A Cold Treachery

by Charles Todd

  This was not agricultural country. The season was brief, the ground stony. Root crops did poorly, but a few hardy varieties such as cabbages and whatever else could be coaxed into growing in the shelter provided by the house survived long enough to be harvested.

  The well and then a stable led the eye to the barn that stood at the end of the yard. A stone feeding trough ran along one side of a large pen, a shed next to it. An outbuilding provided cover for a farm cart and a carriage. Beyond a patch of raspberries and gooseberries, bare-branched now, a track made its way out into an open field. Looking up, Rutledge could see the faint outline of the fell behind the inn, a long slope that climbed to a ridge and ran, humpbacked, in both directions. Shadows carved rocky defiles and boulders, tricked the eye with deceptive smoothness where loose scree or crevices lay waiting for the unsuspecting foot, and then changed shape again as the clouds thinned, presenting a different face entirely. Except for the wind, there was only silence.

  Now that he could see the open sky, Rutledge found the mountains less oppressive than they had been last night. But there was still that uncomfortable sense of being shut off. A sense of claustrophobia.

  “They're treacherous, the fells,” Miss Fraser said at his back, startling him. “That's probably their attraction. And Wordsworth, of course, with his belief that pristine Nature holds secrets civilized people have lost. I don't think he tried to make a living here—he never saw how hard life can be for those who do. It's harsh country, demanding, and it seldom offers a second chance. I wonder, sometimes, if their roots didn't run so deep here, holding them back, whether people in these valleys wouldn't rather live in Kent or Somerset or Essex. If there was any choice at all.” Her voice was sad.

  He turned to see her in her chair, shawl over her hair against the cold air, looking out at the long run of fell faintly outlined against the gray sky.

  When he said nothing, she went on, “That child must have been terrified. I can't help but agree with Constable Ward, that the killer had better luck finding him and disposing of him that awful night. That's why the search parties have come up empty-handed. How can a ten-year-old boy outrun a grown man? I want to hope—and dare not! It would be too cruel to have hope dashed.”

  “Is there any other way out of the valley? From the Elcott farm?”

  “There's a track farther to the south that runs over the mountains and is said to meet a road coming up from the coast. Sheep were driven to market that way, a long time ago, or so some of the older men claim. I doubt if many people outside Urskdale know how to find it . . .” She looked up at him, her blue eyes troubled. “Do you suppose he—whoever he is—escaped that way?”

  “It's possible. I'm sure Inspector Greeley sent a party in that direction to look for traces of him.” But what would bring a man over such rough terrain to kill and then vanish again? There would be easier opportunities along the coast. A lunatic . . .

  “You'll never find him, if he got out of Urskdale. And that brings up the question of whether or not he'll—come back. Whether he's finished—satisfied—or still has other business here . . .”

  “We'll find him,” he told her. “It may take time, but we will. You needn't worry.” But Hamish was not as certain. Rutledge could feel the resistance in his mind. A comforting lie . . .

  They could hear a raven high on the ridge, the deep call echoing.

  Elizabeth Fraser tilted her head to listen. As if following up on an earlier thought, she said, “This is such an isolated valley. Sometimes I find it very lonely. Just now I find it very frightening.”

  “Why do you stay?” he asked, and then wished he could bite back the words. For all he knew she was dependent on the Cumminses for her keep. A companion-housekeeper of sorts to a drunken woman.

  But she smiled. “I like the stillnesses. And the wind. I like the wildness. Everything is pared down to the bone in a place like this. It's a wonderful antidote for self-pity. I'm as bad as the summer walkers, aren't I? They come only for ‘splendid vistas and noble panoramas.' I should be telling you that I admire the hardiness of the people or the bracing climate. Something unselfish and fine.”

  She watched him pace restlessly, his mind on the search parties.

  “You aren't used to waiting, are you?” she asked.

  “No. I'm afraid it shows.” Hamish, still agitating in the back of his mind, was keeping him on edge, and the wait for Greeley was beginning to get on his nerves. There must be people he could speak to, evidence he could begin to pull together. But most of the men of Urskdale were out there on the fells, beyond his reach. And the killer could very well be among them. Had Greeley taken that into account?

  A gust of wind came round the corner of the house and brought with it a shower of snow from the roof over their heads. Reluctantly Miss Fraser turned her chair and went back inside. After a moment, Rutledge followed her, closing the door and latching it.

  “You know these people, do you?” he asked. “Here in Urskdale?”

  “You mean, do I know any of them well enough to point my finger at one and call him a murderer?” She drew her chair to the window, where a rare patch of pale, early sun was reaching through the clouds. She turned her face up to it. “Yes. I suppose I do.”

  He crossed the room and found a chair near the table, taking up one of the napkins there and folding it into triangles and then squares. It soothed his restlessness, a contrast to her peacefulness. How had she learned to accept her disability so tranquilly? Or was it a hard-won lesson, a victory he knew nothing about? “It may be that there was no outsider . . .”

  “I hope I don't know anyone who could kill like that,” she began pensively. “A grudge simmers, doesn't it? It grates and warps a man until he can't bear it any longer. Short words—angry looks behind someone's back—glares in the butcher shop or at the smithy. Something he's feeling seeps out, surely? But I can't remember ever seeing anyone show that kind of animosity towards Gerald Elcott. I don't recall anyone telling me that they'd overheard a quarrel or seen indications of bitterness or envy. I don't want to think that someone could conceal such anger so well. It smacks of madness, doesn't it?”

  “Even madmen have reasons for what they do.” Rutledge remembered Arthur Marlton, the prisoner in the dock in Preston. “Look at it another way. Why the Elcotts? They seemed to have lived a rather ordinary life. Not very different from a dozen other families, surely? Then suddenly someone sweeps down on them in a fury and destroys them. Where did this fury come from? Was it directed at them? Or were they merely the closest target?”

  “The Elcott family has deep roots here. And it's true old resentments are nursed, kept alive for years.” Her back was still to him. “I've told you, this is a hard land, and the people on it are hard as well. They don't have much to give, except perhaps trust, and when that's betrayed, they do know how to hate—”

  She was interrupted as the kitchen door opened and a man came in, his boots in his hand.

  “Morning, Miss,” he said to the woman in the chair, before turning to the man at the table. “You're Inspector Rutledge, then?” His eyes scanned Rutledge from head to foot, as if expecting to find a Londoner wanting in the sheer physical ability to cope with the demands of the North. What he saw seemed to satisfy him, and he held out his free hand.

  He was tall and gangling, heavily dressed for weather, his face burned a deep red from the wind. But his gray eyes were clear enough. “My name's Henderson. I've come from the group that's been searching”—he caught sight of the map on the table and walked over to stab a finger at a location—“just here. We've seen nothing. Spoke to this house—this one—this—this, and this. They've not seen nor heard anything suspicious. No strangers about. And they're all able to account for their time two days ago. Three, now. Four.”

  “And do you believe them?”

  “It's hard not to. The whole family tells the same story, all the while looking straight at us. I'm a shopkeeper, not a policeman, and uncomfortable risking my livelihoo
d pushing those who frequent my shop too hard. Still—I'd say they were telling the truth.” He glanced at Miss Fraser and back again. “Surely what was done leaves scars? You'd have to read something in a man's eyes, if he was guilty of such a crime! And what woman would want to lie for him, knowing he'd slaughtered the children as well?”

  Which was, Rutledge thought, a perceptive comment and very much what a policeman would be looking for, asking questions of potential suspects. The eyes were sometimes unable to mask emotions that the muscles of the face could conceal with greater ease.

  You'd have to read something in a man's eyes, if he was guilty of such a crime!

  But not all killers had a conscience. . . . He had learned that, too, in Cornwall.

  Henderson stayed only for a cup of tea and then was off again, to be followed within the next hour by three more messengers from the search parties. Each, hovering over the map, filled in another area of countryside, giving the details of what they had seen and where they had searched and how they'd found the isolated inhabitants in their path. Rutledge noted each man's information in pencil.

  One of them said wearily, “It's not that we aren't doing our best. It's just that there's too much ground to cover, and no certainty whether the boy was there before us. Or will come there after we've passed the place by. We keep an eye to the skyline as we go, and to the slopes. We find ourselves wondering if the murderer is watching us from behind a boulder or in a fold of the land. Even at night, when we know he must be out there somewhere, maybe wanting young Josh as much as we do, and hoping we'll lead him to the lad, we feel uneasy. Nobody falls behind in the search party. Even the stragglers keep up.”

  “Anyone missing?” Rutledge always asked. “Unaccounted for?”

  But the answer was always the same: “Not that we can discover. So far.”

  Another man reporting in said, “People are locking their doors for the first time in years, barring them as well. Out of fear. You can be sure we make noise, coming into a yard—knowing we're being watched. No one wants a shotgun going off in his face!”

  Hamish said, “They ken the terrain. They ken the name of every male in the district. If he's no' a stranger, then the killer has to be one of the searchers, if no one is missing!”

  Rutledge followed the various parties along the tracks, jotting names beside each square that marked a farm, sketching in the sheep folds and ruins mentioned in the reports, noting the contours and shape of the valley. Information, Hamish reminded him, that was useless to a man in a kitchen by the warmth of a stove.

  It was a challenge, and Rutledge resisted it.

  Elizabeth Fraser put it best, when the men had gone again. “You aren't in London. You can't bring London experience to bear up here.”

  “I know.” But Hamish, stirred by Rutledge's own tension, was goading him.

  There's a child somewhere in the cold. . . .

  Some time later he came to a barrier, and his numbed mind tried to identify what his hands and his feet could feel: hard, icy stones blocking his path. Beyond them he could see the snow moving, like an ocean of heavy flakes.

  But it wasn't the sea, it couldn't be. A walled pen, then, for the sheep who wintered on the fells. He could smell them now, the heavy odor of wet wool. The bellwether often took the flock to shelter when weather came down. Or the owner and his dog would drive them here, where, huddled together, their own warmth would see them through. It was easier to find and care for them when they weren't scattered about the hillsides, nearly invisible humps in the snow.

  With a last spurt of effort he clambered up and over the rough stone wall and slipped in among them. Snow-covered himself, he could crouch here and be safe for a little while, until he got his wind back and the snow slacked off. If anyone came, the sheep would know it before he did.

  The shapes closest to him sneezed in alarm as they caught his scent. But they were accustomed to men, and when he made no move to drive them out into the wind, they accepted his presence. Sidling back towards him seeking the shelter of the wall on their own account, they surrounded him and eventually included him as one of their own. Unthreatening and in need, in this storm.

  Their warmth as they pressed around him in the lee of the wall saved his life.

  The house creaked with the cold wind. The rooms were chill and damp. Rutledge wandered into the little parlor reserved for guests, and considered lighting the fire laid ready on the hearth.

  But the kitchen was warmer, Elizabeth Fraser seemed comfortable enough in his company, and the men sent to report came by habit to the kitchen door, their heavy boots and rough clothes unsuitable for the parlor.

  He stepped into the cold street, leaving the front door ajar, and looked out at the lake. It lay perhaps a quarter of a mile away. Ice and snow rimmed the edges, and the water seemed dark and secretive in the uncertain light. From the Elcott farm it would be impossible for the boy to reach Urskwater . . . but it was a place where a small body could be carried, weighted with whatever the killer had to hand. How long would it take for a child to float back to the surface?

  Where was Josh Robinson?

  Was he a red herring, already long dead, his body hidden while the killer slipped back into the ordinary life of Urskdale? Or had his murderer disappeared over the fells and into safe havens where no one would think to look?

  What could the boy tell the police, if he were found alive? An eyewitness . . .

  Or had he come on the scene long after his family had been shot, and simply lost his way in the snow trying to find help?

  It was easy to make assumptions . . . but there would be no answers until Josh Robinson was found.

  Terrible questions remained. Would there be other killings? What had set a man on the road to such destruction? What had been done to him, real or imagined, that lighted the dormant fuse of such anger? And would he turn on another neighbor next, when some small slight or uncertainty began to haunt him again? Or was he simply a man with a secret to be protected at any cost? Had Gerald Elcott stumbled onto something too vile to be overlooked? The storm might have given even a reluctant killer the perfect excuse to be absent—the perfect timing for murder.

  “I'll just go and have a look at the sheep, before it's any worse out there. . . .”

  But that would mean someone reasonably close by, within reach of the Elcott farm. It might even be someone who had no need to explain his absences. Or—someone who lived alone and was accountable to no one?

  Rutledge remembered what Elizabeth Fraser had told him about the people of Urskdale only a few hours before.

  “They don't have much to give, except perhaps trust, and when that's betrayed, they do know how to hate—”

  Whose trust had Gerald Elcott betrayed? What had he done that would drive a man to kill Grace Elcott and her children as well?

  Until he saw that farmhouse kitchen for himself, his experience and intuition had nothing to work with, except the reactions of others. And secondhand knowledge was never to be trusted.

  What was keeping Greeley? Why was he avoiding the Yard man he had so urgently sent for in the beginning?

  CHAPTER NINE

  Elizabeth Fraser had gone to make the beds. In the silence of the kitchen, Rutledge stood over the map, hands spread on either side, studying what he'd been told by the men reporting to him.

  There appeared to be no farms close enough to the Elcotts to offer the child safe haven, even if Josh Robinson could have found his way to one of them in heavy snow and darkness. And the boy hadn't been born here, bred to the tracks and landmarks that his stepfather would have known by heart. But that might also mean that the killer wouldn't have stumbled across them, either, if he had found the Elcotts only by chance.

  The first priority of Greeley's search parties would have been to reach these farms, and make certain all was well.

  All right then. Where could Josh Robinson have gone, if he was still alive?

  Rutledge ran a finger across the face of the map. In fact,
Urskdale itself was closer, if one came over the shoulder of the ridge. So, why hadn't the boy tried to reach the village? His uncle, Paul Elcott, was here. No, that wasn't quite true. Elcott wasn't an uncle by blood.

  If Josh Robinson didn't know Elcott well enough, then why not the rector? Or his schoolmaster?

  Even Inspector Greeley or Constable Ward? Or the sergeant—what was his name? Miller.

  Or had the child been cut off from the village, and forced to strike out into the darkness without knowing where he was heading?

  There was another possibility. Rutledge turned to stare out the window. Josh might have been terrified of coming to the village. Afraid he would run into the murderer here. It would mean that someone—

  Hamish objected, “It doesna' signify. He didna' have the time.”

  Yes. In spite of all their hopes, the boy must be dead. Rutledge bent over the map again. Perhaps the question now was where a body could be concealed?

  But why hide it? Why not leave it in plain sight, to show that the killer had wiped the slate clean—

  Lost in thought, he didn't hear the door from the passage open. The woman's voice startled him.

  “Good morning . . .” Her hair was crimped and straggling, and her clothes seemed to have been made for another woman, thinner and younger. She cast a glance around the room with an air of vague confusion, as if uncertain if this was where she ought to be.

  He straightened, looking up into drained eyes, a pale blue that seemed to be painted in place under paler lashes.

  “Good morning. Er—Mrs. Cummins? I'm Inspector Rutledge. Thank you for putting me up while I'm here in Urskdale. It was kind of you.”

  “It was my husband decided that,” she replied. “But I'm glad you're here. It isn't safe for two women to be in a house alone. I told my husband as much before he left. I told him if he didn't worry about me, he should worry about Elizabeth. She's helpless—” After a moment she added in a whisper, “He killed the babies, too, you know. This murderer.”