A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [129]
Surprisingly Singleton responded, standing and then gripping the edge of the table to steady himself.
“Give me a shoulder, man!” he appealed to Rutledge, and together they walked out of the bar. Mrs. Smith, standing in the shadows by the stairs, watched, and up on the landing, Mrs. Cathcart had wrapped her arms about her body as if to stop shaking. Rutledge got Singleton outside and into the motorcar.
They drove back toward the cottages, and Singleton was silent, brooding.
As Rutledge turned up the lane toward his cottage, the ex-soldier said, “It’s Quincy, if you’re looking for one of us to be the murderer. He’s half mad anyway, with all those damned birds. Someone should fire the cottage with him in it.”
“Someone did try. He got a shotgun barrel in his face.”
“Then you’ve only to look at any one of us to see who it was.”
“Quincy fired through the door. Apparently scaring the hell out of someone but not hitting him.”
“I told you he was mad.”
“Yes, probably you’re right. Do you want me to come in with you?”
“No. You’re not drinking my whisky and telling me lies.”
“Suit yourself. Good day, Singleton.”
He waited while Singleton made up his mind. After a moment, the man clambered down, threw a mockery of a salute in Rutledge’s direction, and said, “It’s the pain that gets to you after a while. It drives you mad.”
“Were you wounded?” Rutledge knew Singleton had served in India.
“The disgrace, damn you. It turned my father against me, I’ll tell you that. He never spoke to me again. His only son, disgraced before his regiment. And mine. But I didn’t care any more. And he did.”
He walked with surprising steadiness to his door and went inside. As Rutledge turned the motorcar, he was close enough to Number 7 to see Miller standing at his window.
What if Miller had been telling the truth, or part of it, that someone had brought Partridge’s motorcar back to the cottage to make it appear that Partridge hadn’t used it?
With the tab of the respirator found in the vehicle and Miller’s story—if true—to show that the motorcar had been returned late at night by an unknown driver, the pieces of the puzzle were falling together. But Rutledge still hadn’t determined where Parkinson had died. If it was in his own house, then the sisters were involved. If not, then it could have been Brady, or if Deloran didn’t trust him, another of his minions. He hadn’t died in the cottage. Had someone overpowered him while he stood in the trees looking up at the White Horse? It would have been easy, quiet.
Rutledge had come to know Rebecca and Sarah Parkinson. Letting their father die the same way their mother had killed herself smacked of a certain justice. If he took them into custody, and a jury found them guilty, he’d have to be present when they went to the gallows. And he was fairly certain that Rebecca would protect her sister to the end, claiming that she alone had carried out the murder, even if it had taken two of them to drag their father’s body to the motorcar and drive it to Yorkshire.
The newspapers would make a sensation out of the trial. Parkinson’s daughters would be vilified in print, their family’s secrets dragged out into the open and dissected over tea and the butcher’s counter and in the pubs.
He had better be damned certain that his facts were irrefutable before he tossed two young women to the wolves.
But for Parkinson’s sake, his murderer or murderers had to be brought to justice. Even if he would have railed at the police for doing it.
Rutledge thought, I’ve always spoken for the victim. This time the victim might well prefer to see me fail.
Rutledge drove to Sarah Parkinson’s house, waited at the door while she decided whether or not to answer his knock, and when she came at last, he went straight to the point.
“You have a choice, Miss Parkinson. Come with me to Yorkshire and identify your father’s body, then help us solve the mystery of where and how he died. There have been two other deaths among the