A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [59]
It would also explain why Deloran had felt so certain that it was safe to send Rutledge to Berkshire—it wasn’t likely he’d learn more than he should know, while he was searching for “Partridge.” And now, even if the other residents identified the face in the sketch as Partridge, that was as far as Rutledge could take the matter. Meanwhile Yorkshire would soon see the missing man into a pauper’s grave. And there would be the end of it.
Gaylord Partridge would no longer be a problem for the War Office.
But he was still very much a problem for the police.
If Deloran had his way, the daughter would never be told what had become of her father. That might not matter to her now, but if there was a will to be sorted, in time her father’s fate would become important legally.
Martin Deloran be damned—Partridge hadn’t walked back to that cloister on his own, there was someone else involved. And whether the man died by accident or was killed, Rutledge was determined to get to the bottom of what had happened. If there was a murderer somewhere, who could say if he’d killed before this, or if he would kill again?
11
Where to begin a search? The only information Rutledge had at his disposal was the small photograph on the dead man’s desk.
He had no way of judging who the man and boy were, or even if one of them was Partridge. The photograph was not clear enough to tell. For all he knew the two people in it were close friends or even cousins. The possibilities were endless.
And yet—out of everything he might have owned before coming to this place—Partridge had chosen to bring only one personal possession with him: a framed photograph. It had mattered to him in some fashion to have it there.
Where then was the square in which the photograph was taken? Not in Uffington, Rutledge thought, ruling it out immediately. None of the houses there resembled that background.
“Anywhere in England,” Hamish pointed out gloomily. “No’ sae verra easy to find fra’ what could be seen in yon photograph.”
True. There were Georgian houses in Kent, to start with.
“the day we climbed the white horse…”
But not every market square in England possessed Georgian houses and a white horse cut into chalk that could be climbed on the same day as the photograph was taken in the town.
All right then, the second bit of evidence in hand. If the inscription was to be trusted.
What else was unique about this white horse, where he was standing? For one thing, it was the only one galloping with such elegant strides across its hill.
Most of the others he knew about looked more like cart horses.
What else, then?
Legend claimed that in the ninth century King Alfred had ordered this horse carved out of the hillside. It was, in fact, Iron Age workmanship, but the legend persisted.
There were any number of white horses in Wiltshire—it was famous for them.
Rutledge went down to his motorcar and dug maps out of the pouch on the door. He’d bought the set to serve him on walking holidays. Later he’d found it helpful driving.
He spread out the sheets for south England, found Salisbury Plain, and began running a finger up and down the adjacent squares in an orderly search, starting from the right.
When he came to the eastern boundaries of Salisbury Plain, he found a place to begin.
Westbury. The Bratton White Horse.
Which—legend said—King Alfred ordered to mark a victory over the Danes.
He had never been to Westbury. Did it have Georgian houses in its market square? It had been a wool town in its day, and made gloves as well, which meant there was money enough for handsome buildings to mark its success.
He shoved the maps back in the pouch, got out to crank the motorcar, and set off to the west, bearing south, stopping only for petrol. Along the way he scanned other town squares, but he saw nothing that would fit what he was searching for.
But when he drove into the center of Westbury, he had no doubt that he’d made the right