A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [96]
“None,” Gibson agreed. “On the other hand, it would confuse the police.”
Rutledge thanked Gibson and put up the receiver. On his way back to the inn from Uffington, he wondered at what point Willingham’s death would bring attention round to Parkinson’s empty cottage. Until it did, he would leave Hill to it.
He stayed away from the cottages, but by nightfall he was restless. He could feel the tension building, and Hamish, in his mind, was a bleak shadow that threatened to break through his guard.
He walked to Wayland’s Smithy, back again to the inn, and from the road watched the moon rise. After a time he strolled on toward the White Horse, revealing itself as he neared it, and felt the tug of its spell. The graceful gallop was marvelous, and he thought about the hand that had created it, guiding the men who dug the sod from the chalk with antler spades until its dimensions were revealed. What must it have felt like to see it complete for the first time, shimmering in the moonlight, magic in its own way?
He was suddenly distracted by something he could sense but not clearly see. Surely there was someone at the foot of the horse? And instead of looking up, whoever it was had his back to the horse.
Rutledge stood very still, letting all his faculties tell him what was there.
Hamish said, his voice soft in Rutledge’s ear, “Whoever it is, it isna’ stirring. Else I’d hear it.”
Rutledge was thrown back to the trenches, and scanning No Man’s Land in the dark for any activity. Scanning until his eyes ached, and he had to rub them with his fingers before opening them again. His men’s lives had depended on his alertness, his ability to see a sniper crawling to a vantage point, or men changing the watch along the line of trenches opposite, sometimes even parties going out to look for their wounded. Once or twice he’d caught the faint sounds of fresh men settling at the machine gun far across the pitted landscape. Hamish had been better than any of them at the game, his ears attuned to sounds most couldn’t hear.
The slightest movement caught Rutledge’s attention, dragging him back to the figure. No sound, just a minute change in position as if someone had been standing there too long and was beginning to feel stiff or chilled in the night air.
He waited, slowly dropping until he was squatting and no longer a silhouette against the sky.
There it was again. A figure in black. He couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Only that it was as quiet as a carving, its shape altered by arms wrapped around its body, giving it a bulkier outline.
In the day of the White Horse, he’d have believed in ghosts or totems of a clan, he told himself. But this was human, this figure, and tiring.
After a bit, it seemed to lengthen, as if it too had been squatting or bent over, peering toward the cottages.
And then it began to move, away from Rutledge, back to the far side of the horse, and toward a clump of trees that grew across the road. He rose slowly to his feet, and followed in its wake.
He was closer now, and he’d been right. The figure was bent over, as if in pain, and its arms were wrapped tightly around its body.
Hamish said, “Yon motorcar.”
Indeed there was one, left in the dark shadows cast by the trees.
A sound drifted back to him, human and grieving. A sob, he thought, that rose in spite of intense self-control and for an instant broke free before being smothered again.
He was closer still, the figure never turning to look back, never dreaming that someone followed it.
It reached the motorcar and leaned against a wing, as if struggling with some emotion, then it went forward to the grill and reached for the crank.
As the engine fired, Rutledge broke from the side of the hill and raced forward, catching the figure just as it turned toward the driver’s door.
It fought, with tooth and nail and shoe, but he was stronger, saying over the sound of the engine, “I’m not going to harm you. I’ll let you go, if you don’t cry out. Neither one of us wants to be heard over there at the cottages.”
There was a stillness,