A Cold Treachery

by Charles Todd

  The contents of the wardrobe were what he'd expected to find—mostly daily wear, with dark coats for market day and for church. One of the hats on the shelf had been worn by Mrs. Elcott the day of the christening, with frivolous silk roses still pinned on the brim. His sister Frances had told him once that a woman's choice of hat revealed her mood.

  Hamish reminded him of Elizabeth Fraser's words: “We see each other at market or at christenings and weddings, more often at funerals.” And the same clothes served for each occasion, but the hats could define the moment.

  As if mirroring his thoughts, Greeley said, “The Elcotts were no richer than the rest of us. There's never money for frills here in the North. Still, we're grateful for what we have. And through the war, we managed. We were used to making do. Nobody went hungry.”

  It was a comment Rutledge had heard often enough. We managed. . . . The hardships of war and the ensuing peace had left many families struggling to survive. Few of them complained, making an effort to cope and rebuild their shattered hopes. But there were those who had prospered, and for whom there was no looking back.

  Hamish said, “It's no' money, then, that's at the back of this killing.”

  Rutledge, before he could stop himself, answered aloud, “There's the land—”

  Greeley nodded, as if the comment had been directed at him. “We found Gerald Elcott's will. Here's how it stood. The farm has been in the family for generations. There's no one left to inherit now save his brother. Gerald was generally the one who worked with his father, and so Henry passed the land to him. Paul was set up in business as part owner of the licensed house in Urskdale. Of course when Gerald was away in France, Paul came back here to run the sheep. The Ram's Head had all but gone under, anyway, with no one coming of a summer to keep it afloat.”

  “What does Paul Elcott do now?”

  Greeley went back to the head of the stairs, saying over his shoulder, “He's trying to reopen The Ram's Head. On his own. Frankly, it's an uphill struggle.”

  The inspector was eager to get away from the house, and it showed.

  Rutledge followed Greeley back to the motorcar. A watery sun was strengthening, and the snow was beginning to melt. It was slushy underfoot, the first sign of thaw.

  As they came around the corner of the house, Hamish said, “Why did yon brother come out to the farm on Tuesday?”

  Rutledge asked Greeley as he cranked the motorcar.

  “I expect to see if they needed anything. I looked in on two other families myself. One an elderly couple, and the other with very young children. The storm came through in a hurry, and there wasn't much warning. No time to come into the village for lamp oil or staples. There was barely time to bring in the stock.” Greeley stepped into the passenger's seat.

  “Has it occurred to you that Paul Elcott could have killed his brother and his brother's family?”

  Shocked, Greeley simply looked at Rutledge as he drove out of the yard.

  “Paul Elcott would inherit the farm,” Rutledge pointed out. “There's your motive. And he must have visited the house often enough. Any signs of his presence at the murder scene could easily be explained by that fact.”

  “That's foolishness! You didn't see him after he'd found them. He was sick as a dog in the barn—” He broke off, his eyes on the road.

  A horse and carriage was coming swiftly towards them, moving far faster than conditions on the road warranted.

  Greeley said, his voice rising with excitement, “There must be news! By God, they must have found the boy!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Rutledge pulled on the brake, drawing the motorcar to the side of the rutted verge, out of the path of the horse galloping straight at them.

  “No, that's the doctor's carriage,” Greeley declared, squinting at the oncoming vehicle. “Gentle God, you don't suppose there's been another slaughter—!” He leaned out of the window to shout “What's happened?”

  The carriage was near enough now to see the man holding the reins. He wore a heavy gray coat, and his face was half hidden by a hat pulled down tightly against the wind. Greeley swore. “That's not Jarvis or one of my men. It's Hugh Robinson! Grace Elcott's first husband—”

  The horse thundered to a stop ten feet short of the motorcar, eyes rolling, as a slender man with a strained, haunted face drew rein. “My God—” he began, and his voice choked. He shook his head wordlessly. “It must be true!”

  As the lathered horse sidled in such close proximity to the vehicle, Rutledge switched off the motor. He and Greeley opened their doors and stepped out into the lane.

  “Mr. Robinson—” Greeley began.

  “I came as soon as I heard—” Robinson was saying as the horse steadied. “Why in God's name didn't anyone contact me in London!”

  “The blame is mine,” Greeley said, with a tiredness in his voice that spoke of something else besides exhaustion. “We've been out looking for your son. All our energies have gone into searching for him. I'd hoped to have—”

  “I should have been here—I should have been out with the searchers—” Robinson's thin face contorted in grief.

  “Mr. Robinson—” Greeley began, and then found nothing to say.

  Rutledge said, “If you'll come with us back to the hotel—”

  “No! I want to go to the house. I need to see—”

  “I don't think it's a very good idea,” Rutledge began, but Robinson stared at him with angry eyes.

  “It's my family, not yours.” He took up the whip and lashed at the horse, sending it flying down the lane.

  Greeley flinched as if he'd been struck instead, and ran after him, leaving Rutledge to turn the crank and then catch them up.

  Robinson was already in the kitchen when Greeley reached him, leaning against the open door as if poleaxed.

  Rutledge was in time to hear Robinson mumbling over and over again, “Dear God—dear God—dear God . . .”

  And then he was outside and bending down by the cellar stairs, vomiting as if all the contents of his stomach were being forced out by the horrors he'd just seen.

  Greeley looked across at Rutledge, pleading for understanding. Hamish was saying, “I wouldna' be in his shoes—!”

  Rutledge said with some authority, “Mr. Robinson. I'm from Scotland Yard.”

  Robinson fumbled for a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. He stopped to stare up at the man from London, his eyes dazed.

  “When did they summon you?” Robinson asked.

  “I was already in the North,” Rutledge replied. “I'm sorry to hear that Inspector Greeley failed to contact you straightaway. But we were already two days late hunting for Josh, and time was against us.”

  Robinson leaned back against the side of the house, looking up at the sun. “I was bringing gifts for the holidays—I was coming to bring gifts.”

  Greeley said to Rutledge, “He did come about this time last year. I had forgotten—”

  Rutledge said, “How did you get here?”

  “By rail, as I always do. And then I borrowed a mount from the smith to ride the rest of the way. Dr. Jarvis overtook me outside Urskdale. He wanted me to come to his house—but I couldn't wait—and he gave me the loan of his carriage. My horse was not as fresh as his.” He straightened. “Where's Josh? Why haven't you found my son?”

  “We've done all we can—all that's humanly possible. I'm afraid prospects aren't . . . the best.” Greeley dug the toe of his heavy boot into the trampled snow by the back door. “The searchers haven't given up.”

  Robinson began to pace in his agitation. “I want to know who did this. I want to know now. Do you understand me?”

  “We're no less eager than you are to apprehend the bastard,” Greeley told him, stung.

  “Inspector,” Rutledge intervened, “if you'll take the doctor's carriage back to him, I'll drive Mr. Robinson to the hotel—”

  “I want to see them,” Robinson said steadfastly. “I want to see Grace and my daughter.”

  A
nd in the end, there was nothing to be done but to let him have his way.

  While Inspector Greeley took Robinson to the makeshift mortuary to inspect the bodies of his dead, Rutledge drove back to Urskdale with only Hamish for company.

  Hamish was saying, “It's no' very wise to view the corpses.”

  “No. But then I don't know him well enough to judge what's best. For some men—”

  For some men it could harden their resolve to mete out their own justice. . . .

  When he reached the inn, Rutledge reported to Miss Fraser that there would be another guest.

  “I don't know how he can bear such a loss,” she said with compassion. “I wish we had better news for him, but the search parties, I'm to tell you, have found no one. They're to try again tomorrow at first light, but they need to rest. Mr. Cummins is so weary, he's staying with his men over at the Ederby farm.”

  That was far down the valley, just before the lake turned.

  “And you,” Hamish reminded Rutledge as Miss Fraser wheeled herself down the passage, “havena' wet your shoes out on the fells.”

  Rutledge went into the kitchen to stand by the window, watching the early darkness rise up the face of the ridge like a curtain.

  It would be a miracle to find a lone child in such an expanse of empty landscape. The valley, small as it was, was still a vast area to comb. And time had surely run out for Josh Robinson. Even if every farmer scoured his own acres, it would take days to cover them properly. There wasn't even a certainty that the boy would turn up in the spring. His small bones would be carried off by ravens and foxes, leaving nothing to mark how or where he died.

  Yet it was not something any man found easy to do: to walk away from a child in need. Greeley would have to make the decision to halt the search, and Rutledge didn't envy him.

  Hamish said, “It doesna' sit well.”

  In the aftermath of a shelling or in the carnage of an attack, men went missing: dead, lying wounded in No Man's Land, or captured. Rutledge had always done his best to bring back his wounded, young Scots not so many years older than the missing boy, and yet already men. It had felt like a betrayal to post them as lost. As if he could have done more . . . should have . . .

  He shook off the darkness that came creeping out of the past to waylay him. This was not his battle, it was Hugh Robinson's.

  Elizabeth Fraser had wheeled into the room behind him, and as he looked up, he realized from the odors wafting to him from the cooker that dinner was already well under way. Turning to her, he smiled ruefully.

  “I'm sorry. I promised to bring in coal.”

  “You still may, if you will. One of the searchers helped me earlier.”

  And he followed her directions as to where to find the scuttles needing filling, and then took them out into the yard where the cellar door led down into the bowels of the house. Shoveling coal from the bin into each, he found the physical effort released some of the tension that had built up at the Elcott farm.

  On his last trip the stars were pushing their way through thinning clouds, and he looked up at them, his breath coming in white puffs.

  Hamish said, jarring him, “Ye're reduced to carrying coal, like a dustman.”

  Ignoring him, Rutledge walked past the barn and into the field beyond, then began to climb the slope of the fell that rose in the darkness like a hunched figure out of some wild mythology. The snow, giving light back to the stars, seemed more sinister in the darkness, as if holding secrets within its white mantle. And there was nothing to show him a path to follow, although in summer when he had come to the Lake Country with his father, there had always been tracks, clear on the ground where thousands of feet—man and beast—had preceded him. Worn ground, giving up its secrets easily in some places, holding to them tightly in others. But the snow obliterated even the clearest signs, offering silence and mystery instead. And it was no use trying to read what the snow shrouded. It would be too easy to find oneself in a place where retreat was as dangerous as going on.

  But he had always believed in knowing his enemy. And these fells were his, in more ways than one. Professionally they foiled him, hiding what he needed to know. Personally they threatened him, as if intent on sending him out of the valley before his work was done.

  He climbed another fifty feet, and then fifty more. Looking back at the winding street of houses and the lights in the inn, the plain stone church at the far end of the village, and at the head of Urskwater, the great bulge of The Claws black against the sky, Rutledge could see the paper map come to life. Where a light faintly twinkled, he could name the farm, traveling in his mind's eye the track that led there. He scanned the heights for a telltale bobbing line of lanterns traversing a slope, but there was nothing: Either too great a distance lay between them or the searchers were asleep in a house or barn, dead to everything but the needs of their weary bodies.

  Like it or not, it was time to call a halt to the search. If Josh Robinson had survived this long without shelter, it would be a miracle. Exposure would quickly finish what exhaustion had begun.

  If the murderer had also failed to find him, then the boy missing would be in as great a danger as the boy found and in the custody of the police. . . .

  And what would he do then, this killer of children?

  It would be ironic if the weather that had doomed the boy had also doomed his murderer. Two bodies to find in the spring.

  But all the reports claimed that no one else was missing . . . Where had the killer gone to ground? Or had he come here by chance?

  Below him, a carriage was turning into the inn's yard. He could see the side lamps gleaming in the darkness, and then the light from the kitchen door as someone opened it.

  Rutledge began to walk quickly back the way he had come, his feet slipping once or twice as his boots pressed into the icy crust. Pausing only to pick up the last coal scuttle, he turned towards the kitchen door. And instead of opening it, he looked through the window at the lighted scene inside.

  A middle-aged man was there, speaking to Elizabeth Fraser, and at his side was a white-faced Hugh Robinson, his hands gripping a chair's back as if desperate for its support. Then the men followed Elizabeth through the door to the passage and disappeared.

  Rutledge stepped into the empty kitchen, setting the scuttle by the stove, and stood there, warming his cold hands, listening to the sounds of the house. Faint voices, doors opening and closing. Steps coming this way.

  The middle-aged man returned, and looked up at Rutledge with some surprise. “Shall I fetch Miss Fraser or Mrs. Cummins . . . ?”

  Rutledge introduced himself, and the other man said in his turn, “Jarvis. Local doctor.” He shook his head. “I tried to persuade Robinson not to view—but he's a stubborn man. In the end, I think he regretted it. I had to give him some of my hoarded whiskey before he fell on his face.” The doctor was clearly irritated, his hands moving restlessly around the brim of his black hat.

  “I shouldn't think it was easy for either of you,” Rutledge commented.

  “No.” Jarvis pulled the chair out and sat. “I gather the searchers have come up empty-handed?” He indicated the map, and turned it towards him.

  “So far. Reports haven't been promising.”

  “I can't think where the boy could have got to.” Jarvis sighed as he leaned over the map and with one finger traced several routes from the death scene out into the hilly ground that surrounded it. “There's nothing in any direction for miles.”

  “A sheep pen here,” Rutledge said, leaning across the table, “and what appears to be a ruin here.”

  “Yes, that's the old Braithewaite farmhouse. Long since fallen into ruin. My wife's grandfather knew the family, but they had all died by her father's time. You should have seen the stonework on that house! A marvel of construction, a lost art. My father-in-law took me there to point it out. Couldn't have been comfortable to live in, up at that elevation, but they were hardy Norse stock and never seemed to mind either the isolation
or the cold. The old grandmother could weave blankets thick as your finger! Double-sided, they were. My wife's mother had one of them, as I remember. A wedding gift.”

  “You know the people around here better than I do,” Rutledge said. “Any thoughts on who might have killed the Elcotts? Or why?”

  “I heal people, when I can. I don't judge them,” Jarvis said bluntly. “Why should it be someone local?”

  “It's a place to begin,” Rutledge responded mildly. “I was under the impression that Gerald Elcott was shot where he stood, by the stove. He wasn't afraid of the intruder in his wife's kitchen, or he would have been at the door, between his family and the unexpected danger.”

  Jarvis's face changed. “I hadn't considered that. I knew Gerald. He could handle himself. Even before he went into the Army. You're absolutely right, he'd have fought—”

  “I understood he was invalided out of the Army.”

  “Yes, a kidney shot up. Doctors removed it. But he got on well enough, afterward. And he'd have protected his family at any cost to himself.”

  “Tell me about Paul Elcott.”

  “There's not much to tell. He'd broken his left leg when he was young—a severe compound fracture that left the bone weak—and the Army wouldn't take him. He spent the war years working with local farms, trying to increase crop yield. And he ran the Elcott place as well. By the time Gerald was invalided home, Paul had lost thirty pounds. The man was a walking skeleton.”

  “And Robinson? Did he bear a grudge against Elcott for taking away his wife?”

  “For one thing, Gerald hardly took away Hugh Robinson's wife! The Army declared the man missing, then dead, a year before Gerald met Grace. And when he came home, Robinson himself believed that it was for the best to bow out. He hadn't seen his wife in years, and she was carrying Gerald's twins by that time. I hardly think that twelve months later he would slaughter all of them in some sudden craving for revenge. Certainly the man I saw an hour ago, looking at his little daughter's body, was distraught—”

  The door opened and Elizabeth entered. “I think he might be able to sleep a little. Mr. Robinson. If not, I told him he could find us here.”