A Pale Horse Page 7

“There’s a dead man found in Fountains Abbey, of all places. The police are harassing a local schoolmaster over it. You’re to deal with it. The Chief Constable has requested you by name. But he let it be known the request came from higher-ups.”

  “Little enough to go on—a dead man in an abbey.”

  Bowles considered him. “Getting a reputation for yourself, are you?”

  Rutledge laughed without humor. “My sergeant used to tell me that once the army gets you in its clutches, you’re never free again.”

  “That’s as may be,” Bowles answered. “But see that you do better with this matter than you did in Berkshire. It was tricky, telling the War Office you’d failed to find their precious lost sheep.”

  Walking out of the building, Rutledge found himself already tying the two cases together. He wasn’t sure why, except that each request had come from the army, and if Gaylord Partridge was still missing, someone was scouring the countryside for bodies.

  6

  It was a long drive to Yorkshire, and Rutledge broke the journey in Lincoln, staying in the shadow of the great cathedral there. After a late dinner at the hotel, he walked through the gate into the precincts to view the magnificent west front. It was quiet, shadows giving the carvings depth and reality, and he stayed for some time, letting the peace wash over him.

  It was rare that he had time to dwell on something other than murder. Just as in the war, death pursued him as a policeman as well. It was his chosen profession, but he found himself thinking that the men who had built such splendor had left a greater legacy than most. Names long since forgotten, they lived on in what their hands had wrought. Not guns or tanks or deadly gas, but in stone, defining the human spirit’s capacity to create rather than destroy.

  Hamish, good Covenanter that he was, preferred unadorned simplicity.

  Rutledge said to him, his voice echoing against the towering west front, “Ah, but is man better off without something to stir him and lift him and carry him through the darkness?”

  Hamish responded, the deep Scots voice trapped in the narrow space between Rutledge and the massive gate, “It didna’ serve you well in the trenches, no more than plainness served me. Where was your God or mine then?”

  It was unanswerable. Rutledge turned and walked back to his hotel, the moment broken.

  The next morning, he drove on to Elthorpe, his mind already busy with what he could expect to find.

  No one had given him either a description or a photograph of Gaylord Partridge, and he wasn’t certain what it was he was supposed to achieve when he arrived. But accustomed to the mysterious workings of the army, he wasn’t surprised.

  He came into Elthorpe after lunch when the streets were relatively quiet and the April sun had vanished behind clouds.

  Yorkshire’s landscape was varied—the rolling dales of the North Riding, a long shoreline to the east, and very fertile land along the rivers that flowed through the West Riding. It was small wonder that medieval monks established so many houses here, building abbeys by the handful. Their ruins, dramatic and quite beautiful, were reminders of a distant past. For someone who loved architecture, it was a feast for the mind and the eye.

  Fountains stood on the plateau west of the city of York, and it was still sheep country, though on a smaller scale, feeding the looms and the mills nearer the coal deposits.

  Elthorpe, small and tidy, stood upright in the sun, as if absorbing as much of its warmth into stone walls as the waning afternoon permitted. A wind had come up, promising a cool night, but the few people on the streets still wore only sweaters or coats against the chill.

  Rutledge found a hotel close by the church, though its name, The Castle Arms, was far too elegant for what was on offer—a comfortable lobby, a lounge beyond an arch, and a desk manned by a very attractive woman about his own age.

  She smiled at him in a way that offered no familiarity, merely an acknowledgment that he was custom newly arrived.

  “I’m looking for a room for several nights,” he said, and she nodded, her eyes flicking to the book in front of her.

  “There’s number ten, which should suit you. Would you care to see it, Mr….”

  She paused, waiting for him to give her his name.

  “Rutledge,” he replied pleasantly. “From London. Thank you, number ten will be fine.”

  She nodded, and wrote his name in the hotel register, then handed him an ornate key on a knob that wouldn’t fit comfortably into a pocket. Embossed on the end of the knob was a brass inlay of the Great Tower at Richmond Castle. Behind her on a board were similar keys, and a quick glance showed him that there were three other guests at present.

  “Shall I help you carry your luggage up the stairs?” she asked, but it was perfunctory, and she made no move to come round the desk.

  “I should manage very well, thank you.”

  He went back to his motorcar, smiling to himself. The people of Yorkshire were not unfriendly but their reserve was legendary. A man, he thought, might live here forty years before he was accepted in the inner circle. And perhaps not then, if there was any suspicion that he might not be deserving of it.

  Two men some twenty yards from him were talking together, and Rutledge found himself listening to the local dialect. The English had such a variety of voices, and his, in this place, stood out as foreign. A stranger.

  He wondered how he would be received by Inspector Madsen.

  Oddly enough, it was with relief.

  Madsen rose from behind his desk to shake hands, his face tired and his eyes troubled.

  He launched into a brief report on the murder as if he had rehearsed it a dozen times that morning.

  “We’ve got nowhere in this business. The schoolmaster is involved but we don’t know how—or why. It’s his book there at the dead man’s feet,” he said. “The book was dew damp, but hadn’t been there any longer than the body, judging by its condition.” He reached behind him for a book lying on a shelf and passed it to Rutledge.

  “Alchemy,” Madsen went on. “Nonsense if there ever was one. But we’ve looked through the book with care, and there’s nothing to say it isn’t what it appears to be—a book wildly out of place. But if the schoolmaster, Crowell, brought it to the meeting, why? And why leave it where it was found? Does it say something about the dead man that we don’t understand? What’s in the blasted book that took it to a scene of violence?”

  Rutledge opened the book and thumbed through it. A history of alchemy, the philosopher’s stone, the centuries-old search for a way to turn lead or other base metals into gold.

  A good many famous men had dabbled in alchemy. A good many more had used it to cheat unsuspecting people out of their money. He’d heard a professor say that it was merely a forerunner, early attempts to explain chemistry. But there had been an overtone of other interests in the study of this quasi-science—a search for the elixir of life and for spells that forced the spirits of evil to obey commands and serve the alchemist. It had sometimes been called heresy and commerce with the Devil, and even witchcraft.

  He scanned several of the purported incantations that had come down through the years, and they were laughable. The garish illustrations next to several of them showed someone very like Roger Bacon standing in a cavelike room, smoke circling his head, the fire at his back roaring up the chimney, and an array of vessels spread out on the table before him.

  Hamish, who had been silent for some time, startled him by speaking so normally that he was sure the man across the desk heard the words.

  “Yon man in the drawing is wearing a robe.”

  Roger Bacon had been a monk. And his robe was very much like the description Madsen had just given Rutledge of the cloak the dead man had been wrapped in.

  So perhaps there was a connection, though not the most obvious one. Not meddling with spirits but with something else.

  “And still no word on the identity of the dead man?”

  “None. If he’d dropped out of the sky, we’d have
been no wiser.”

  Rutledge said, “I’d like to see the victim for myself.”

  Madsen considered him for a moment and then said, “He’s at the doctor’s surgery.”

  “And the cloak, the respirator?”

  “There as well.”

  They walked down the street to the doctor’s surgery, and were admitted by a nurse who looked to be close to forty, trim and dark haired. Madsen asked to see the murder victim and was shown into the room where the body was being kept until the police were finished with it. Madsen nodded to the woman, and she left them.

  Rutledge raised the sheet over the body. The man looked to be of good height, his shoulders broad and well muscled. Rutledge took a moment to look at his hands. Not those of a laborer—no calluses in the palms, the nails clean and well shaped. The face was not one that would stand out. The man could walk down any London street or one in Manchester and never attract attention. His hair was a light brown, showing gray strands throughout. Forty-five? Fifty? It was hard to tell. There were lines in his face that death hadn’t smoothed away, as if he had been ill or aged before his time.

  “What about his clothing?”

  “Good quality. They’re in the box, there.”

  That matched the condition of the man’s hands. “London labels?”

  “See for yourself.”

  Rutledge squatted to examine the contents of the box. Madsen was right, the clothes were of good quality but had seen a great deal of use. As if the dead man had fallen on hard times or lost interest in what he wore. Even the shoes had seen hard use.

  “Anything in the pockets?”

  “Nothing. Not so much as a handkerchief.”

  Rutledge stood up. “I’d like to see the cloak and the respirator.”

  The cloak was of fine wool, well made, with a hood. Rutledge fingered it, felt the weight of it, and the thickness. Unlike the clothes, it appeared to be almost new. Because it wasn’t something that might be worn every day?

  Hamish said, “An actor, then?”

  But no smudges of grease paint or powder marked the neckline or the edges of the hood.

  The gas mask was a 1917 small box respirator, standard equipment during the war. No one had felt safe, once the Germans had used poison gas in the field.

  But the tab underneath the chin was missing, leaving a small tear and making the mask useless. It wasn’t uncommon for the tab to come off, and there was no way to tell how long ago or how recently it had happened. The question was, why had anyone gone to the trouble of putting the respirator over the face? A mockery of the manner of death or to make the death seem more macabre?

  “There were no scars, no indication of a surgery, no identifying marks on the body? No irregularities in the teeth?”

  “The doctor says not.”

  Once this man was buried, there would be nothing to show he had lived. Nothing to identify him in a report, nothing to hand in evidence to witnesses or suspects, nothing to set him apart, if someday someone came looking for him.

  Anonymous…which explained why the man wasn’t known in this part of Yorkshire. He wasn’t meant to be identified. A mystery, an unclaimed body, a nine days’ wonder, buried and soon forgotten.

  Rutledge said, “Is there someone here—in Elthorpe—who could make a drawing of his face?”

  “A drawing?” Madsen was caught off guard, busy with his own thoughts as Rutledge went through the box.

  “If we’re to locate someone who knows the victim, we need something to be going on with.”

  “Why not a photograph?”

  “Because it will show that he’s dead. People might be more willing to talk to us about a missing person.”

  No one wanted to be drawn into a murder inquiry. It was a stigma, something that happened to other, less savory classes. And Rutledge had a feeling that this man had had secrets. Otherwise, why should he wind up dead, like a buffoon, wearing a respirator and a monk’s cloak, a long way from home? Why not simply leave the body in a ditch or throw it into a lake or shove it off a cliff?

  Madsen was saying, “Benson. He’s one of the employees at The Castle Arms. He did a pen-and-ink sketch of my house for my wife’s birthday. Mrs. Madsen was quite taken with it.”

  “That’s where I’m staying. We’ll speak to him now.”

  Madsen went with Rutledge back to the hotel, where Miss Norton, at Reception, told them they would find Mr. Benson in the kitchen, discussing menus with the cook.

  Rutledge waited in the small sitting room while Inspector Madsen went in search of the artist. He was a short, thin man with the carriage of a soldier.

  “Sketch the face of a dead man?” He stared from one policeman to the other. “I’ve—I’m not really good with faces. Why not take a photograph?”

  “Yes, I’d considered that,” Rutledge told him, “but I think a sketch might serve us better. It doesn’t make an issue of the fact that we’re trying to identify a corpse.”

  Benson wiped a hand across his mouth. “I’m not sure I can do this. I’ve seen enough dead men to last a lifetime.”

  “Yes, I can sympathize,” Rutledge responded. “All we ask is that you give it a try.”

  Madsen added, “He’s not unpleasant to view. Dead, yes, but not—er—marked in any way.”

  In the end, Benson collected a pad and his box of charcoal sticks and went with them across to the doctor’s surgery.

  Rutledge was already regretting his request. Benson’s face was pale and strained as they waited for the doctor. He said, “I’m sorry—”

  But the doctor was coming out of his consultation room, nodding to Madsen and shaking hands with Rutledge.

  Five minutes later, Benson was sitting on a high stool looking down at the body of the man no one knew.

  He sketched quickly, using the charcoal with deft strokes, creating the shape of the head, the placement of the ears, the dark hair springing from a high forehead. And then he began to put in the features, the eyes first, getting them right before tackling the straight nose and a surprisingly mobile mouth.

  At one point he looked up at Rutledge, his face set as if his mind had withdrawn to somewhere safe. “I—I can’t see the color of his eyes…?”

  “Blue,” the doctor told him from where he stood by the wall, watching. “They’re a pale blue.”

  Benson nodded and kept working.

  He took his time, and when he’d finished, the likeness was so fine that he forgot where he was for a moment and studied the dead face on the pillow.

  “It’s first-rate, isn’t it?” he asked. “I’ve got it right.” There was surprise and satisfaction in the words.

  Rutledge thought, He’s captured something I hadn’t seen—a subtle sense of the person whose face it was. A man with such talent oughtn’t be running a hotel dining room.

  And an instant later Benson came back to the present, where he was and what he’d been doing. He looked as if he might be sick on the spot. He hastily passed the sheet of drawing paper to Rutledge before hurrying out of the room, his footsteps beating a rapid tattoo as he ran down the passage.

  Rutledge caught up with Benson just outside the surgery door, where he was standing in the cool air, his face lifted to the watery sun.

  Rutledge said briskly, “Thanks sounds insufficient. I’ll make your excuses to Miss Norton while you take your time getting back to work.”

  Madsen was behind him, holding out the pencil box and pad of artist’s paper.

  But Benson said, his voice rough, “I’m all right. Don’t fuss.” He took his things and walked away, toward the hotel.

  Halfway there, he turned to ask, “He’s the man from the abbey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pity.”

  And he walked on.

  Madsen said quietly, “He went through a rough patch on the Somme.”

  Hamish said, “He wasna’ one of your men.”

  And Rutledge answered silently, “He could have been.”

  He nodded to Mad
sen and followed Benson back to the hotel. He was nowhere in sight when Rutledge stepped through the door.

  Miss Norton stopped him. “Would you care for some tea, Mr. Rutledge? You look tired—I don’t know, worried, perhaps.”

  He said, not knowing how to answer, “It was a long drive from London.”

  “That’s not the kind of tired I meant. Were you in the war?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes,” she repeated. “I thought perhaps that was it. If Julian had come home, I think he would have looked the same. Haunted by what he’d done and seen. He sometimes wrote about his life in the trenches. Not the whole truth, I’m certain of that. But enough, I think, to warn me not to expect him to be quite the same. When I look at Mark Benson, I wonder.”

  “Your brother?” he hazarded, in an effort to redirect the conversation.

  “My fiancé. He died at Ypres. Lingered in hospital for a week, and died. Gassed. He was Albert Crowell’s brother. They were so close.”

  “The schoolmaster?”

  “Yes. Poor man. Inspector Madsen is certain he’s done murder. That’s what Alice wrote to me yesterday. The gossips haven’t picked up the news yet, but they will.”

  “And you? What do you think?”

  She sighed. “I don’t think he could. Kill, I mean. Julian once said that Albert is not made up like most men. He should be a Quaker. They’re an odd lot, Quakers. There’s an iron strength to them. A coldness. I think sometimes they must be hard people, to stand aside and watch.”

  “Is that how you see Albert Crowell?” Rutledge asked with interest.

  She shook her head, confused. “I don’t know. He forgave the man who scarred his wife’s face. It was a terrible ordeal for her. I don’t think I could have done that. My own suffering, yes, but not someone else’s.”

  “I hadn’t heard the story. How did it happen?”

  “They were at Whitby. On holiday. She went out alone a little while after tea, to shop for Albert’s birthday gift. There was a man near the corner. He’d been drinking, and was flinging his arms about, shouting. He was angry or upset, I don’t know. And he shoved her out of his path. She fell against a wrought-iron railing, cutting her face badly. Passersby rushed to help her, and two men held on to her assailant. The police came and took him up for public drunkenness. He was quite sober by that time, crying and apologizing. But it was too late, wasn’t it? The damage had been done. She was taken to hospital, bleeding profusely, and the doctors feared for her eye. They took her directly to surgery and sent someone to find her husband. Albert called it an accident. Of course it was, but if the man hadn’t been drinking—if he’d been in his right senses rather than looking for trouble—nothing would have happened to Alice.”