the letter to me. Better to let her believe help arrived before you could act in the matter. Sensibilities of the local police, and all that. This needs to be sorted quietly-if she's to continue living in Yorkshire, that is. And I know just the man to look into matters.'
Colonel Ingle was no fool.
'Thanks very much, Martin.' He waited to see if more information might be forthcoming. 'I'll be on my way then.'
'Anything for an old friend,' Deloran assured him. But Colonel Ingle knew that friendship had nothing to do with Martin Deloran taking on this matter with such speed. He was jumping in for reasons of his own.
Deloran got to his feet. 'What do you say to a spot of lunch, while you're in London?'
Sometime later, Rutledge was summoned to Bowles's office, and he found his superintendent in a dark mood.
'Bloody army, they think we have nothing better to do than run their errands for them. You're wanted in Yorkshire now. I asked if it was the same business, and they declined to tell me. Bloody Cook's Tour, if you want my view of the matter. Give me what's on your desk, and I'll see that it's dealt with.'
'What is it in Yorkshire that I'm supposed to be investigating?'
'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 Gay- lord 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
