A Pale Horse Part 5

"People are people," Rutledge said. "Each one interesting in his or her own way. Good or bad, mean or generous, helpful or not, they make up the human race. You must take them as you find them, because few of them ever really change."

"I've been happy here, going in to the forge when I have heavy work to do, staying clear of them all when I can. But it's lonely, all the same." He studied Rutledge's face. "Did you fight in France?"

"Yes, I did." He answered the question simply, wondering where it was going.

"Aye, I thought as much. You brought it home with you. And you aren't the first I've met with such a look. No offense meant, it's there for anyone to see. The army wouldn't take me. I told them I was strong, but they told me I wasn't up to the work. I told them I could shoe the horses and keep the wagons and caissons moving, but they didn't believe me." He shook his head, the disappointment still raw. "I don't read very well. But what's that got to say to what I can do with my hands?"

"Very little," Rutledge answered and turned toward the door. "All the same, you were lucky. It was not a war you'd have liked."

"What does liking have to do with it?"

He followed Rutledge out into the sunshine again, and noticed when Rutledge took a deep breath, almost unwittingly. "You don't like small s.p.a.ces. I'd not sleep in the Smithy, if I were you." He stood there on his threshold, looking up at the sky.

"Ever think about the old G.o.ds?" Slater asked. "The ones before we was all Christians?"

Rutledge remembered a woman named Maggie in Westmorland, who knew the Viking G.o.ds in her own fashion. "Sometimes," he answered.

"They're still out there, aren't they? Displaced, but still there, waiting to come back. And they will, one day, and catch us all off our guard. That will be a day of reckoning, when it comes."

He nodded to Rutledge and went back inside, shutting the door quietly.

5.

Walking back to his motorcar, Rutledge tried to see if Partridge's own motor was still in the shed by the house, but it was impossible, given the direction of the sun, to judge if the light struck metal.

Hamish said, "If ye're here to see yon horse, ye've done precious little to show an interest."

"I thought you didn't like the horse."

"Oh, aye, it's a wicked beast, but it wasna' me who told the world and his brother it's the thing that brought ye here."

"I could hardly explain that I was looking for Partridge."

"They ken you arena' a day-tripper wi' a taste for what's cut into the chalk. If ye stay anither day, they'll no' need to be told the truth."

"Then let's hope Partridge comes home before that."

Hamish said, "I dona' think he will."

"Why?"

"Ye ken, this time they sent a policeman."

Rutledge climbed the hill again and walked to the head of the great horse. There he stood and looked across the valley. There was another hill here where Saint George slew the dragon-Dragon Hill, as he remembered it was called. One of many places where the militant saint was said to have encountered dragons. Rutledge recalled a page in one of his mother's books where Saint George on his white horse-this one?-quelled the dozen-headed, fire-breathing beast with a single spear. Gilt edged and delicately painted, the scene was taken from a plate in an ancient ma.n.u.script, and the artist had captured the quality of the original work. Saint George was handsomely robed in crimson and sapphire velvet, no workaday dented armor for him.

He turned to study the cottages. Nine of them. It would have been more efficient if the War Office had given him the names of the other residents here. He had met two of them, seen a third, and Partridge made a fourth. Where had the other five inhabitants been as he wandered about, walking into Quincy's house like a welcomed guest, and then into Slater's?

He drew himself a mental map of the cottages. They were set out like a horseshoe, appropriate enough here. Four to a side and one at the top of the bend. A lane ran between them, cutting the horseshoe in half, and from the lane paths led to each door.

Slater lived in Number 1 on the left, then Partridge at Number 2, his white gate distinctive, as if shutting out his neighbors. Quincy was the first cottage on the right-hand side, Number 9 on the map, and the woman with the wash hanging on the line lived in Number 8.

Someone opened the door of Number 4 and stepped out into the sunshine, shading his hand to see better as he scanned the cottages and then turned slightly to stare up at the horse. Even at that distance, his eyes seemed to meet Rutledge's, and he stood there, not moving, for a dozen seconds more. Then he turned his back and stepped inside, shutting his door firmly behind him.

That accounted for five of the residents. And this hadn't been a casual interest shown by a curious resident. There was more to it. Not a challenge precisely, but an acknowledgment.

"Anither watcher?" Hamish said.

Rutledge wouldn't have been surprised. Someone who knew that Rutledge would be coming and while having no intention of working with him, at least wanted it to be known that he was present as well.

The government kept an eye on certain people. Quietly and un.o.btrusively as a rule.

What had Partridge done to excite interest? Knowing that might make a difference in deciding where to look for him.

His only choice now was to wait for dark and then search Partridge's cottage. He could come to it by a roundabout way, pa.s.sing unseen. He'd been told this was merely a watching brief. But if Hamish was right and Partridge wasn't coming back, there could be an advantage in knowing what the man was up to.

Rutledge left the hill of the White Horse half an hour later and went back to The Smith's Arms, where he had taken a room. He found he was in time for luncheon served both in the dining room and at a handful of tables that had been set up outside with benches round them for the lorry drivers.

It was a rough crowd. Men who drove long distances for a living were often footloose by nature and had more in common with one another than with families left behind. They'd cast glances in Rutledge's direction when he drove up and walked into the inn, curious and suspicious. Then conversation had picked up again when he disappeared from view.

The innkeeper's wife-Mrs. Smith-greeted him with a harried nod and went on serving tables with quick efficiency and a laugh that kept the men jolly and at arm's length. Rutledge glimpsed Mr. Smith; the swinging doors into the nether regions showed him briefly. He was the cook here, not his wife.

Rutledge wondered if their name was Smith or if they enjoyed the play on words as well as their anonymity. It would explain why they kept their inn for transient custom and showed no ambition to cater to a different clientele.

Mrs. Smith reappeared from the kitchen with a tray for Rutledge. "If you won't mind eating it upstairs," she said apologetically. "There's not a table to spare for a single."

He took the tray and thanked her. In his room he looked under the serviette that covered it and found generous sandwiches of beef and pork, a pickle, a small dish of tinned fruit, and a gla.s.s of beer.

Sitting by the window he ate with an appet.i.te, listening to the voices rising from the tables below. Someone had started a political argument and found himself shouted down by his comrades good-naturedly calling him a fool. But he stuck to his guns, clearly possessed of a grievance against a proposed tax on goods shipped to France or the Low Countries.

"It'ul put me out of business, I tell you, and you as well," he said gruffly. "Wait and see."

"Rumor," another voice replied. "It'ul never happen, see if I'm not right."

They moved away, still talking, and then it was quiet for a moment before lorry engines roared into life and began to roll out of the yard.

A bird was singing now, a chat, the song filling the air with brightness.

Then a male voice called, "Betty?"

And Mrs. Smith answered from the doorway almost at Rutledge's feet, her voice was so clear. "If you're hungry, you're out of luck. That lot ate everything but the rats in the barn and the straw in the mangers."

"That man-the one who owns the motorcar in the yard. Is he staying here? What do you know about him?"

"Only that he's from London and unlucky in love." Her voice was light, deflecting his questions.

Rutledge set his plate aside and stood up, hoping to see who had come to the inn. But the man was just out of sight.

"I need to know, Betty," he went on urgently. "Are you sure he's from London?"

"I don't think he said," she answered him. "I just a.s.sumed..."

"I don't like it. Is he staying?"

"He's taken a room for tonight." It was a reluctant admission. "You're building castles in quicksand," she added. "What would he he want with the likes of want with the likes of you you?"

The man's answer was lost in the clatter of feet on the stairs and someone calling, "Good-bye, love, I'm off to make my fortune-oh, there you are! Thought you were in the kitchen. Well, then," the voice went on, "I've left what I owe on the table. And you can count on me again in a fortnight. Anything you'd like from Wales?"

"Wales, is it? I'll take one of those wool shawls, in a paisley pattern. Like the red one you brought Ma."

"Right you are!" And a young man who looked enough like Mrs. Smith to be her brother dashed into sight heading for the last lorry, standing by a plane tree.

When he'd gone, there was no further conversation. Rutledge could hear Mrs. Smith moving about below, humming to herself. The man who had questioned her had gone.

Hamish said, startling Rutledge, "Ye canna' ask her who it was."

"No. But it wasn't Quincy or Slater. Someone else. I didn't recognize the voice. And there's no certainty he came from the cottages."

He sat down again, finished his meal, and then carried the tray back to the dining room.

It was interesting, Rutledge thought, walking out the inn door, that Mrs. Smith asked no questions of him. Her pleasant nod as he pa.s.sed indicated no curiosity about where he might be going or why. And she had answered the man at her door with circ.u.mspection, as if she were accustomed to keeping secrets.

He drove back toward the Tomlin Cottages, but pa.s.sed no one walking in that direction.

The remainder of the afternoon he spent prowling about the chalk horse, while keeping a surrept.i.tious eye on the cottages below him.

Rutledge had the strongest feeling, supported by the uneasiness of Hamish, that he was being watched in his turn.

But if Partridge had come home, learned of Rutledge's presence, and then questioned Mrs. Smith at the inn, there was no sign of him here at the cottages.

Rutledge drove some twenty miles for his dinner, lingering over the meal far longer than its quality justified, and it was nearly dark by the time he drove back to the inn. He left the motorcar in the yard, went up to his room, and stretched himself on the bed.

When he heard the clock in the downstairs dining room strike one, he got up, dressed in dark clothing, and quietly left the inn. In his pocket he carried his torch. From the companionable snores coming from the room where the Smiths slept as he went down the stairs, Rutledge was certain they hadn't heard him go. As far as he could tell, he was the only guest this night.

Rutledge walked back to the cottages, standing under a tree for some time to let his eyes adjust to the ambient light and listening to the sounds around him.

There were steps coming his way, and he faded into the shadows where he was fairly certain he couldn't be seen.

Andrew Slater appeared farther up the road, heading for his own cottage. He carried something in his hands, Rutledge couldn't see what, and disappeared through his door without any indication that he knew someone was about.

But as Hamish was busy pointing out, a man like Slater often knew more than ordinary people, as if to make up for his simplicity. Not so much a sixth sense, but a knowledge that often came to such people. Not animal, either, that wariness of a fox or even a deer, but something generated by the need to protect himself from those who would trick him, take advantage of him, or cheat him.

Rutledge gave the smith another hour to fall asleep and then walked softly across the dew-wet gra.s.s to the house with the white gate.

He didn't pa.s.s through it, but went over the wall on the side that couldn't be seen from the other cottages.

The door was unlocked, as Quincy had told him it would be.

He opened it cautiously, listening for sounds inside that indicated someone was there. Silence came back to him.

He went inside and began his search. But there was nothing of interest in the cottage. Shielding his torch, he looked around at the furnishings-mainly castoffs, he thought, though there was a chest under a window that appeared to have come from a different life. It was locked. He glanced at the books on the low shelf by the hearth, and found that most of them were scientific, although there was an odd mixture of historical materials as well. Renaissance Italian history, African exploration, South American botany, and a Chinese herbal. Heavy reading for one's spare time. Sections marked were often macabre, descriptions of the way everyone from Socrates to victims of curses died.

The bedroom was tidy, the kitchen cleared, and dishes set as if by habit to drain by the sink. Nothing out of place, an empty valise under the bed, clothes still hanging in the armoire.

Wherever Partridge had taken himself, he clearly intended to come back.

Rutledge returned to the sitting room and looked at the desk there. He found nothing of interest, as if it were seldom used.

There was a single framed photograph on the desktop, grainy and yellowed, showing a man and a small boy standing together in what appeared to be the marketplace of a Georgian town. There was nothing in the shop windows to indicate which town or where in England it might be. Rutledge lifted the frame, slid open the back, and looked to see if there was any inscription on the other side of the photograph. And indeed there was. A schoolboy hand had scribbled, "the day we climbed the white horse."

Had Partridge come here as a boy? Was that what brought him back as a man?

Rutledge rea.s.sembled the gla.s.s and the frame, and set it where he'd found it.

In the basket to one side of the desk, however, was a crumpled sheet of paper. He reached for it, spread it out, and in the shaded light of his torch found that there was only one line on it.

My dear The start of a letter? To a friend, a lover, a relative? There was no way of knowing.

He crumpled it again and dropped it back into the basket.

Nothing here to tell him who Partridge was, where he might have gone, or when he intended to return.

Certainly nothing mysterious enough to make London worry about where he was.

When Rutledge stepped out of the cottage, he nearly leapt out of his skin as something warm and sinuous wrapped itself around his legs.

"'Ware!" Hamish warned in the same instant.

It was all he could do to stifle a yelp even as his brain absorbed the sound of a soft purr.

Dublin the cat.

He bent down to pet her, and she accepted the salute but was more intent on finding her way into the house. He managed to get the door shut first, and as if displeased, the cat stopped purring and trotted off.

Rutledge stood there for a moment as his heart rate steadied and then made his way to the shed where Partridge kept his motorcar. It was still there, and a bicycle stood in the deeper shadows beyond the bonnet.

The only unusual thing was a small length of carpet that lay crumpled by the boot, a trap for unwary feet. The oil stains down its length, dark as blood in the little light there was, explained its use.

Wherever g.a.y.l.o.r.d Partridge had gone, he had left on shank's mare, not his bicycle or his motorcar.

But then he needn't have gone far to find someone to take him away. For a price, the lorry drivers at The Smith's Arms would have been willing to let him ride with them as far as he liked. From there he might have gone anywhere by train or bus.

And come back just as inconspicuously.