breakfast. There's usually cold bacon, bread, and hard-boiled eggs in the cupboard. There's coffee as well as tea. Some of the lorry drivers prefer it to keep them awake.'
'I'll stay with tea.'
When she brought his plate it was large as a charger, and as promised there were rashers of bacon, eggs, toasted bread, and pots of butter and jam. Rutledge thanked her and added, 'I've just come past those cottages not far from the spot where you can look up and see the White Horse. Odd place to put them, I should think, unless they're intended for viewers to stop in.' He couldn't remember seeing them there when he'd come to Uffington as a boy, but then the horse had been all that mattered, firing his imagination.
'Well, I hope you're not thinking of wanting one. They're taken, the lot of them. They were put up near the beginning of the late Queen's reign, leper houses they were. But no lepers came, and then they were let to anyone who was willing to live there. The local people don't much care for them, but there's no dearth of people who do.'
'Why leper houses? Was leprosy a problem here?'
She paused on her way back to the kitchen. 'It was a Miss Tomlin, they say, who was set on them, having been a missionary and seen her share of suffering. And there's a leper in the Bible, you know. I expect that was what put her in mind of doing something for them. She sold off another parcel of land her grandfather had left her and sent for a builder to make cottages where the poor things could live without being tormented. But she never found any 'children of God' as she called them, and she died not long after.'
'At least she cared enough to try.'
'Well, there's that, I expect. Or a guilty conscience. The fact is, she could have done more good with her money in other directions, in my opinion. A touch of the sun, it's what my granddad always said. Too much sun and too long in heathen lands. She'd lost sight of what truly needed doing in England. And I've dishes to see to. My husband's gone to market, and the girl who dries for me has a bad thumb, so I'm on my own. Give me half an hour, and there'll be a room for you.'
She was gone, leaving him to the hearty breakfast.
Afterward she showed him to a small room that seemed Lilliputian, and he remembered the young man on the road. He'd have played the very devil getting himself into this box, he thought.
And the cramped space sent his claustrophobia reeling. The first order of business was to open the only window, which looked out on the road. He stood there breathing in the morning air and fighting an urge to run back down the stairs after Mrs. Smith, begging for something larger. But there weren't any larger rooms, given the size of the building.
Fatigue overtook him after a few minutes, and he lay down on the narrow bed, asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. The fragrance of sun-dried sheets folded with lavender was the last thing he remembered.
It was late morning when he drove back to the White Horse and climbed the hill. His legs were longer than they had been at age nine, and he made short work of it now. As a child he'd huffed and puffed in his father's wake, trying to keep pace but stumbling as he tried to see everything at once.
Hamish, unhappy with this heathen horse, kept him company with a vigorous objection to having any part of it.
When one stood on the crest of the hill looking down at the figure, it was difficult to pick out what the expanse of white chalk represented. Aware of what the design was, it was possible to identify the flowing tail, the legs stretched in a gallop, the reared head. But the ancient people who had cut the turf here to create the figure must have had someone standing on the ground below, guiding them.
As, he realized, someone was standing now, looking up at him.
He began to walk back the way he'd come, and the man stayed where he was. It wasn't the young giant from early this morning, but an older man with gray in his hair and a lined face. His eyes, when Rutledge was near enough to see them, were brown but the whites were yellow.
Malaria.
Rutledge had seen troops from the Commonwealth, especially India, with just such yellowing.
'Good morning,' he said to the man, for all the world a traveler taken with the local sight. 'It's quite a piece of work, isn't it? I expect it was dug with wooden mattocks or antler horn. I wonder how long it took to create the full figure.'
'Don't ask me, I don't know a damned thing about it. And care less. Is that what brought you here, the horse?'
Warily, Rutledge said, 'Should there be another reason?'
'Well, Partridge has gone missing again. There's generally someone from London looking in on him or waiting for him to come back when he's on one of his walkabouts.'
It was an Australian term, and the man seemed to use it as if from habit.
'How do you know he's-er-gone missing?'
'I feed his cat, don't I? When he's not to home, she comes to my door. That's the arrangement we have. And I don't mind, she's a good mouser.'
Rutledge held out his hand and introduced himself.
'Quincy,' the other man said, briefly. 'Well, since you're down, you'll want to come for a spot of tea.'
'Thank you, Mr. Quincy.'
'No, just Quincy,' he retorted, turning on his heel to lead the way to the cottage across from the one with the white gate.
Rutledge bent his head to follow his host inside. The rooms were small but of a size for one man to manage well enough. Or one woman. He'd glimpsed a woman's face peering out at him from her windows as he had turned from the road into the lane that linked the cottages.
'That chair's got better springs,' Quincy said, pointing it out.
Rutledge sat down and looked around. From the sitting room/ parlor, he could see a kitchen in the back where Quincy was busy, a second room across the entry from this one, its door shut, and in the middle of the house, stairs up to a loft.
'Quite comfortable here, are you?' Rutledge asked.
'If you like small places,' Quincy answered, putting on the kettle. 'I've had to store some of my belongings under the bed upstairs. Where did you drive from?'
'London,' Rutledge answered and they talked until the kettle whistled about the city, which Quincy seemed to know, although his information was often more than a little out of date as if he hadn't been there for some time.
The closed door creaked, a paw came out and around it, followed by a long gray cat with orange eyes. Behind her, Rutledge could see a burst of color in the room, as if tins of paint had been splattered everywhere.
'Dublin!' Quincy, catching sight of the cat, swore and came to scoop her up to put her outside. But first he'd shut the inner door quickly as if not wishing Rutledge to know what was in the room beyond.
But Rutledge had already guessed. Birds, in every hue, every size, all naturally posed. And all quite dead.
He said nothing, accepting the cup of tea he was offered. 'These cottages are interesting. What's their history?'
'Not much,' Quincy told him bluntly. 'Built at a guess some fifty years ago by a woman who had more money than sense. Comfortable enough, but I need a bicycle to go anywhere. It's out back.'
'And how did Partridge get around?'
'He had a motorcar. It's in the shed behind his house. I expect he wasn't going far and left it in favor of his own bicycle.'
'Does he usually wander off like this?'
'He's mad as a hatter,' Quincy responded sourly. 'Goes where the wind blows.'
'And who comes here looking for him?'
'Business associates. So they tell me. It seems he worked for a firm in London before he was put to pasture, and apparently someone there still cares what becomes of him.'
'That's thoughtful,' Rutledge answered.
