A Cold Treachery ir-7

by Charles Todd

  “It's possible someone came into Urskdale by that track-”

  “It hasn't been used in years! How was he to know it was there, in the first place? And how did he manage to find it, in a storm like that one?”

  Hamish said, “The woman is right. It isna' possible.”

  Rutledge answered him. “Anything is possible.” But he wasn't aware until the words were out of his mouth that he'd spoken them aloud.

  “You're no' thinking clearly-”

  But Maggie had taken the comment in stride. “That's right. Men can fly now, can't they? But it's not likely I ever will. And it's not likely this late in the day that you'd manage to see any footprints even if you found the old drift road. The snow's melted all week. The rain took a good bit of it off the heights. It's a wild-goose chase.”

  “Is there anyone else who could take me where I want to go?”

  “Gerald Elcott might have known where to look. Drew Taylor might-”

  “Taylor?” Rutledge asked quickly. “Is that his last name?”

  “That's right. You know him then?”

  “He took me up the fell that rises behind the hotel. For a better look at Urskdale.”

  “You might ask him, then. But I'm no use to you. And my soup's on the boil and will be all over the floor if I don't go in and see to it.” She turned and went back into her house, closing the door firmly behind her.

  Rutledge swore.

  “Taylor's no' uncommon a name.”

  It was true. He turned the motorcar gingerly, then paused to look at the prints of Wellingtons in the snow around the sheep pen beyond the shed.

  Surely on virgin snow, tracks might still be visible He drove down the farm lane faster than was safe, in a hurry to get back to Urskdale.

  D rew Taylor lived in one of the houses that straggled out of the village just beyond the church. It was stone, low to the ground, and seemed to belong to a generation long gone.

  Rutledge had got Taylor's direction from Elizabeth Fraser, asking her if Taylor had had any sons in the war.

  She shook her head. “He never married. He's not the sort-if you wanted the perfect lighthouse keeper, it would be Drew. He prefers his own company.”

  Knocking at the door now, Rutledge looked at the garden that lay to one side of the house. It was well kept, the autumn's debris cut and taken away, the roses set in the one sunny corner heavily mulched far up their stems. Behind the house he could see barns, sheds, and, higher up the long shoulder of the hill, grazing sheep.

  After a time Drew came to the door, opening it to stare at Rutledge.

  “I've come for information,” the policeman said.

  Taylor waited.

  “I've just spoken with Maggie Ingerson. She tells me you might know how to find the old drift road that led over the mountains to the coast.”

  “It was closed by a rock fall in my father's father's time,” he said.

  “To sheep, perhaps. What about one man? Could he find the way in and make it over the slide?”

  “What's this in aid of?”

  “It's important to be certain no one came into-or went out of the valley-that way. Where no one could see him.”

  Drew grunted. “Late in the day to be looking for signs of that. Snow'd covered any prints long before we got up there to the rock fall. Just as it had the boy's. Besides, a stranger would have to know where the beginning or the end of the track was, wouldn't he? To find his way? He wouldn't be likely to stumble across the old road and just like that, know what it was or where it led. Not this time of year.”

  “But it could be done. If you were set on reaching the valley by the back door? And someone had told you how.”

  “It's possible,” Drew grudgingly answered him, unwittingly using Maggie Ingerson's words. “But not likely.”

  “Then show me, if you will, what we're talking about.”

  The man shrugged. “Well, then. I'll just get my coat.” He shut the door in Rutledge's face and was gone for some five minutes. When he came back, he was wearing heavier shoes, a scarf, and his thick coat.

  Rutledge had expected to be directed back to Maggie Ingerson's farm, but Drew Taylor sent him instead to the Elcotts.

  They arrived to find Paul Elcott's carriage there, but Drew told Rutledge to drive on for some two hundred yards beyond the house. A broad track led to a pen where the sheep were brought in for shearing, and stopped just beyond.

  They got out there.

  Drew led the way past the pen, and began his steady climb up a track that was apparently clear to him but invisible to Rutledge. Other boots had packed the snow to an icy crust, indicating that a party of searchers had started from here. But after an hour or more, Taylor struck out in a different direction.

  At one point when they had stopped on the high shoulder, Rutledge asked, “Did you have relatives who served in the war?”

  Drew Taylor looked at him. “I'm the last of my name here. Why?”

  “Gerald Elcott knew a private soldier by the name of Taylor. They served together, for a time. Or so I've just been told.”

  “Gerald asked me the same question when he came back to the dale.” He turned and began to climb again. “Common enough name.”

  In another hour they had reached the long ridge and made their way along it. Another rank of mountains, lower but just as rough, forked off to the south and east, towards the coast.

  “On a clear day you can see the sea from here,” Drew Taylor told Rutledge. “The drift road you want cuts in over there. See how the ridge dips and flattens? You can run sheep up and over it. And horsemen could follow, if they started up from the Ingerson farm and cut over. Still, that was chancey. Mostly it was the sheep, the cur-dogs, and drovers on foot.”

  “I have in mind a man, determined and alone.”

  “And I've told you before, it's hit or miss. In a storm and at night-” He shook his head. “I'd not attempt it, myself.”

  “They bring charabancs up to Wastwater, don't they? Filled with sightseers?”

  “But that's an easier route. You'd never get one into Urskdale, save by way of Buttermere. And there's nothing at Urskdale to make it worthwhile.”

  “What's that hut there, the one where the roof has fallen in?”

  “A shieling, a shepherd's hut. My father's father told me that William Wordsworth walked there once, and called it a tolerable view. But whether it's true or not, I can't say.”

  “And the rock fall?”

  “We can reach it from here.” He described the route to take.

  Rutledge followed his pointing finger. Another hour or more, at the least. And more to the point, without landmarks, how would anyone find his way from there to one of the nearby farms? The Elcotts at High Fell… Apple Tree… South Farm. The Ingerson holding. By guess and by God, if at all.

  He could feel the stiffness in his knees from the climb. In snow it would have been far more difficult, and the risk of getting lost would be high.

  But what if the interloper had come during the daylight hours, and stopped at the hut where Wordsworth had admired the view? Got his bearings there and then waited for dark? Who was to see him but a passing raven? The storm, catching him up, would have persuaded him that he was safe from detection. And afterward, after the murders, he had only to wait on the other side of the rock fall until the worst of the snow had abated…

  Hamish said, “A man would have to be intent on revenge, to attempt it.”

  The sun was moving faster than they were walking. But Rutledge told Taylor, “I want to see the fall. Did any of the search parties look on the far side of that?”

  “To what end? It's not likely the lad could get across it!” He moved on, breaking through the crust of snow with the surefootedness of one of his sheep. After a time he pointed to where the ravens had been at the torn body of a seagull blown inland in one of the storms.

  “The fate of the lad,” Hamish said. “If he got this far…”

  Trying to stave off discouragement,
Rutledge kept on. Taylor seemed tireless, his legs moving with precision over the stones and folds and loose scree that Rutledge couldn't see.

  After a time they came to the rock fall that had turned this road into a footnote in the history of Urskdale. As far as Rutledge could tell, the spread was a good fifty feet wide. Jagged edges protruded through the snow, and when he reached out to test their stability, Rutledge could feel the unsteadiness of the larger stones on top. Already many of them had tumbled down to form small hillocks and traps for the unwary foot.

  With good light and steady nerves, it would be possible to clamber over the fall. Just.

  And sheep were not stupid, as someone had pointed out to him earlier. No bellwether or dog would risk seeing the flock trapped here. And it would take blasting and long weeks of digging to make even a single track through the debris.

  Rutledge looked at it, and then began to fight his way up the shambles of rock and loose scree.

  “Here-!” Drew Taylor began, and then fell silent.

  Rutledge struggled upward, slipped and banged a knee, found his footing again, and moved on. He was young and agile. But the snow was heavy, making handholds hard to pick out. And then without warning, he began to fall as a single rock moved under his boot and dislodged its neighbors as well. With nothing but his fingers to break his descent, he bumped down the hidden obstacles and landed hard on his back.

  For an instant he lay there, winded. Drew came hurrying across to him, but Rutledge waved him away. There was a scrape on his cheek, his shins had been bruised in five or six places, and an elbow ached. But nothing was broken, and gathering his feet under him again, he stood.

  “That was foolish,” his guide scolded him. “Break a leg, and who's to drag you out of here, with darkness coming on?”

  Rutledge clapped his hands to dust the snow off his gloves and then brushed down his coat and his trousers. His hat had gone rolling, and he picked it up. The palm of his right hand was stinging and he took off his glove to look at it. There were bloody punctures in a half-moon crescent.

  “What the hell-?” he began, reaching for his handkerchief to wipe away the blood.

  It was an odd wound for a rock to make. And it looked like nothing he could identify.

  Turning back to where he had fallen, he considered the ascent he'd tried to make. By instinct, he'd taken the line of least resistance. Closest to the wall-and the lowest point. The most logical place.

  After a moment he began to dig in the snow where he'd landed.

  Drew squatted on his haunches to watch.

  It took several minutes to find what his hand had come down on hard enough to break the skin in five places.

  He held it up for Drew to see.

  A heel from a boot. With the nails still embedded in the leather. He turned it over and matched it to the wounds on his palm.

  “Someone has climbed over this slide. Or tried. The question is, when?”

  “Last summer, I'd say. We had a number of Cambridge lads here. Not much money and not overmuch sense. We brought one of them down with a broken ankle. From The Knob. In my book, he was lucky he didn't break his neck!”

  B y the time Rutledge had reached the hotel again, the moon had risen, casting a cold silver light over the fells, etching them against the sky. It was very late.

  Every bone in his body ached. All he wanted was his bed, and a night's sleep. His hand stung where the nails had gone in, two of them deeper than the others, as his weight had come down there first. It had been difficult to crank the car when they reached the Elcott farm. But Drew Taylor had been eager for them to be on their way, as if he expected the ghosts of the dead to come out of the kitchen door in their bloody shrouds.

  Paul Elcott's carriage was gone, and the house was dark. Moonlight touching the upper windows gave them an eerie brightness, almost as if someone had lit the lamps in the bedchambers.

  Up on the fell, something was moving. A line of sheep slowly made their way to a place flat enough for them to settle for the night.

  And then Drew Taylor said into the silent darkness, “He must have stood about here, where we are, that night. The killer. He could have seen that the lamps were still lit in the kitchen, and known where to find the family. Or he might have waited in the barn until he could be sure they were all there. What went through his mind, do you think?”

  It was an unexpected question from a man who ordinarily had little to say. And he waited, as if wanting an answer.

  Rutledge looked at the yard, the shapes of the outbuildings, the peak of the house roof, the shadow of the fell behind.

  “Anticipation. He couldn't know how it would turn out.”

  “No. I think it must have been hunger. A wanting so deep he could taste it.”

  And Drew Taylor climbed into the motorcar, without looking at Rutledge.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  R utledge woke to Hamish's voice.

  “The heel of a shoe isna' evidence of anything.”

  The voice seemed to be there with him in the room, and he kept his eyes tightly closed against it.

  “It proves someone was there at the rock fall.”

  “Aye, I grant you that. But a heel canna tell you when it was lost. Or fra' whose shoe. Or if the wearer walked sae far out of curiosity or murderous intent. Yon rock fall is in plain view. It's the old drover's road that climbed to it and passed on beyond it that's been lost.”

  Rutledge had left the motorcar idling long enough to put a message under the knocker on Greeley's door last night, asking him to contact the police along the coast.

  Tell them to question hotels and shopkeepers about any holidaymaker who had shown an unusual interest in an old drift road coming down from Urskdale-or who was curious about other ways to reach the dale.

  “It's a wild-goose chase.”

  “It's a beginning,” Rutledge retorted. “If we don't get to the bottom of this, a clever barrister for the defense will.”

  Hamish made no answer.

  After a time Rutledge opened his eyes to an empty room.

  I t had slipped his mind that Harry Cummins was eager to speak to him. It was brought home again when Cummins waylaid him in the passage as Rutledge was on his way to the kitchen for tea and a late breakfast.

  Cummins was pressing, and took him into the empty dining room where Rutledge could see that he'd been waiting for some time. A dish of half-smoked cigarettes sat by the one chair pulled out from the table.

  Without preamble, the innkeeper said, “It's about the names of people to investigate that you sent to the Yard.”

  “Yes?” Rutledge answered warily, thinking of a name he had not given to Greeley or anyone else.

  To his surprise Cummins asked directly, “Am I on that list?”

  “Why should you be?” Rutledge countered.

  “Because you've had your suspicions. I've read them in your face.”

  “Not all the answers have come back,” Rutledge replied evenly. “Is there anything you want to tell me before they do?”

  “I-I just need to know if my name is there! I haven't done anything-not to the Elcotts. But I'm used to-it's-something personal-I'd rather not have it talked about. Not here, where everyone knows one's business before the day is out.”

  “It might be best, then, to tell me what you're hiding.”

  “I'm not hiding-at least nothing to do with murder. It's a very private matter. You don't understand what it's like, sometimes. Surely you've done something you're not especially proud of!”

  The expression on Rutledge's face tightened, and Harry stepped back, his hand on the chair behind him.

  “I didn't mean- Look, forget I said anything. It's just that everyone's nerves are on edge. You can feel it. Even Elizabeth isn't herself. She snapped at me this morning, and she's never done that. Never. If she can be unsettled by all this, it isn't-surprising-that others should be.” He turned away, towards the window. “If only you could take into custody whoever it was killed the El
cotts! We could be at peace again.”

  “How long have you known Miss Fraser?” Rutledge asked.

  He turned so quickly he nearly knocked over the chair. “Elizabeth? For about four years, at a guess. Why?”

  “How did she come to Urskdale?”

  “I-I offered her a position here. To be company for my wife while I was away fighting. Elizabeth had just recovered from her accident. She wanted to get away from pity; she wanted a quiet place where no one cared how or why she was bound to that chair.” He gestured around him, as if the cold dining room was sanctuary. “It suited us both.”

  “Tell me about her accident.”

  “Truthfully? I don't know what happened. I was in Green Park in London early one morning, walking off too much whiskey the night before. And she was sitting there in her chair, crying. I went over to her and asked if there was anything I could do. She said, ‘Talk to me until I've got myself together again.' And I did. Fifteen minutes later, she thanked me and there was an end to it.”

  “Go on.”

  “I met her on the street a day or so afterward, and she said, ‘I remember how lonely the Urskdale mountains are, and how the afternoon light glints on the lake. I'm afraid I don't remember your name.' I took her to a shop for tea, and we talked for a bit. I think I told her how unhappy my wife was. It had been worrying me and there was nothing I could do. You can't very well tell the Army to go hang! I don't know if I suggested she come here to be with Vera, or she did. It didn't matter. I was grateful. A fortnight after that, I put her on the train and said good-bye. I sailed three days later. But she wrote to me while I was away. Vera couldn't. She'd begun drinking, you see. She was certain I'd be killed. So many were…”

  “And you knew nothing about Elizabeth Fraser, before sending her north? That was damned trusting!”

  “I was desperate. She seemed gentle and kind. My wife's family hadn't spoken to her since we were married. Vera needed someone. My God, what else was I to do!”

  G reeley arrived as Rutledge was preparing to leave the hotel.