A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [100]
Had Parkinson been asked to come here for a reconciliation, and then drugged enough to keep him from waking up when someone slipped in, turned on the gas, and laid towels outside the doors? Retribution without pity, but without having to watch a father die.
Hamish said, “Aye, but no’ in this room, and no’ in this house. He wouldna’ sleep here.”
Which might explain why the body had been discovered in Yorkshire; but even if Parkinson had somehow been lured there, where was the gas jet that killed him? Even two young women would have a problem dragging a dead man out of a hotel without being noticed.
Hamish said, “Ye ken, it may ha’ been one of Deloran’s men who lured him to where he was killed.”
Counting on the fact that the newspapers wouldn’t concern themselves with a nobody’s unfortunate death? Then why dress the body in mask and cloak, attracting attention to it?
Hard to believe that Deloran would stoop to murder, but then Rutledge was still in the dark about why precisely the man cared what happened to either Gaylord Partridge or Gerald Parkinson. It would be easier, surely, to discredit him than to murder him.
Aloud Rutledge said, “Then why send the Yard here, when Parkinson went missing? Drawing attention to him. Why not leave well enough alone?”
“To wash his hands. There’s the watcher. He could ha’ sworn that nobody knew where Partridge had gone, just as nobody kenned where he’d vanished before.”
“Yes, well, I think tomorrow it’s time to speak to Mr. Brady. Drunk or sober.”
Keeping his torch from striking the glass, he went to the window and looked down on the dark gardens. Clouds were moving across the face of the moon as it set, and he could almost imagine something out there as the shadows shifted. Very likely the horse fountain, showing itself in ghostly white fragments as the shrubs moved in the wind. But add a little guilt to that, and he could understand how the family must have felt about this room and the gardens.
In the passage leading to the stairs, Rutledge paused to consider the nature of the silence around him. The ashes in the garden must have been the last straw, not the first. He had a strong feeling that this family had broken apart long before Mrs. Parkinson’s suicide. What had really brought her to the brink of despair? It must have gone far beyond her belief that her husband was squandering his gifts and talents on work that he loved and she hated.
He reached the kitchen, made certain that he’d not tracked mud from the yard onto the stone flags by the door, and left the house exactly as he’d found it. Standing for a moment in the night’s darkness until his eyes adjusted, he thought he heard an owl call from the trees beyond. Then he walked to the motorcar without looking back.
Hamish remarked, “It wasna’ wise to come here.”
“It could do no harm,” Rutledge answered, going down the drive without his headlamps, and turning the bonnet toward Berkshire.
“Aye, so ye may think now. And later live to regret it.”
In fact, Hamish was right. Rutledge was eating a late breakfast at The Smith’s Arms when the door opened and Rebecca Parkinson strode in.
“What the devil did you think you were doing,” she asked harshly, “when you went to my mother’s house in the night?”
Rutledge, caught off guard, said, “If there are no servants in the house to protect it, if doors are left unlocked, anyone can walk in. How many times did your father go back to that house without your knowledge? Or for that matter, the man he called Dreadnought?”
She opened her mouth to say something, and then shut it smartly. After a moment she asked, “What could you possibly know about Dreadnought?”
“His real name.”
That took her aback. In the silence that followed, she tried to absorb the implications of what he’d said.
“My father disliked him intensely. It was personal and professional.