A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [81]
Rutledge gave it orally, as Bowles stood fuming by the window.
When he’d finished, Bowles grunted, and Rutledge couldn’t tell whether he was satisfied or still irritated. It was often difficult to read the man’s moods.
“Stepping on toes is never prudent. I want you back in Berkshire tonight. I want to see the end of this business with Partridge or Parkinson or whatever his name is. Finish it as fast as you can, and report to me. Yorkshire is complaining we’re playing merry hell with their inquiry, and giving them damn all in return. They still have that godforsaken body, and don’t know what to do with it.”
Rutledge was as eager to leave London as Bowles was to send him away. But he said, “If I get too close to the truth, Deloran will be knocking at your door, complaining.”
“And that’s when I’ll know you’re doing your job. Get on with it.”
Rutledge had been driving for three days, but he said only, “I’ll be leaving within the hour.”
Somehow the road west seemed longer this time. But in the end Rutledge saw the familiar shape of the White Horse galloping silently across its grassy hillside. He drove on, passing it, then stopped in the darkness to look up at it.
What had it seen, this chalk horse? Why had it brought Parkinson here, and why had he died in Yorkshire, and not in Berkshire?
He got out and walked a little way up the hill. Somehow it seemed peaceful and comforting. The horse had been there since time out of mind. Rutledge squatted in the dew-wet grass and studied the dark, silent cottages.
Hamish said, “No one wants this dead man.”
“Except to use him,” Rutledge answered aloud. “A convenience. Sad, isn’t it? The cottages are the end of the road for most of the people down there. A place to grow old and die without fuss. Did death come looking for Parkinson, or did he go out to find it?”
“It’s a long way to Yorkshire fra’ here.”
There was movement below. Rutledge could just make out the smith coming home. He slowed for an instant, as if he sensed being watched, then walked on toward his door.
A curtain twitched in Brady’s cottage, a sliver of lamp light flashing briefly and then vanishing. The lane was quiet again.
Rutledge was content to sit here on the hill and listen to sounds of the night. His mind was tired, and even the puzzle of Parkinson’s life and death failed to interest him. It could wait until tomorrow.
A cat—Dublin?—trotted across the open space between Quincy’s cottage and Mrs. Cathcart’s. A dog barked in a farmyard a long way off, the sound carrying without urgency.
For a moment Rutledge wondered why he had ever chosen to become a policeman and deal so closely with death. And he knew the answer even as he posed the question. It was still the same as it had been at eighteen, when he’d told his father that he intended to join the metropolitan force when he came down from Oxford. Tired he might be of death, yet he was still here to speak for the dead. Only it was proving more difficult to speak for Parkinson. It was possible, he thought, that Parkinson didn’t want anyone to learn the truth about him. That he would be glad to lie in an unmarked grave and be forgotten.
Then, without warning, as if it had been busy this last quarter hour without his knowing it, his mind offered Rutledge a solution to the puzzle of Gerald Parkinson.
He had been working on the theory that the man had had something to hide, like the other residents of the Tomlin Cottages. And perhaps it was true. But the overriding factor behind what had brought Parkinson here was guilt. A strong sense of guilt.
And that was where to begin, if Rutledge expected to unravel the puzzle of this man’s life and his death.
Rutledge stood up and walked back down the hill, cranked the motorcar, and drove on to The Smith’s Arms. It took him several minutes to wake Mr. Smith and bring him down to unlock the door.
“Back again, are you? Your room’s empty, if you want it. We’ll settle on that tomorrow.”
“Fair enough.” Rutledge thanked him and followed him up the stairs in the wake of his flickering