Rutledge slipped out of the shed and made his way through the darkness in the deepest shadow he could find, until he was well past Wayland's Smithy.
Where did Partridge go, and why? he asked himself as he walked without haste, listening to the night around him.
Hamish said, 'If he was in the war, it's possible he doesna' remember where he goes, or why.'
At the clinic where Frances had taken Rutledge to learn how to deal with his own shell shock, there was an officer who went away for days at a time. Physically present, but his mind lost in some other world where his body couldn't follow, Lieutenant Albany would sit by his window staring inward, and simply not hear or see or feel anything. As if the empty shell of himself waited for him there knowing that in the end he would come back to it. And then, quietly, he did just that, moving and speaking and acting as if nothing had happened, incurious about the hours or days that had passed meanwhile.
Rutledge had no way of knowing if Partridge was a victim of the war. Nothing in his cottage indicated military service, not the way he'd made his bed or the clothing in his armoire. But then that might have been deliberate.
The letter beginning 'My dear' could mean there was someone he regularly went to see. And if the Government had no knowledge of that someone, it could well be a woman he preferred to keep secret.
A rendezvous far from the War Office's prying eyes, a brief escape from whatever it was he'd done to have people watching his every move? It was distasteful to spy on a man, entering his house without his knowledge, looking at his personal correspondence. The fact that the search hadn't yielded any useful information made matters worse. No body in the bedroom to explain away Partridge's absence, no souvenirs of Brighton to point to his whereabouts, no letters giving Rutledge the direction of the man's family. Was the young woman who'd knocked on Partridge's door a daughter-or a lover?
Which brought him back to the unseen man who had been questioning Betty Smith at the inn door. If that was Partridge himself, back again and worried about the stranger hanging about in his absence, he'd taken off.
Rutledge reached the inn, and removing his shoes, went up the stairs as silently as he could. The snores from the Smith bedroom rumbled in counterpoint.
Rutledge woke to the early arrival of three more lorries, and as he shaved, he considered his instructions from London.
A watching brief. Waiting for Partridge to come home, and then reporting to the man's masters, whoever they were, through Chief Superintendent Bowles.
How long had the man been gone? Three days? A week?
It was time to find that out.
At breakfast he asked Mrs. Smith who it was she'd been talking with just after lunch the day before.
'Just as your brother was leaving. I happened to hear the man mention my motorcar.' Rutledge added when she frowned, 'He seemed to know you well. He called you by your first name.'
'Lord have mercy, half the people in and out this door know me by my Christian name. It was a busy day from the time I opened my eyes until I shut them again, and with Larry underfoot as well, I was behind most of it.'
'It wasn't a man named Partridge, by any chance? I'd been hoping to see him.'
'Partridge? No, that's not likely. And if it was your motorcar whoever it was had an interest in, he's not the first nor will he be the last. Most of my regulars want to know if the King is staying here.' She laughed and bustled back into the kitchen, leaving Rutledge to his meal.
He drove back to the White Horse, and when Quincy appeared to feed Dublin the cat, Rutledge walked down to speak to him.
Quincy saw him coming. He straightened and waited, while the cat ate its food without haste, unconcerned by the man from London coming to stand close by its dish.
'You do your duty by your neighbor,' Rutledge began, looking down at the scraps minced for the cat.
'It's a dumb animal, it doesn't know when to expect its owner. When there's no one about to feed it, at least it knows it won't starve.'
'Which is far from being a dumb animal,' Rutledge observed. 'How long has Dublin's owner been away this time?'
'How should I know? I'm not his keeper.'
'Would any of his other neighbors be able to tell me?'
'I feed the cat, not them.'
'What happens if you aren't here by the time your neighbor returns from his walkabout? Surely the woman up the way would take pity on Dublin.'
'Why?' Quincy shrugged. 'I'm not likely to be going anywhere. I leave the walkabouts to Partridge.'
'Partridge? An odd name. What part of the country did he say he came from?'
'He didn't. And it's no odder than Quincy,' he retorted. 'Why is it you're really here? Not the horse yonder.'
'Does it matter?'
'It does. Because every one of us in these cottages is afraid of something. And Partridge was always afraid of strangers.'
'What frightens you?' Rutledge asked, curious.
'My dreams,' Quincy retorted, and went back inside his cottage.
Later in the day, Rutledge drove to London. His mood was mixed, frustration warring with duty.
Hamish said, 'Have ye no' thought? Ye're a red herring.'
Rutledge was beginning to believe that might be true.
He found Chief Superintendent Bowles in his office, finishing a report.
Bowles looked up as he entered, frowned, and said, 'What brings you back so soon?'
'There's nothing to be gained by staying where I was. I was beginning to arouse suspicion. And if I'm not mistaken, there's a watcher there already. Partridge's motor is in the shed, his bicycle as well. He's not in the house ill or dead. And with lorries passing through at all hours of the day and night, he has ample opportunity to disappear wherever he pleases. Unless I'm given more resources, there's nothing more to be done.' hat same morning, as Rutledge was questioning Mrs. Smith
'They won't like it at the War Office.' Bowles's voice was thoughtful. 'But I'll tell them, all the same.' about the man he'd heard from his window, Alice Crowell sat down to write a letter to her father.
He hadn't approved of her husband's declining to fight in the war, but felt that Albert Crowell's duty driving an ambulance had in some measure made up for it. It took considerable courage to pull men out of shell holes under fire and dress the wounds of men lying helpless in No Man's Land. The Germans had no compunction about shooting ambulance men, and Crowell had distinguished himself several times, even shooting at a diving plane with a borrowed rifle and hitting it before it could fire on his vehicle.
And so she began her letter with 'Dearest Papa…'
She went on to tell him that her husband was being persecuted by the police inspector in Elthorpe, and unfairly so since he had had nothing to do with the dead man in the Fountains Abbey ruins.
But she wisely omitted any reference to the book found at the man's feet.
Ending the letter with a plea for her father's help, she added, 'What disturbs me is that the intense scrutiny he's given Albert may have its roots in Inspector Madsen's previous relationship with me, and I daren't remind him of that for fear it will only make matters worse.' She sealed the letter, posted it, and told no one. Her father, colonel of an East Anglian regiment, went directly to London and presented the letter to a friend at the War Office. He didn't know the Chief Constable of Yorkshire well enough to approach him, but he rather thought that Martin Deloran might.
The matter might have languished in limbo but for the fact that Colonel Ingle and the man he met with had both been at Sandhurst. He had come prepared to argue. It wasn't necessary.
For one sentence in the letter seemed to leap off the page, startling Deloran.
… the poor man was wearing a respirator, which causes the police to think his death might have something to do with the war, but if Albert couldn't shoot the Hun, how could he kill a man he swears he has never seen before?
The man behind the desk fingered the sheet of paper for a moment, and then, choosing his words with care, said, 'Interesting story. Yes, well. Consider it done. But I'd rather you didn't tell your daughter that you've brought
