A Pale Horse Part 39

The only other mention of the Parkinsons that year was a notation that Parkinson had come to Dr. Butler in July with cuts on his hands after an accident in his laboratory. "Self-inflicted" had been added to the terse notation. But Dr. Butler hadn't seen fit to elaborate.

The heartbreaking loss of a son recorded in a few dozen words written in a cramped but clear hand.

Rutledge went through the next year to be sure, but there was no other mention of the child or how the family had learned to cope. Whatever role Dr. Butler had played in Mrs. Parkinson's recovery was not given. These were reminders to himself, not a medical record.

He jotted down the dates and events, then closed the diary and thanked the Butlers. They were glad to see the back of him, he thought. Another woman had arrived with an armload of freshly ironed bed hangings, and Mrs. Butler had taken her directly upstairs.

He could hear her voice drifting down after her. "Betsy, you're a good friend to pitch in like this. I'd never have got them ready in time. There's just one wall left to paint-"

Butler followed Rutledge to the door, as politeness dictated, saying, "I don't suppose you found what you were looking for. Sorry."

"It was worth my time to read what was there." Rutledge thanked him and went out to his motorcar.

It was after midnight, in fact closer to two o'clock. He could feel the long day in his shoulders, and in the tension in Hamish's voice as they drove back to Berkshire.

There had been a living child. So much harder to forget, so much more of a tie for the grieving mother who had heard him cry.

It had been a wild-goose chase, as Hamish was pointing out, but Martha Ingram had been right in her supposition that while she was occupied with her short-lived marriage, there had been another child, a boy after two daughters. And when she returned to serve the family, Mrs. Parkinson had never told her the whole story.

He recalled the comment, "Had long talk with Parkinson, explaining situation."

And later, Gerald Parkinson had smashed something in his laboratory, cutting himself badly.

Things had gone wrong for him as well.

When he reached the inn, Rutledge went up to his bed and fell asleep almost at once. Hamish, silent at last, waited as he always did for the dawn.

There were no alarms in the night, and Mrs. Cathcart announced over breakfast that she was ready to return to her cottage.

Rutledge took her back, and on the way told her that Allen had died. She cried for him.

"Poor man. But he knew it was coming. If I had anywhere else to go, I'd leave here. But there's no hope of that and I mustn't even dwell on it."

He saw her safely inside, then stood there in the soft end of April morning light, looking up at the White Horse. There were workmen repairing the damage to Quincy's door, the blows of their hammers echoing against the hill and rebounding.

Legend had it that if someone knew the secret, he could stand on the ground below the hill and make his voice appear to come from the horse. Rutledge's father had told him that, but try as they would, they never found the spot. A priest or chieftain would have known where to look for it, and like the Delphic oracle, could have given his p.r.o.nouncements the power of a G.o.d.

It was time to go back to London and report. But he was reluctant to leave until Inspector Hill had caught his murderer. What he would do about his own was another matter altogether. It hadn't worked to turn one sister against the other.

Slater called to him as he was walking home from the village, and Rutledge went to meet him.

"You were wrong. Nothing happened last night."

But Hill had left a message earlier at the inn for Rutledge, saying that he'd collected a sample of handwriting from each of the surviving inhabitants, and the results were unclear. The message ended with "Whoever wrote this confession must have tried to emulate Brady's hand or, at the very least, tried to disguise his own. Hard to say which."

"Nothing happened," Rutledge agreed. "But why take the risk? I'm not convinced Brady killed anyone."

Slater looked up at the horse. "I spent much of the night thinking about Mr. Brady. If he'd killed Mr. Willingham, he'd have tried to bluff his way out. He was that sort. Good at making excuses."

"Perhaps the point was to kill Willingham, and see that Brady took the blame."

"Willingham was free with his tongue, I grant you. And he never cared who he hurt," Slater agreed. "And if that's what's behind this business, he invited his own death. He's called me a simpleton and witless often enough. But I'm used to it. I've been called names all my life. I can't kill every man or woman who hurts my feelings."

"The attempt to burn down Quincy's cottage was probably a sham, to throw us off the scent. The question is, did Quincy set that fire himself?"

Slater said, "They should all be burned down. They were never meant for us. But then I'd have nowhere to go."

He went inside and shut his door, a lost and lonely man who would always draw spite because he was different.

Hill arrived just then, and said, "There's been a development."

"I got your message."

"Yes, well, the doctor says now that Brady couldn't have killed himself, no matter how it was made to look. The angle of the thrust is wrong. He conferred with a colleague."

"So two murders, and an attempted one, if you count the fire at Quincy's. I was just going up to speak to Miller. Would you like to join me?"

Hill shook his head. "It's Slater I'm interested in. That man's got the arm to wield a knife like that, and whatever he says, I think he was pushed over the edge."

"I'd like to look through Willingham's cottage."

"My men have been thorough."

"I'm sure they have. It won't do any harm to add another pair of eyes."

"Go ahead. All you'll find will be the sketches. Constable Smith saw them before I did. Nasty piece of work, but it explains, doesn't it, why we were so ready to believe that Brady had killed the man."

"What sketches?"

Hill said with a grin, "Didn't you know? He took aim at all his neighbors. Quite Hogarthian, really. Still, he knew his way around pen and paper-"

But Rutledge was already on his way, swearing under his breath.

Hamish was pointing out that it wasn't his case.

Rutledge ignored him.

There had been a constable on duty the first day, but he was gone now. Rutledge let himself in, shutting the door behind him.

It wasn't hard to locate the sketches. They were in the desk drawer in a folder tied by string.

He unwound the string and brought out a dozen or more pen-and-ink drawings that were as vicious as any he'd ever seen. Each one showed one of the residents involved in a scene that was often crude and at the same time close to the mark. Singleton as a soldier, Miller in the dock and later standing by the hangman, Mrs. Cathcart drunk in public, Allen craftily using his illness for pity, Quincy paying ragged children to bring him his birds, Slater creating teapots without handles, offering them for sale at a market fair, the sign below them reading STOLEN FROM CHURCHES STOLEN FROM CHURCHES.

Partridge was there, wearing a mask that was what the artist must have seen as his true self. It was goatlike, the real man cringing behind it. Scapegoat? Only Brady was missing from the collection, presumably because he would have taken his sketch when he killed Willingham. Only he hadn't killed anyone.

Rutledge stood there studying them. Hill was right, the draftsmanship was excellent, the content exceedingly vicious, and most certainly the work of a man who cared nothing for the feelings of others.

He was a recluse by habit and inclination. Charles d.i.c.kens might have used him for the model of half a dozen unsavory characters. Whatever had embittered him in his youth, he had slowly become a man to avoid. A nasty piece of work, indeed.

But had he created these sketches?

There was an imagination at work here that didn't fit Willingham as Rutledge had seen him. These had taken time to draw in such detail, and from Willingham Rutledge would have expected more dash and less drama. His temper flared too easily. These were secretive, closet vengeance, a pleasure taken in private, so that no one knew he'd been savaged on paper.

"A coward's work," Hamish said.

Quincy, for instance, could have taken pleasure in skewering himself and his neighbors. But there would have been more dark humor, Rutledge thought, not such earthy attacks, if it had been his hand holding the pen. There was no whimsy here.

Rutledge went on searching the desk, but couldn't find more of the paper that the artist had used nor the nibs that were necessary to carry out the design.

He went back through the drawings, remembering how Mark Benson had worked on the face of a dead man, the strokes, the intensity of concentration. Mrs. Cathcart was too emotional. Allen couldn't have killed either Willingham or Brady, no match for them physically. Slater worked with his hands, but not with ink or charcoal. It was a very different skill, a very different brain.

That left Singleton or Miller.

He considered the two men, then went back to the portrayal on paper. Miller in the dock. Yes, that went along with what Rutledge himself had suspected. It could be proved. The portrayal of Singleton was more like the recruiting posters Rutledge had seen at the start of the war-the Hun bayoneting innocent Belgian women and children and committing other atrocities. It had made excellent propaganda, men had volunteered in droves. And like most propaganda, there was not much basis in fact to support it. The emotional impact was all.

Hamish said, "He was trained to kill."

"So he was. But why should he attack Willingham or Brady, suddenly and without apparent warning?"

Rutledge put the drawings back in their folder and shoved them out of sight in the desk.

"We'll start with Mrs. Cathcart. Her cottage is near enough to have heard any exchanges."

She was reluctant to talk to him about Willingham. "He's dead, we should respect the dead."

"He was murdered, Mrs. Cathcart. There's a difference."

"There's that." She took a deep breath, then answered with a self-deprecating gesture. "He would say the cruelest things. I tried not to listen. He told me once that I was a self-centered woman with nothing to offer any man. That was when he was very angry because I'd had someone come and repair my roof. It was a noisy business, and he shouted at them to stop."

"And Quincy?"

"They got into a shouting match once, because Willingham called him a ne'er-do-well who had never worked a day in his life."

"Who else took the brunt of his tongue?"

"Mr. Miller, of course. Willingham called him a liar and a scoundrel, and said he should be locked up."

"What was that about?"

"I'm not really sure. Mr. Miller told Quincy it was because Willingham thought he'd seen Mr. Miller's photograph in a London newspaper. Some scheme to defraud. It was Mr. Singleton he annoyed the most, called him a toy soldier, a disgrace to the uniform. Mr. Singleton ignored him, but I saw his face, sometimes, and it would be twisted with his fury."

"Any truth to the charges?"

"I don't know. It hurts most when they're true, doesn't it? Hearing them shouted about like the town crier. I don't think anyone would have blamed Singleton if he'd taken on Willingham and beaten him until he took back every word." She flushed at her own vehemence. "I'm sorry, I could never like the man, though I wouldn't have wanted him killed."

"It might have been the only way to stop him."

"Yes, there's that. A pity, wouldn't you say? But I thought it was Mr. Brady who'd killed Willingham. Why are you interested in the rest of us?"

"Making sure we've got the right man," he said, and thanked her.

Hill was waiting. "What was that all about?"

"Mrs. Cathcart had heard some of Willingham's shouting matches. Did you find the Brady sketch in his cottage?"

"No, but then he'd have burned it, wouldn't he? If he'd been guilty."

"I don't think Willingham drew any of them. There was no paper, no special ink, no pens in his desk. How had he done them without the proper tools?"

"Look, Rutledge, we're doing our best. If you want to point a finger, then get on with it. If not, leave us to our work."

"Start with Singleton. He and Brady were both in the army. There might have been something there. Singleton might not have known that in the beginning. Brady kept his past to himself, I should think. When the truth came out, Singleton might have thought that Brady knew more than he should."

"Singleton makes no secret about being cashiered."

"He didn't, did he? Perhaps it was too late when he realized he'd been better off keeping his mouth shut."

"Then why kill Willingham first?"

"Willingham irritated everybody. Kill two birds with one stone, and put the blame on Brady before setting up his death."

Hill glared at him. "You're not serious."

"Do you have any better suggestion? Go talk to him, but watch your back if you're going to make accusations."

Hill looked at the cottages, the way they were set out, to give each one maximum privacy. "Willingham could have seen anyone going into Brady's cottage, couldn't he? A good soldier would have taken him out, then launched his main attack."

Rutledge walked back to his motorcar and said as he took up the crank, "Good luck."

Hill was dragging his feet. "I'll ask the army for information," he said. "I've been wrong once already. I don't relish a second time."

"Your decision," Rutledge agreed, and drove off.

Hamish said, "He doesna' believe you."

Rutledge answered, "I think he does. He's just covering his back."

He turned the car and went to call on Sarah Parkinson, on his way back to London.

24.

Sarah Parkinson was just leaving her house when Rutledge drove up. She was riding the bicycle today.