handsome pair, I can tell you. Him dark, her fair…”

  When he’d finished his tea, he thanked her and rose to leave.

  “I shall have to mention to Miss Rebecca and Miss Sarah that you were here,” she told him as she saw him to the door. “If they ask. And if you could see fit to forget anything I may’uv said out of turn, it would be a kindness. But you being a policeman and all, it’s not like gossiping with the greengrocer’s wife, is it?”

  He promised to respect her confidences, and walked back to his motorcar, thinking about what she’d told him.

  A miscarriage could change the relationship of husband and wife. Most certainly if the doctors had told her she mustn’t have another child. The emotional impact of loss and grief could have frightened children who didn’t understand what had happened. They would certainly have felt the great distress wrapping their parents in shared sorrow, and they might have felt left out of it. Something like that could shake the safe world a child was accustomed to living in.

  It went a long way toward understanding the sisters’ anger and even explained to some extent why Mrs. Parkinson had finally killed herself, if she had never quite come to terms with her grief. But it didn’t explain patricide.

  Hamish said, “She died many years later.”

  “I don’t know that time has anything to do with grief, but yes, it must have added to her burden.”

  He’d spoken aloud from habit, and caught himself up.

  Hamish said, “Aye, ye can pretend I’m no’ here, but you canna’ turn around to see for yoursel’.”

  It was true, the one thing Rutledge dreaded was seeing the face of a dead man. However real Hamish was, he was lying in his grave in France. And if he was not…it didn’t bear thinking of.

  The housekeeper, Martha, might not have believed in ghosts, and for that matter, neither did Rutledge. The voice in his head had nothing to do with dead men walking. It was there because Hamish had died, and there was nothing he could do to change that. It was his punishment for killing so many of his own men, for leading them over the top and across No Man’s Land and coming back without a scratch on him, while they fell and cried out and died. He’d had the courage to die with them, but Fate had decided to spare him, and scar him with the knowledge that his very survival mocked him.

  22

  When he got back to The Smith’s Arms, Rutledge was surprised to find that the ex-soldier, Singleton, had come to the bar and was there drinking heavily.

  It was Mrs. Smith who told him, her voice pitched not to carry but her concern very real.

  “I don’t want Smith to throw him out, it isn’t good for business, and besides, he’s likely drunk enough to take exception to it, and then where will we be? And for that matter, poor Mrs. Cathcart is in her room frightened of her own shadow, with him shouting down here.”

  As Hamish warned him to stay out of it, Rutledge pushed through the door and found Smith behind the bar, standing there grimly watching Singleton. He was talking with a lorry driver, and the man had pushed back from the table to escape the intensity of Singleton’s vehement certainty that the world was going to the dogs, and before long they’d all be murdered in their beds.

  Walking over to the pair, Rutledge greeted them with a nod and then said, “Singleton. I’d like to have a word, if you don’t mind.”

  The ex-soldier looked up at him. “If it’s about the murders, I have nothing to say. It’s not a military matter, is it?”

  “You’re right. Still, you’ve more experience than most of the residents there at the cottages.” He sat down, moving his chair slightly so that he could watch Singleton and his irate companion at the same time.

  “Experience in what?” It was a low growl, as if Rutledge had accused him of the killings.

  “Dealing with men. What if Hill is wrong, and Brady couldn’t have killed himself or Willingham? Who do you think might be capable of it?”

  Singleton shook his head as if to clear it. “Blame it on Partridge, if you like. It’s as good a guess as any. Why else did he run off, and bring the police prowling about like ants?”

  “Hardly like ants. Hill and his men have tried to be discreet.”

  �
��Yes, well, I’d had enough. I came here for a little peace. If Mrs. Cathcart can flee the scene, so can I.”

  “She’s a woman, and nervous.”

  “I intend to stay the night.”

  “Mrs. Smith doesn’t have a free room.”

  “Then I’ll sleep here. All I need is a pillow and a blanket.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible. Let me drive you home. You’ll be safer in your own bed.”

  “Safe has nothing to do with it. There’s no peace there any more. I wish Willingham had never died, or Brady for that matter, though I didn’t like him at all. Smelled of trouble, the moment I saw him.”

  “He never disturbed you, to my knowledge,” Rutledge pointed out.

  “I’d have dealt with him if he had.”

  The lorry driver cleared his throat and started to get up. Singleton told him shortly to sit down and mind where he was. “You’re drinking my round, and you’ll finish it out of courtesy.”

  But the lorry driver said, “I’ve had all I can drink and still drive. You don’t have another fifty miles to travel before you’re done.”

  “I want company,” Singleton retorted. “I’ve never liked to drink alone.”

  “You’ve got company,” the driver pointed out but subsided in his chair, casting a pleading glance at Rutledge.

  “Singleton. I’ll ask Smith to give us a bottle and we’ll finish it at the cottage.”

  Singleton considered him. “I told you, I wanted to get away from there.”

  “This is hardly the place to drown your sorrows.”

  “But it’s where I am.”

  “Partridge is dead. His body was found some distance from here. It’s likely he was murdered as well. But not necessarily by the same hand as Brady and Willingham.”

  Singleton’s eyes sharpened. “You’re lying. You can’t have two murderers prowling the same patch.”

  “Why not? Murder is as individual as the man or woman who resorts to it. You’ve killed, you know that’s true.”

  “What do you mean, I’ve killed?”

  Rutledge thought, He’s beyond reasoning with.

  And Hamish said once more, “’Ware!”