of him. Or required of him?
'What excuse do I have for being there?'
'There's that damned great white horse on the hillside.' Bowles turned back to the room. 'Done in chalk. People come to stare at it, and strangers are taken for granted. Not liked, mind you, but for the most part ignored.'
The damned great white horse was a chalk figure from the prehistoric past, and of all the chalk figures, possibly Rutledge's favorite. He'd been taken to see it as a child and allowed to walk the bounds.
'Who is the man I'm to watch? How will I know him?'
'It's Partridge, of all the bloody names. Gaylord Partridge. The cottage with the white gate. He matters to the War Office, and that's what you're to keep in mind at all times.' He passed a sheet of paper to Rutledge.
Not even on official stationery, he thought, scanning it. A name, a direction. Nothing more. Spoken rather than written instructions. Sydney Riley, the infamous spy, could have done no better in the cloak-and-dagger world.
Rutledge left soon afterward, not happy about the long drive that lay ahead, but in other ways glad to be out of London. The daffodils would be rioting among the hedgerows, and the air was sweet in the countryside.
Hamish reminded him, 'There's yon Simon Barrington,' as Rut- ledge put the kettle on and then went to pack his valise.
'He'll still be in London when I return. It can wait.' But Frances's face when she'd come to ask him to take her to dinner with Maryanne Browning was before him, even as he answered Hamish aloud.
He could hardly pound Barrington into admitting he'd lied to Frances, or arrest him for cruelty to his sister. And there was always the possibility that perhaps it was Frances who lied about Scotland, to keep herself from blurting out the truth-that something had gone wrong between the two of them.
'It can wait,' he said again to Hamish as much as to himself. 'It might work out better without my meddling.'
Hamish said derisively, 'Aye, that's a comfort.'
Rutledge filled his Thermos with tea, then turned out the lamps. He paused there in the darkness, wondering again if he should leave a message for his sister, then thought better of it. A letter was no way to deliver bad news, if she truly didn't know where Simon was. And it was always possible that he had dined with the Douglases and then traveled north with them.
Cutting across London, Rutledge set out in the direction of Uff- ington, and drove through the darkness, stopping only to stretch his legs when he felt himself drowsing at the wheel and to drink from the Thermos.
It was a remarkably soft night, one of those April evenings when the world seemed pleased with itself. When he'd left the busy towns ringing London behind, he could sometimes smell plowed earth and, once or twice, the wafting fragrance of fruit trees in bloom. The road emptied as the night moved on toward the early hours of morning, a handful of lorries making their way to the east and the occasional motorcar passing him. At one point he smelled wood smoke, and wondered if gypsies were camping in a copse of trees in the middle of nowhere. The policeman's instinct was to stop and investigate, but he drove on, ignoring it.
Around two in the morning, he pulled into a small clearing and slept, awaking to the dampness of an early dew. For several seconds he was disoriented, not sure where he was, in France or in England, but then his mind cleared and he got out to walk again and to finish his tea.
It was just getting light when he drove past his destination, a cluster of nine cottages that seemed to stand in the middle of nowhere, much of a sameness in design as if they were built to match. Stone and thatch, they seemed out of place here. He saw that one a little to itself boasted a white gate in a low stone wall.
On the hillside above him was the White Horse, pale in the morning light, an early mist hiding its feet, giving it the appearance of floating across the ground, silent and mysterious.
He stopped the motorcar in the middle of the road, swept by such an intense emotion that he could feel his heart thudding heavily in his chest.
The mist, moving gently, blotted out everything else until it was all he could see.
Gas. Floating across the battlefield, and the shout going up, Masks!
He was back in France, the tension and fear spreading around him as he and his men watched the slow- moving cloud, fumbling to put on their gas masks, hastily making sure not an inch of skin showed. He thrust his hands in his pockets, unable to find his gloves, digging them deep until he could feel his knuckles hard against the fabric. And Hamish saying in his ear-
'Are you lost, then?'
He came back to the present with a jolt, staring at what appeared to be a giant of a man standing at his elbow.
For the life of him, he couldn't have told how long the man had been there or what he'd been saying.
'I- Admiring the horse,' he managed, trying to bring it into focus against the backdrop of his slip into the past.
The young man turned to look at it. 'Impressive, right enough. I like it best at moonrise. But you're blocking the road.'
Rutledge glanced in his mirror and saw a large wagon behind him and a patient horse between the shafts. On the wagon was a harrow.
'Sorry.'
He let in the clutch and drove on, still lost in that nightmare world that all too often shared his real one.
The cottages were behind him, and ahead lay Wayland's Smithy in a copse of beech trees. He could make it out clearly, an arrangement of great stones that encompassed a small space with a narrow opening. It had probably been a Stone Age tomb, not a blacksmith's shop. Still, legend maintained that if a man left his horse there overnight to be shod, and a coin to pay for the work, the animal would be waiting for him in the morning. More likely, local smiths had discovered a way to expand their trade. For centuries fire and those who used it to work metal were held in high regard, and sometimes feared as well.
A few miles along, he found a small inn by the road, lorries in the yard and a motorcar or two as well.
He stopped to ask if they were serving at this hour, and inside saw a pot of tea standing on a small table near the door, a stack of mugs beside it, sugar and a pitcher of lukewarm milk just behind it.
He poured himself a cup, wandered into the tiny reception area, and sat down by the window overlooking the road.
It was two hours later that he opened his eyes again.
A woman was clearing away the tea things, and she smiled as he stirred and then straightened up in his chair.
'You're not the first to nod off in that chair,' she said, her eyes merry, 'nor the last. That your motorcar by the lilacs?'
'I'm afraid so. When do you begin serving breakfast?'
'Lord love you, we closed the kitchen more than an hour ago. Most of the lorry drivers have moved on. I'd have thought their racket would've wakened the dead.'
'Not this dead,' he said, standing and stretching his shoulders. 'Do you by any chance have rooms here?'
'We keep a half-dozen beds for travelers. Clean sheets and good food, as well as good cheer. That's what we offer. And all we offer.' She considered him. 'It's not very posh-'
Rutledge smiled. 'Still, I'd like a room for tonight, if you have one. I'm here to see the horse.'
'Oh, yes? It's early for the day-trippers, but I expect you aren't the usual visitor. What are you, then?'
Her face was red with the morning's rush, her hair pinned back out of her way, and her clothing sober, as if she worked hard and had no time to worry about how she looked.
He hadn't been prepared to deal with questions of this sort.
'I was tired of London, and I drove all night.' Following her into the dining room, he added, 'I needed to see something besides walls and pavement and people.'
'Disappointed in love, are you?'
He was on the point of vigorously denying it when he realized that she was teasing him. And he must have looked the picture of the rejected lover, unshaven, his clothes unpressed, his face marked with fatigue.
'No. Foolish in the extreme.'
She laughed. 'Sit down over there in the corner-that cloth's clean-and I'll bring you whatever's left from
