A Cold Treachery ir-7

by Charles Todd

  Mrs. Peterson had said something about Gerald's uncle. Rutledge interrupted Greeley. “Where is this trunk now? I don't remember seeing anything like that in the house.”

  “Nor do I. It could be Paul Elcott's got it.”

  “Is there anyone who knew the family well enough to answer a few questions before we go to Elcott?”

  “Um, I daresay it would be the ironmonger. Belfors. He was a friend of Paul's father and uncle.”

  Rutledge stood. “Then it's time to ask him.”

  W hen Rutledge opened the door of the ironmonger's shop, Greeley at his heels, very blue eyes examined the Londoner as if weighing him up.

  The man behind the counter was elderly, with shoulders that were still broad and heavy. His face was rugged, pocked with scars from working hot iron, and his broad hands were gnarled and twisted.

  “What can I do for you, then?” Belfors asked, palms resting flat on the worn surface.

  There was a clutter of goods everywhere: Barrels of nails and hinges and locks were stocked in front of ax heads, shovels, and spades. Gates for fences leaned against one wall, rakes and pitchforks on either side. And all manner of chains and hammers and spanners filled shelves. A sharp odor of metal mixed with the scent of pipe smoke filled the air.

  “My name is Rutledge-”

  “Aye, from London.”

  “That's right. I'm told you knew Gerald Elcott's father.”

  “His father?” He stared at Rutledge for a moment, as if this was a question he'd never expected. “He's been dead for going on ten years. But yes, we were in school together, Henry and I.” Belfors straightened. “We courted the same girl for a time.” A grin creased his face. “Until she married someone else.”

  “And did you know his brother, Theo?”

  “The inspector here has no doubt already told you I did.”

  “Tell me about Theo Elcott.”

  “What's this about, then?” Belfors glanced at Greeley as if seeking an explanation.

  But Greeley said only, “Answer the inspector, if you will.”

  “Theo was railway-mad. Since he was a lad. Read everything he could find about trains. That finally carried him off from here at the age of nineteen, and I saw him but once after that.”

  “Where did this passion for railways take him?” Rutledge asked patiently.

  “Slough, for a time. Then he was offered a position in South Africa, and he took it. Did well enough for himself out there. But he died before he could return to England.” Belfors glanced from Greeley to Rutledge. “What's this in aid of, then?” he asked a second time. “You don't think Theo's come home to murder people, do you?” There was a thread of sarcasm in the man's voice.

  Greeley started to speak, but Rutledge was already answering. “Hardly. We're looking for his trunk. The one holding his belongings, the one that came back after he was buried at sea.”

  Belfors sighed. “I can tell you the answer to that. It was given to my sister when she went to Northumberland to live.”

  “And the contents? What became of those?”

  “How should I know? Clothes and shoes and hats and the like? Donated to the Mission boxes, most likely.”

  “Did he bring any souvenirs out of Africa with him?”

  “Ah. It's the revolver you want to know about, then! Why didn't you say so? The revolver he used to shoot the Boer. I saw it once. Henry brought it in to show me. He was that proud of his brother. To be honest, I'd have never thought of Theo as a brave man. He had his head in machinery when I knew him. But I suppose he must have been brave enough, when the time came.”

  Rutledge held on to his patience. “What became of Theo's revolver, do you know?”

  “Henry is the only one who can answer that. And Henry, God rest him, is in the churchyard.”

  “Surely one of his sons would have wanted it. A token, as it were, of their uncle's courage?”

  The bright blue eyes stared into Rutledge's dark ones.

  “I never thought to ask, to tell you the truth. I never knew.”

  And Rutledge had to be satisfied with that. But he had the oddest sense that Belfors could have told him more, that he was holding back the whole truth and palming off this stranger from London with bland half-lies.

  Who was the old man protecting?

  Hamish answered the thought. The only Elcott that's left. Paul.

  But Rutledge was groping for something else, something that seemed elusive and fragmentary. At length he said, “By any chance, did you offer to buy the revolver from Henry, when he brought it in to show you?”

  There was a flicker of change in the steady blue eyes.

  “Henry never wanted to sell it. Why should he? It was Theo's.”

  “Then who did offer to sell it to you-”

  But the shop door opened and a customer came in. Belfors turned away, and the question hung in the air like a ghost, waiting to be exorcised.

  O utside in the street again, Rutledge said to Greeley, “I want to go back to the farm and search before I speak to Paul Elcott. For now, I'd like to get a message to Sergeant Gibson in London. Can you see that it's taken care of?”

  “I'll send Constable Ward to Keswick with it.”

  “He can drive the motorcar. That should take less time. And ask him to wait for a reply.” Rutledge commandeered a desk and began to write.

  He could almost feel Hamish standing just behind him, peering over his shoulder as he worked on a list of names for Sergeant Gibson.

  T he house was quiet when Rutledge returned to the hotel. He walked through to the kitchen to find himself a glass of water, and sat at the table, where he could see the fell rising beyond the gardens, and the play of light in the dips and hummocks of snow. There were more ribs of stone showing now, as the sun strengthened to warm the hard rock. The slopes seemed less oppressive, more tired, as if they had been waging a battle against the blanket of white.

  It was odd, he thought, how in the years he'd come here to walk in season, he hadn't really come to know the people. Or, for that matter, to understand them. The days were spent on the fells, if the weather was good, and the evenings in their lodgings, where he and his father or his friends had talked about the day's experiences, comparing views, the difficulty of the tracks, the plans for the next day. Wastwater had been one of his favorite haunts, wild and beautiful, always a challenge-he could remember where he had walked even now. But he couldn't bring back the name of a single family he'd stayed with There was a light tap on the back door, and it opened.

  The man coming in was from one of the first of the search parties to report to Rutledge. Henderson…

  He nodded to Rutledge, and stood there in the doorway as if expecting to find someone else in the kitchen.

  Rutledge said, standing up, “Did you want Cummins? Or Miss Fraser?”

  “No. I've come to speak to you.” Henderson seemed reluctant to go on with whatever had brought him there. “No word of the lad?” he said finally.

  “Sorry, nothing.”

  “Umm. And the killer, are you any closer to finding out who it was?”

  “We're continuing our inquiries,” Rutledge answered. It was the standard reply when someone prodded the police. And then with honesty, he added, “I'm afraid we haven't found him yet.”

  “Umm.”

  “Is there something you've come across that might help us?”

  Henderson looked down at the hat in his hand. “I don't know. But it was that strange.”

  Hamish was speaking in the back of Rutledge's mind, a voice that was a low rumble. “He's troubled…”

  It was clear that Henderson was of two minds about what he had come to say. Rutledge held his tongue, waiting patiently.

  Finally the man said, “I was bringing my youngest in to see Dr. Jarvis last night. He'd fallen-there was a lump on his collarbone.”

  “Broken, was it?”

  “No. But he'd cried for an hour. It worried my wife.”

  “Yes, I can see that.�
�

  “Dr. Jarvis gave him something for the pain. And let him rest half an hour before going home. It was well after eleven o'clock before we were on the road again.”

  “Your wife was with you?” Corroborating evidence.

  “No, just the boy and me. I had come out of Urskdale, and was just past The Knob, and I looked up to see there was a light, high up.”

  The Knob was within view from where Rutledge had been sitting.

  “Are you sure?”

  “It bobbed, the way it would if a man was walking.”

  “And where was it going? Towards Urskdale or away?”

  “Away. Towards the Saddle.”

  “That's above the Elcott property.”

  “Yes, that's right. I didn't see it for very long, the light. It was as if when he heard my team, he shielded the lantern. I looked again soon after that, but there was no more sign of him. Whether he went on or came down I don't know.”

  “It's not usual to see people on the fells at night?”

  “Not one who hides his light.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “I wouldn't want to make trouble for a neighbor.”

  “No, I understand that.”

  “All the same… it was like someone walking over my grave! I thought it was something you might want to hear.”

  “Yes, that's very helpful, Mr. Henderson. I appreciate your willingness to come forward.”

  “I don't make out why it should have bothered me. But it did.”

  “Can you guide me up there now, to see if there are any tracks?”

  “I've already walked up. That's why I decided to come and speak to you. Mind, I wasn't able to go up until well into the afternoon. The sun had been at any footprints. All I could see was that someone had passed there before me.”

  “A man? Or a woman?”

  He shook his head. “There was no way to tell. The sheep move about. The underlying rock encourages the snow to melt. Prints change shape. But someone had been there.”

  Henderson seemed to be uncomfortable with his decision to tell what he'd seen. After a moment, he nodded to Rutledge, clapped his hat back on his head, and was gone out the door.

  As it closed after him, Hamish said, “Who moved about the fells at night?”

  And Rutledge knew the name that Hamish was expecting.

  But he didn't answer.

  I t was too late to go on to the farmhouse.

  Either the revolver was still there-or it had already been taken away.

  Josh Robinson must have heard the story of his stepfather's uncle. But who had inherited the famous revolver? Had the boy looked for it when his mother was occupied with the twins, or his stepfather was out in the barn or up on the fell pastures? And had the timing of the killings been set when he found that revolver, for fear that his sister's prying or his mother's quick eye might prevent him from using it?

  It was a chilling thought…

  Hamish was saying, “You didna' fancy the valleys, coming back to them in the dark. What if the lad felt the same, away from all that was familiar in London? You're no' the only one who doesna' care to be shut in by the mountains.”

  What was there about this valley that had disturbed the boy? Even if he'd been unhappy at home, even if he'd had trouble making friends in a closed community he hadn't grown up in, even if he had wanted to go and live with his natural father, it didn't explain murder.

  Was it Gerald's fault? What had he done to the boy? Punished him too harshly?

  What might have turned the tide in a child's mind and made murder something he could contemplate?

  Rutledge shook himself.

  He couldn't put himself into Josh's shoes. Their experiences had been too different.

  But thinking back to something the schoolmaster had said about Grace, that she refused to consider letting her son go to his father, he wondered just how long she herself would have been happy here. Had she seen her son's suffering and ignored it for fear it would feed her own?

  Had the happy family facade been on the verge of collapse, and no one had realized it?

  “There hasna' been another killing,” Hamish was pointing out. “Nor is there likely to be. If it was the boy.”

  Then who had been walking across the heights late at night with a lantern?

  J anet Ashton came in, intending to warm her hands at the banked fires in the stove. Startled to see Rutledge sitting there with the lamps unlit, she stopped and drew in her breath as if she would have avoided him if she had not come so far into the kitchen.

  “I've walked until I'm cold to the bone. It didn't help,” she said after a moment. “All I've done is make my ribs ache.”

  “If you'd like a cup of tea-”

  “No. That is-thank you, but no.” She went to the window and stood looking up at the fell, where the westering sun was painting faint colors across the snow. “I hate this place!” she said fiercely, almost to herself. “I hate what it did to my sister-and what it does to me.”

  “What did it do to your sister?”

  “It was too hard a life for Grace. She was city bred, with shops and neighbors across the back fence. We'd always lived where there was some semblance of culture, some semblance of comfort. Here they heat the rooms they use, and the rest of the house is cold! And there were no servants to help her-”

  “If you'd married Gerald, it would have been the same.”

  Caught off guard, she answered tartly, “If I'd married Gerald, he'd have stayed in the South!”

  “He owns land here. He'd have wanted to come back and run his sheep; you couldn't have kept him away forever.”

  “But then I wasn't in love with him, was I?” she countered.

  “I don't know.”

  She turned to stare at him, then took a deep breath. But whatever she was on the point of saying, she stopped herself.

  “Why do you live in Carlisle, if you hate the North?” he went on.

  “I told you. I was worried about Grace. I came up here to keep an eye on her. It's the only thing that could possibly have brought me here!”

  “I expect,” Rutledge said, “that if it came to a choice, the local people would prefer to see you charged with the murders of your sister and her family. You'd be taken away and hanged rather than Paul Elcott, and life could go on here as it had before. A very tidy ending.”

  “Is that why you haven't told Inspector Greeley whatever it is you suspect?”

  “I don't know what I suspect,” he told her honestly.

  “That's probably true. You prefer to sit here in the comfort of this kitchen, with the soft, sweet voice of Elizabeth Fraser in your ear!”

  Angry, he stood quickly and said, “You have no reason-”

  “It's my sister who is dead. My niece and nephew as well. And what have you done since you came here? Nothing!” She was suddenly angry, too. “It wasn't poor Josh who killed them. You know that as well as I do! But you won't take the killer into custody. If you do, you'll have to leave Urskdale; your work will be done. And so-for now-Paul Elcott goes free. What are you afraid of? Your own judgment? What's wrong with you? The war? Were you wounded? Is that what makes you doubt yourself?”

  When he didn't answer, she said, “My sister Grace was very much like Elizabeth Fraser. Don't you care about her? Or a little girl who had all her life ahead of her? Hazel was only seven!”

  He had himself under control again. He said, “You're the only one with a revolver-so far. I can't prove that Josh Robinson had access to one. If he did, it makes a lie of your story that you came here in that storm to bring one to your sister. And the same is true of Paul Elcott. If he's the murderer, where's the weapon?”

  “Somewhere out there in the snow. You'll never find it-he didn't expect you to find it. And if you wait for the weapon, you'll wait until spring. Summer.” She shook her head. “Josh is dead. All of them are dead. I close my eyes at night and I hear them crying out to me. I want someone to pay for their pain and my grief. I want someone to remember tha
t they were avenged.”

  “Justice isn't vengeance,” Rutledge replied.

  She looked him in the eye. “As far as I'm concerned, it's the same.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  M iss Fraser sat at the table cradling her injured hand as she gave Mrs. Cummins instructions on preparing the meal. It would be a little late, she wryly told Rutledge as he brought in the last of the coal scuttles.

  “No matter-”

  Harry Cummins put his head in the kitchen doorway. “Mr. Rutledge. I'd like to speak to you.”

  Rutledge set the scuttle by the parlor hearth and turned to shut the door as Cummins stood by the cold hearth. The man was uneasy, his eyes moving around the room as if he'd never seen it before.

  “I just heard you'd asked London for information about a list of people living in Urskdale…”

  News passed quickly. Damn Ward!

  “Yes, that's true.” Rutledge dusted his hands and added, “It's not an unusual request. Routine, in fact. But the constable was out of line if he told you the names.”

  “But people may have secrets that aren't-in any way connected to murder.”

  “I have to be the judge of that,” Rutledge replied.

  “What do you do with the information collected for you? Do you make it common knowledge-do you, for instance, tell Inspector Greeley? Or anyone else?”

  Rutledge's attention sharpened. “What's worrying you, Cummins?”

  “I-I'm not worried. It isn't that. Curiosity… it's just curiosity.”

  Hamish said, “He wouldna' ask if it wasna' something that mattered.”

  “Well,” Cummins went on, summoning a smile. “I daresay dinner will be a little late. I apologize.”

  “There's no need.”

  “I'm not much of a hand in the kitchen. It isn't something…” His voice trailed off. “I'll just see if there's anything I can do. Thank you for bringing in the coal-I'll see to it myself from now on.”