A Cold Treachery ir-7

by Charles Todd

  “Oh, no, I came from London. Kensington,” she told him. “Do you know it?”

  “Yes, indeed. Does your family still live there?”

  A frown shadowed her face. “I don't know. They haven't told me. We aren't-close.”

  “Did Miss Fraser know them?”

  “No, I asked her that when she first came here. But she didn't. Elizabeth's family lived in Chelsea. Near the hospital, in one of those lovely old houses. I should have liked to live there after we were married. But of course Harry wasn't-happy in London.”

  “And so you came here.”

  “Actually we went to Warwick first. But it didn't work out. We had no friends to speak of. It was very lonely.” She smiled wryly. “I didn't know the meaning of that word lonely until we came here.”

  “Why?”

  “We weren't born here. My grandfather was from Buttermere, but he's been dead for years. Oh, people were nice enough, but they kept us at arm's length. Harry needs people more than I do, and I could feel that weighing on him.”

  But he thought she, too, had missed being a part of what social life there was here. “Is any of his family still living?”

  “Oh, no. That's why he-could do what he did. Walk away, so to speak. There was no one to hurt. But it hurt him inside, I know it did. I thought perhaps he blamed me…”

  He could see, watching her face, the toll life had taken on her. “Were you grateful for Miss Fraser's help while Harry was away in the war?”

  “At first I was suspicious. I thought he'd sent her here to kill me.”

  “Kill you?” Rutledge asked in astonishment. “Why on earth-”

  “Because she'd already killed someone. Didn't you know? I thought a policeman would.”

  E lizabeth was quite frank about it, when she came,” Mrs. Cummins went on. “She said it wasn't fair if I didn't know. She'd told Harry, too. Harry's always collected lost sheep. I saw him a time or two talking with Josh Robinson. For all I know, he thought I was one of his lost souls. No, that's not true, not at first. We loved each other very much.” She raised a hand to her forehead as if to clear her mind. “I sometimes forget that.”

  “Did you mind that he was a Jew?” Rutledge asked gently.

  “How did you know?” she asked in astonishment. “Is it so obvious?”

  He smiled, while Hamish called him traitor to his promise. “I'm a policeman, after all.”

  “Yes, of course. But you seem too nice to be a policeman. Elizabeth tells me you're such a gentleman. She's quite fond of you.”

  “Harry-” he reminded her, embarrassed.

  “No, I didn't care if he was a Hottentot! My father cared, though. He told me he would never speak to me again if I married beneath me-that's how he saw it!-and of course I didn't believe him.” Tears came to her eyes. “I didn't even have a trousseau. I wasn't allowed to take anything from the house except the clothes I stood up in.”

  “That was cruel of him!”

  “Was it? I've wondered if I was the one who was cruel-to disobey him.”

  Shifting the conversation, Rutledge asked, “Did you get along well with Miss Fraser, after she came here?”

  “Everyone loves Elizabeth. I envy her that. Even Harry loves her, after a fashion.” She sighed. “I think more than anything Egypt changed Harry. I think being so close to Palestine made him realize what he'd lost. He wrote long letters to me about how much he wanted to go to Jerusalem. And I couldn't answer them. I was so terrified that Palestine would take him from me!”

  She set the book aside and stood up. “I could fight another woman for him. But I couldn't fight his heritage. I kept hoping that that man Lawrence, the one in all the newspapers, would see to it that the Arabs got all of Palestine and the Jews were thrown out. It was the only way I'd ever win the battle for Harry's soul.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  R utledge got to his feet as Mrs. Cummins walked from the room. He couldn't be sure how much of what she'd told him he could believe. Or whether years of drinking heavily had warped her memories.

  Hamish said, “She's to be pitied.”

  “People who make great sacrifices for love often live to regret it.” Rutledge was thinking of Jean, but it was Hamish who brought up the name of Fiona MacDonald.

  “ She didna' regret loving me.”

  Rutledge stared into the fire.

  He was tired of the grief and pain of others. He hadn't healed sufficiently himself to take on more suffering.

  “How do I find this killer?” he asked into the silence. “I can't seem to put a finger on the truth. I can't seem to sort out the people and see them clearly. I can't seem to find the thread that will lead me to the answer.”

  The Scot's voice seemed to fill the room. “First you must look at the key…”

  W hen Maggie had latched the door on Rutledge, she stood for a moment, resting her leg, her back to the cold wooden panels.

  “It's a bloody Picadilly Circus!” she said under her breath. Her eyes fell on the Wellingtons by the door. Then she looked up at the frightened boy waiting tensely across the room.

  “Well, we're rid of him. But with so much coming and going, I'd recommend feeding the sheep after dark from now on. There's no use calling attention to ourselves, unless we need to.”

  Taking off her coat, she hung it from the hook beside her. Sinking into her chair with relief, she put her head back and considered the ceiling. “If I knew what it was you were afraid of, I'd do better by you.”

  But he said nothing.

  She pointed to the table. “There's pen and paper there. I can go on talking to myself, if that's what pleases you. But my father, God rest him, always told me that facing the monsters under the bed gave you power over them.”

  He didn't seem to understand what she was saying. Heaving herself out of her chair, she crossed to the table, found a clean sheet in the assortment of papers she kept there. Taking up a pencil, she concentrated on drawing for several minutes.

  The boy stole closer, for a better look, and she shifted in her chair so that he couldn't see what it was she was doing.

  Then, satisfied, she leaned back, set the pencil down, and got to her feet.

  “That's what terrified me at your age. Now I'm going to rest for a little. This leg aches like the very devil! There must be a change coming in the weather.”

  She walked to her room, closed the door, and sat down on the bed.

  The boy crept to the table to see what she had drawn, and stood there fascinated.

  A blackness against greater blackness, shaped like a hulking human figure, its broad shoulders crowding out everything else. It loomed above a child's narrow bed, menacing in the extreme. The image was crudely drawn, but the power of it was immense, the pencil strokes bold and vigorous, as if the memory was real and fresh.

  Underneath, Maggie had scrawled The Man of the Mountain.

  He had listened to Mr. Blackwell's classroom account of the man who had lived in one of the shielings on the mountains and crept down at night into the village, hungry for human flesh. It was an old Norse legend carried to England by early settlers in the region, and with the passage of time had come into local folklore as a threat for naughty children.

  “If you don't mind your mother, the Man of the Mountain will come for you. Wait and see…”

  “If you're not back by dark…”

  “If you fail to say your prayers…”

  Mr. Blackwell had called it superstitious nonsense, but there were those in the classroom who had surreptitiously crossed their fingers against invoking the Man. He had more reality than the Devil and was closer to home. The schoolmaster had also told his students that the Man owed much to Beowulf, but the boy hadn't recognized the name. Someone living in another valley, he thought.

  To the boy, an outsider over whom the power of the legend held no sway, it was no more than a delicious tale meant to send a shiver down the spine.

  He smiled a little as he looked at Maggie's work. And then,
turning the sheet over, he studied the blank paper for a time.

  Then he picked up the pencil and with shaking fingers made his own drawing before hiding it deep in the pile on the table.

  After the boy had gone to bed, Maggie looked for and finally found the sheet. She was chilled to see a stark outline of a gallows, with a dangling, empty noose.

  A swift foray into the kitchen was unsuccessful, but Rutledge found what he was looking for in the barn.

  The cow, which the neighbor had been caring for while Harry Cummins was away, lifted her head from the manger where hay had been strewn for her, and stared at him with dark, soft eyes.

  He spoke to her as he went out, and she went on placidly chewing.

  Rutledge left the hotel to drive back to the Elcott farm. Paul's carriage was there, but he didn't go to the kitchen to find the man.

  Instead, he got out of the motorcar and walked around to the front door.

  Moving quietly, he went up the stairs to Josh Robinson's bedchamber. He went carefully through the boy's belongings again, frowning as he worked. Clothes, shoes, stockings, belts-a cricket bat and ball And then he remembered the set of broken cuff links. Taking them, he put everything else back where he'd found it.

  Outside again, he climbed the slope behind the house. The going was still difficult, but he took his time and watched where he set his boots.

  Far up on the shoulder, where the scree began, was the Elcott sheep pen.

  A pregnant ewe had taken shelter there, scraping at the snow cover in search of grass. She sneezed as Rutledge came towards her, and then edged nervously away.

  He kept walking, heading for the ruin of a hut higher up.

  The roof had fallen in, snow had banked high against the walls, and there were heavy tracks all around the hut. It was here that Paul Elcott had once retreated. And here that Josh had retreated the day his mother had gone into false labor.

  The search party had been thorough, poking their staffs into the drifts and trying to probe the narrow opening under a part of the collapsed roof that formed a tiny shelter. If there was anything to be found, they would have seen it. But even they, in the first aftermath of the storm, might have missed something that the rain and sun had brought to the surface like old bones.

  Rutledge knelt and looked inside.

  This was the likeliest place for a child to take shelter. Jarvis had been right. And although the search party hadn't found him here, small traces might have been buried deep in the snow, impossible to see in the light of a lamp or torch.

  What he was about to do would be accepted as truth.

  Reaching into his pocket, he took out one of the cuff links and dropped it into a crevice between stones in the corner nearest what had been the door.

  Satisfied, he squatted there and looked at what he'd done. The cuff link was completely out of sight. He got to his feet and dusted off his gloves.

  Paul Elcott had stepped out into the yard, shielding his eyes as he looked up the fell towards Rutledge.

  Rutledge lifted a hand as if he'd just realized Elcott was there, and began to descend the slope, Hamish arguing with him every step of the way.

  By the time he reached the yard, Elcott had closed the kitchen door and stored his painting gear in the barn. He stood there by his carriage as Rutledge slipped and skidded down the last hundred yards.

  “What possessed you to go up there? It's been searched, that hut.”

  Rutledge, breathless, shook his head. “I'm sure it was. The report said nothing was found. But the snow has melted considerably. I was luckier. I came across these.”

  In the palm of his hand he held out a stub of candle and a burnt match.

  “Someone was there. Either the night it happened, or afterward. I expect it was Josh. But it might have been the killer.”

  Elcott stared at the candle. “You can't be sure-”

  “No. Of course I can't. I didn't have any tools with me. I'll come back tomorrow and look again.”

  “It doesn't make sense. I mean, if he was there-if he had a candle-why didn't he come out when the searchers were calling his name?”

  “You may be right,” Rutledge said, with reluctance. “But this candle hasn't been out in the weather long. Who else has been up there, if not the boy?”

  “Gerry might have been-”

  “I can't see Gerald taking a candle and hunkering down in the hut. But I'll come back tomorrow and take my time.”

  He cranked the motor and stepped into the driver's seat.

  “Did you ever go up there as a child, and hide? Is it a likely place?”

  “I-yes. I could see the yard, and come down when my father was in a better temper,” he admitted reluctantly. “But I doubt Josh ever did that.”

  “I wouldn't say anything about this in Urskdale. Until I can be sure what the candle means.”

  “No. Of course not. I-I'll be working out here again tomorrow. You'll let me know-”

  “Yes, I'll be sure to do that.”

  A t the hotel, Rutledge found Mrs. Cummins in the kitchen boiling carrots for dinner.

  He took out the candle stub and held it out.

  “I found this above the Elcott farm-in a hut that's beyond the sheep pen. Does it look as if this candle is one that could be bought here in Urskdale?”

  She studied it. “Harry has a box just like it that he bought in one of the shops. He keeps them in the barn. What's it doing up in a hut? That's an unlikely place to store candles!”

  “I can't be sure what it means. I'm going back tomorrow to search again. There was no time to do more-I didn't have a spade or a torch with me.”

  Mrs. Cummins said, “You ought to ask Sergeant Miller to go with you. He's a good man with a spade. You should see the garden behind his house!”

  “Thank you. I'll do that.”

  I t was Janet Ashton who made a comment at the dinner table about the candle.

  “I can't see that it's important. That candle you found. I mean, Josh had probably played up there a hundred times. He liked walking about on his own.”

  “I don't know that it matters,” Rutledge agreed. “But I'll have a look tomorrow. I could have missed something today.”

  “It's silly,” she said doubtfully. “But you know your own business best.”

  “What troubles me,” Rutledge said, “is that the boy may be alive somewhere. I'm considering sending out search parties again. Who else could have been using a candle in that hut? What was he waiting for? Was he looking for you, Robinson? Or afraid to come to the authorities? And if it wasn't the boy, someone was waiting, possibly watching the farm. You can see the yard quite clearly from there. It's an ideal observation post.”

  “For what?” Harry Cummins asked.

  “Opportunity,” Rutledge answered him. “He might not have been certain whose farm he'd come across. Or how many people lived there. What the best time for attack might be. In short, reconnaissance.”

  “What you're telling us is that it was a cold-blooded attack. Well planned and scouted,” Robinson retorted. “No one living in Urskdale would need to do that. Josh wouldn't have to conceal himself and spy. And I refuse to believe he acted with such chilling premeditation.”

  “That's why I'm going back. The candle and match prove nothing. But if the searchers missed this, what else did they overlook?”

  Elizabeth Fraser said, “It's a frightful thought. That someone could sit and watch, like a monstrous animal in search of prey. But even animals have a reason for what they do. Why should someone stalk and kill the Elcotts?”

  Mrs. Cummins said, “Oh, don't! I don't want to know! That someone could be out there right now, watching us.”

  “My dear, it's supposition. You needn't be afraid! Not with this many people about. You're safe!” Harry Cummins assured his wife, and then deliberately turned the subject. “And that reminds me, Mr. Rutledge, if you're intending to send your motorcar back to Keswick, I'd like to ride with the constable-we're in need of supplies.”


  There was an apple pudding for dessert. As he finished his, Rutledge said, “I'm sorry-I haven't had a chance to speak to Inspector Greeley. If you'll excuse me, I'll do that now and turn in early.”

  He rose from his seat at the table and went to his room to get his coat and hat.

  Passing the dining room five minutes later, he could hear the discussion going on.

  And Elizabeth Fraser was saying, “I really think it was unwise to tell us what he'd found. Or for us to speculate this way.”

  But Janet Ashton was furious. “I don't care how many candles he found, or where he might have found them. It's not proof that will stand up in a court of law, and for all we know it has nothing to do with our killer. It's a waste of time, and I for one think we ought to tell the Chief Constable as much. Inspector Rutledge saved my life, and I'm grateful. But I am tired of sitting here waiting for him to get to the bottom of this wretched business.”

  Hugh Robinson's deeper voice cut across something that Harry Cummins was about to say. “What if Josh came back, waiting for me? He might have taken shelter in that hut, thinking I'd be sent for and would come looking for him. It's possible, for God's sake! We're dealing with a ten-year-old!”

  “Elizabeth is right,” Cummins intervened. “It's not proper to be talking about this. My dear, shall I bring in the tea tray, or will you?”

  R utledge found Sergeant Miller at the police station, thumbing through a catalog of gardening supplies.

  He looked up at Rutledge and said, “Something I can do for you, then, sir?”

  “I need your help. Will you drive me now to the Elcott farm, and then bring the motorcar back here, and leave it in the yard of the hotel?”

  Miller frowned. “I don't understand, sir. Take you out there and leave you? What's that in aid of?”

  “Let's call it an experiment, shall we? As far as anyone knows, I'm at the hotel, asleep. And you'll say nothing to the contrary. Tomorrow morning, at first light, you can come and fetch me again.”