A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [53]
Slater looked at him. “What do you want with a teapot? It’s not yours to start with. It belongs to the church service.”
“Yes, it does. And I’ll make a gift of it back to them, so that it stays where it should.”
“You’re mocking me.”
He had got off on the wrong foot unintentionally, and Hamish was already telling him as much. But Rutledge said, “I’m mocking no one. You showed me that teapot, and I think the sexton is wrong. Good work deserves good pay, and I for one recognize that.”
“Well. It’s not your problem. It’s mine. What have you come for?”
“To show you a sketch, if you don’t mind.”
“Of work you wish me to do?”
“Sorry, no. I’d like to ask if you recognize the person in the sketch. I’m looking for this man.”
There was instant hostility. “What’s he done, then?”
“Nothing that I’m aware of. But friends are anxious about him. I’d like to put their minds at ease.” If Deloran could be considered any man’s friend…
“You’re being fair with me?”
“Actually, I’ve told you the truth.”
“Why do you think I might know him?”
“Look at the sketch first. And then I’ll give you the answer to that.”
He lifted the folder from the table and opened it.
Slater looked down at it, but his eye went first to the quality of the drawing. “It’s well done, this sketch. Who made it?”
“A young man in Yorkshire. He takes as much pride in his work as you do in yours.”
“And so it’s a good likeness.”
“We hope it is.”
Slater didn’t need to study the face on the paper. He said at once, “Yes, I know him. As you know very well I do.”
“Who is he?”
“It’s Mr. Partridge.” Slater looked up. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
The certainty of identification was what Rutledge had been expecting, but not the conclusion that Slater had drawn from the face in his hands.
Yet it was too easy. Deloran must surely have realized that, armed with the sketch, sooner or later Rutledge would learn who the dead man in Yorkshire was.
“He couldna’ be sure you would come back here,” Hamish answered the thought. “He’s used to being obeyed.”
“Why do you think Mr. Partridge is dead?” Rutledge asked the smith, but he already knew the answer. Slater worked with his hands, he had a feeling for skill and observation and how to translate that to whatever he was creating. And it was true, the likeness caught something that perhaps the living man had lost.
“Because it’s a good likeness, that’s why. How could it be this good from memory?”
“The artist might have used a photograph.”
“No, I don’t think he did. He saw the man. And Mr. Partridge isn’t here, is he? Hasn’t been for a bit. And you were here earlier, looking for him, weren’t you? Somehow I have a feeling he’s dead.”
“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