A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [21]
The innkeeper’s wife—Mrs. Smith—greeted him with a harried nod and went on serving tables with quick efficiency and a laugh that kept the men jolly and at arm’s length. Rutledge glimpsed Mr. Smith; the swinging doors into the nether regions showed him briefly. He was the cook here, not his wife.
Rutledge wondered if their name was Smith or if they enjoyed the play on words as well as their anonymity. It would explain why they kept their inn for transient custom and showed no ambition to cater to a different clientele.
Mrs. Smith reappeared from the kitchen with a tray for Rutledge. “If you won’t mind eating it upstairs,” she said apologetically. “There’s not a table to spare for a single.”
He took the tray and thanked her. In his room he looked under the serviette that covered it and found generous sandwiches of beef and pork, a pickle, a small dish of tinned fruit, and a glass of beer.
Sitting by the window he ate with an appetite, listening to the voices rising from the tables below. Someone had started a political argument and found himself shouted down by his comrades good-naturedly calling him a fool. But he stuck to his guns, clearly possessed of a grievance against a proposed tax on goods shipped to France or the Low Countries.
“It’ul put me out of business, I tell you, and you as well,” he said gruffly. “Wait and see.”
“Rumor,” another voice replied. “It’ul never happen, see if I’m not right.”
They moved away, still talking, and then it was quiet for a moment before lorry engines roared into life and began to roll out of the yard.
A bird was singing now, a chat, the song filling the air with brightness.
Then a male voice called, “Betty?”
And Mrs. Smith answered from the doorway almost at Rutledge’s feet, her voice was so clear. “If you’re hungry, you’re out of luck. That lot ate everything but the rats in the barn and the straw in the mangers.”
“That man—the one who owns the motorcar in the yard. Is he staying here? What do you know about him?”
“Only that he’s from London and unlucky in love.” Her voice was light, deflecting his questions.
Rutledge set his plate aside and stood up, hoping to see who had come to the inn. But the man was just out of sight.
“I need to know, Betty,” he went on urgently. “Are you sure he’s from London?”
“I don’t think he said,” she answered him. “I just assumed…”
“I don’t like it. Is he staying?”
“He’s taken a room for tonight.” It was a reluctant admission. “You’re building castles in quicksand,” she added. “What would he want with the likes of you?”
The man’s answer was lost in the clatter of feet on the stairs and someone calling, “Good-bye, love, I’m off to make my fortune—oh, there you are! Thought you were in the kitchen. Well, then,” the voice went on, “I’ve left what I owe on the table. And you can count on me again in a fortnight. Anything you’d like from Wales?”
“Wales, is it? I’ll take one of those wool shawls, in a paisley pattern. Like the red one you brought Ma.”
“Right you are!” And a young man who looked enough like Mrs. Smith to be her brother dashed into sight heading for the last lorry, standing by a plane tree.
When he’d gone, there was no further conversation. Rutledge could hear Mrs. Smith moving about below, humming to herself. The man who had questioned her had gone.
Hamish said, startling Rutledge, “Ye canna’ ask her who it was.”
“No. But it wasn’t Quincy or Slater. Someone else. I didn’t recognize the voice. And there’s no certainty he came from the cottages.”
He sat down again, finished his meal, and then carried the tray back to the dining room.
It was interesting, Rutledge thought, walking out the inn door, that Mrs. Smith asked no questions of him. Her pleasant nod as he passed indicated no curiosity about where he might be going or why. And she had answered the man at her door with circumspection, as if she were accustomed to keeping secrets.
He drove back toward the Tomlin