by Charles Todd
"But how? And where?"
Slater shrugged. "Ask a policeman to answer that for you."
"I am a policeman," Rutledge said slowly. "Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard."
There was a pause. Then Slater said, "You have lied to us." More than the words, his tone of voice and his face conveyed the sense of betrayal and dislike.
"I wasn't here as a policeman. I was here to see if there was an explanation for a man leaving his house and not coming back within a reasonable length of time. His motorcar and his bicycle are here. But he isn't. People don't disappear as a rule. When they do, there's always someone who wants to know why." Even as he said the words, in his mind's eye he could see the bland face of Martin Deloran as he figuratively washed his hands of Gaylord Partridge. "No, that's a lie as well," Rutledge went on. "I don't think, in the end, they really cared, these people, whether Partridge lived or died. What worried them was that he wasn't where he was supposed to be."
"He has a minder. Why should they send you here?"
"A minder?" He had suspected as much. But hadn't expected confirmation.
"I'm not a fool," Slater said, "even though people believe I am. He drinks, does Mr. Brady."
"The man in Number Four?"
"The first time Mr. Partridge went missing, he was beside himself. He'd got very drunk that night and passed out in his front garden. I put him to bed, and in the morning he must have thought he'd managed it alone. I never told him otherwise. He took his field glasses up the hill with the Horse, and searched everywhere. Even in the Smithy. But Mr. Partridge came home again, and all was well. Mr. Brady stayed sober for several weeks afterward, then went back to his drinking."
"Where do you think Partridge went?"
"It's his own business, isn't it? If he'd wanted me to know, he'd have told me."
"Still, if he's dead, it's no longer his business. It's a matter for the police."
"He didn't die here. How could any of us be responsible?"
"How do you know where he died?"
"I don't. But if the sketch was made in Yorkshire, then it must be that he died there."
Simple Slater might be, but stupid he was not.
"A good point. But the fact is, we don't know where he died. His body was found in Yorkshire. Hence the mystery. And the concern."
Slater shook his head as Rutledge finished his tea. "I've nothing to do with this. I'm sorry he's dead, he wasn't a difficult neighbor, though I didn't know him well, but I had nothing to do with his death."
Rutledge set his cup aside and stood up. "I didn't expect you had. But you're a man with clear eyes, and it was important to ask you. Thank you for the tea."
He took up his sketch and walked to the door.
As he was opening it, Slater, behind him, said, "I'd not ask the man in Number Seven about the sketch, if I were you."
Rutledge turned. "Why is that?"
Slater said, "Whenever I see him, I feel the darkness in him. I try to stay out of his way."
"I'll remember that. Thank you." And with that, he closed the door.
Slater had identified the sketch, just as Rutledge had expected. Moreover, he believed the smith. What he needed now was information of a different kind. And for that he chose to call on Quincy next.
Quincy wasn't at home-or at least failed to answer his door-when Rutledge knocked. And so Rutledge moved on to the next cottage, where he'd seen a woman's face at the window on his earlier visit.
She opened the door only, he thought, because after he knocked he stood there waiting.
Through the crack she said, "Yes?" As if he had come to sell brushes or produce from a barrow. He couldn't see her face clearly. But he could tell from her eyes that she was frightened.
"My name is Rutledge. I'd like to speak with you."
"You were here before. Who sent you?"
"Sent me?"
"Was it my husband? He only sends someone if there's bad news."
"I can't bring you bad news," Rutledge answered her quietly. "I don't even know your name."
"It's Cathcart," she answered him. "Maria Cathcart."
"I'm sorry if I frightened you, Miss Cathcart-"
"It's Mrs. Was and still is, whatever he may tell you."
"Mrs. Cathcart. I'm here to ask if you recognize the man in a sketch I'd like to show you. Would you mind if I came in? I'll only stay for a moment, I promise you."
Grudgingly she let him in. The cottage was obsessively neat, as if she had nothing better to do than keep it that way. House-proud? And yet she didn't seem to be the sort of woman who would do her own cleaning. As if she came from different circumstances than he found her in here. Tall and slim, tired and afraid. It was the only way to describe her. The circles under her troubled blue eyes indicated sleepless nights.
She didn't ask him to sit down. Instead she said with some anxiety, "Show me this man's face."
He opened the folder and held it out to her. She didn't take it, just glanced at the sheet of paper inside, seemed relieved that it was not the person she'd been expecting, and said, "Mr. Partridge, I think. I don't know him well. But I daresay that's him."
"He's been away for some time. Do you have any idea where he might have gone? Or why? Or with whom?"
"I'm not his keeper, nor is he mine," she answered him.
Rutledge said, "Did he have family? Friends who came to call? You can see his cottage well from your windows. You might have noticed who came and went."
"I might have," she agreed. "But I didn't. He was of no concern to me. I doubt we said good morning more than a dozen times all told."
"You never saw anyone at his door?"
"Once when I was in my garden I saw a young woman come to his door. But if he was in the house, he didn't answer her knock. And shortly afterward she left."
"What did she look like?"
"A well-dressed, fair-haired young woman. I couldn't see her face. I made no effort to try. It had nothing to do with me."
Was this the same woman Quincy had seen and assumed was Partridge's daughter?
"How long have you lived here, Mrs. Cathcart?"
"For fifteen years, this June."
"Which means you were living here when Mr. Partridge first came. Do you remember when that was?"
"Of course I remember. It was during the war. The spring of 1918."
"And he made no effort to be friendly with his neighbors?"
"He was polite. We all are. But we have no desire to befriend one another."
He wondered why she lived here, alone and with no interest in her neighbors.
"And so there's nothing more you can tell me about Mr. Partridge that might help us find him or learn what's become of him?"
"I have no idea what he did with his time or where he went when he wasn't here. I've told you."
"We have reason to fear he may be dead."
She heard him but seemed untouched by the news. "I'm sorry to hear it," she said, but it was perfunctory, good manners coming to the fore. "I've answered your questions. Good day, Mr. Rutledge."
Rutledge accepted his dismissal, but said on the threshold, "Did you know-or hear-what Mr. Partridge did for a living?"
"He appeared to be unemployed. That's all I can tell you."
Rutledge thanked her and left.
He went back to Quincy's cottage and knocked again.
This time the man came to the door and stepped aside to let him in. "Making the rounds of the neighborhood, are you?"
"In a way," Rutledge answered him. Dublin got up from a pillow by the fire and stretched before eyeing Rutledge with suspicion. "I see you're still feeding Partridge's cat."
"She doesn't bother me, nor I her."
Rutledge opened the folder. "Is this Partridge?"
Quincy looked at the sketch. "Yes. Yes, it is. You've found him then. If that's what you came for before."
"We think we might have, yes. He's dead. His body was lying in an old ruin, left for the caretaker to stumble over. There's
a possibility that he was murdered."
"Good God!" He seemed genuinely shocked.
"Did he have enemies, that you knew of? I gather you knew him better than most."
"First of all, I'd like to know why you're here asking so many questions," Quincy said, drawing back and letting Rutledge close the folder.
"I'm with the police, you see. Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard."
"So your interest in the White Horse was all a ruse."
"No, I am interested in it. I always have been. But in other things as well."
"I see. This is now an official inquiry. My neighbors won't care for that, I can tell you!"
"Why not?"
"You know very well why not. We all have something to hide. Perhaps not murder, but something that to us is just as powerful."
Lepers all, indeed. "Perhaps you'd like to tell me what it is you must hide."
Quincy laughed. "I didn't kill Partridge. That's what I can tell you. The rest is none of your business."
"Besides the care of the cat, what did you talk to Partridge about?"
"My birds, if you must know. Oh, you've seen them in the other room. I'm no fool. But he was curious about them, and wanted to know where they had come from."
"I'd like to see them."
"Oh, yes?" He crossed to the inner door and flung it open.
Rutledge stood there, stunned.
Hamish, in the back of his mind, was speechless.
Rutledge had never seen such an array of birds-all of them dead, yet perched on twigs or railings or stones, like so many toys that with a turn of the key would dance and twitter and sing, to please a child.
Every shape and size, blazing with color and their eyes sparkling like shoe buttons in the light from the windows, they seemed to watch Rutledge.
"I have every right to them, you know. I brought them back to England under a license."
"Were they alive then?"
"No, of course not. I spent years collecting them. I think I was slightly mad at the time, certainly I wasn't fully in my right mind. It had become an obsession, you see. To find them and capture them and mount them. It gave me something to do, a reason for living. That's a keel-billed toucan over there. Next to him is a fiery-billed tro- gon. You should see them flying about the trees. And that's a rufous motmot. The chestnut one just there, with yellow in his tail, is a Mont- ezuma oropendola. The little green one is a red-headed barbet. That's a resplendent quetzal, with the long tail, and the bigger blue one is a white-throated magpie-jay. The Jabiru stork is just behind it. And the very small ones are hummingbirds. Marvelous little creatures. My favorite is the little snowcap, the purple one with the white head. We don't have them in this hemisphere. A shame. You see them dart about flowers like tiny fairies, wings beating so quickly you glimpse only a blur, and when the sun catches them, they're like tiny jewels. I'm told that the Inca kings wore cloaks made from their feathers."
"Where do they come from? South America, I should think."
"Most of these are from Central America. The one with what looks like a worm in his beak is a three-wattled bellbird. Over there is the crimson-collared tanager. He was one of my first successes. The odd one with the large eyes isn't an owl, it's the common potoo." He seemed to enjoy naming his prizes. Dublin had slipped in behind the two men and was staring at the array of color. Indeed, it reminded Rutledge himself of a feathered rainbow.
Hamish said, "My granny would say he's bewitched."
"What took you there? An interest in these birds?"
"Good God, no. I hardly knew one species from another. I went there to hire myself out as an engineer on the construction of the Panama Canal. The first try, the one that didn't succeed. In the end most of us came down with malaria or yellow fever, and we hardly knew what we were about."
"But you stayed."
"I stayed because there was nowhere else to go. I trekked through jungle looking for ruins and gold. I climbed volcanoes and dragged myself through caves. I reasoned that the Spanish couldn't have found it all. But they must have done. All the gold I saw was on the high altars of churches, great mountains of it, ceiling to floor. Nothing like it in England. I just stood and stared at the first one I came across. I worked for a time translating invoices and bills of lading for a coffee plantation outside a place called Antigua, then moved on to manage a banana company's plantation on the Caribbean coast. It wasn't a life I'd recommend."
Rutledge said as Quincy reached out to smooth the wing of one of his specimens, "With that background, you must have been in demand."
"Oh, it wasn't as exciting as it may sound," he went on dryly. "Sometimes I guided people coming out to look at land. I learned to use a foot loom in a village on the side of a volcanic lake. Atitlan, it was. Whatever came to hand. By that time I was drunk most of the day and all of the night, and finally I went to see a shaman, to find a way to sober up. Saint Maximon, they called him. Only it wasn't a man, it was a lump of wood draped in shawls and wearing a black hat. They'd told me he was wise. I brought cigars and wine and a watch I'd stolen, as gifts. The room was dark, filled with incense and smoke, and I thought I'd suffocate before my turn came. The man who interpreted for him-it-told me that my salvation was in the colors of the rainbow. I thought him as mad as I was."
Satisfied that all was well with the bird, he added, "Then I remembered the birds, and the more I thought about them, the more the obsession grew. I went back into the jungle for them, and up and down the coast, and climbed into rain forests and sailed down rivers, looking for them."
"What did you intend to do with them? Bring them back to a museum?"
Quincy laughed. "Hardly that. No, I tell you it was an obsession. I just wanted them. And then one day I realized that they were all dead. Not flying about, not mating, not bringing up their young or foraging for food. They were dead. And I never touched another drop of whisky. I was stone-cold sober, and I had this enormous collection of dead things in my house, and I realized I wanted to go home. I sold most of them, kept these to remind me, and came back to England against all the odds."
"And so the wise man's prediction that your salvation lay in a rainbow was right. After a fashion."
"I don't know if it was his prediction or my liver. But I kept these to remember where I'd come from. And I've never killed anything since."
It was a remarkable story. How much of it had actually happened?
"Did you know Partridge before you came here to live?"
"Never clapped eyes on him."
It rang true, but Rutledge wasn't sure whether he believed Quincy or not. He thought, he's very likely a remittance man. Someone the family pays well to stay out of the country, where his behavior won't embarrass them. It would behoove him to lie if it meant trouble for the family.
And therefore the question might be, what had Quincy done before he left England that had to be hushed up?
But Rutledge said nothing of this, listening as Quincy rattled off the names of his precious birds, interspersing that with the story of his years in Central America.
It was as if the man had dammed up the past for so long that the pressure had been building behind it, the need to talk that sometimes made lonely people garrulous.
And Quincy seemed to realize this in almost the same instant, ushering Rutledge out of the room, picking up Dublin and taking her with him as he shut the door on his collection.
"Pay no heed to me," he said, trying to cover his lapse. "They were my salvation, those birds, and I'm fond of them."
"Back to Partridge," Rutledge said, and thought how appropriate the name was, in this house. "I think it's time I spoke to someone in his family. There was a young woman, and you suggested she might be his daughter."
"She favored him, although she was fair instead of dark. I have no idea where she lives. He didn't open the door to her when she came. From that you might reach the conclusion that there is no warmth between them."
"Does she live in Uffington, do you think?" It
was the nearest town.
"I've never seen her there, but of course that's not proof of anything."
"I've also been told that he'd lost his wife."
Quincy's brows rose. "Indeed? Well, that could well explain why he's reclusive. And for all we know, when he disappears he's visiting her grave."
"I appreciate the help you've given me."
Quincy walked with him to the door. "What had friend Partridge done, to get himself murdered? He'd gone missing before."
"If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't be here questioning his neighbors. He's an enigma. We know very little about the man."
"You might speak to Mr. Brady, then. He's shown an inordinate interest in Partridge and his whereabouts on previous absences. Most of us here try to keep our private life private, but when Brady came, he asked questions. It wasn't well received, I can tell you. And he's a nosy sod, sitting by his window day and night as if there's nothing better to do."
Not so much a helpful suggestion as a touch of revenge on Quincy's part?
"I'll bear that in mind." Rutledge was on the threshold when another thought struck him. "When is the post delivered here at the cottages?" He had seen no letters in Partridge's house, but that was not proof that none had come.
"In theory, around nine. But we seldom receive any mail, you see. Lepers don't. Nor do we write to anyone. Or if we do, it's posted in Uffington." His voice was suddenly bitter, as if this were a reminder of how completely he'd been cut off from his family.
He shut his door almost on Rutledge's heels.
Rutledge looked at the neat half circle of cottages, and thought to himself that murder could be done here, and no one would know except the other residents, and they would refrain from summoning the police until the smell of decay overwhelmed them.
He considered calling on Brady, but decided that this was not the time. As Quincy had pointed out, he'd already spoken to Slater and Mrs. Cathcart. Everyone was prepared for a visitor now. Better to let the matter appear to drop.
But there was a man standing in his front garden, watching Rutledge leave Quincy's cottage. If Rutledge had kept to his original itinerary, Number 3, between Partridge and Brady, would be the next cottage to be visited. And it seemed that the owner was outside, prepared to confront the interloper in their midst. His expression was hostile.
