A Cold Treachery

by Charles Todd

  “If it's any of your business, it was after I had my dinner. Such as it was. I don't have the heart to cook these days. And precious little appetite after working in that cursed kitchen. I'd sell High Fell, if I thought my father wouldn't come back from his grave and devour me. Instead I'll have to learn to live there. Call it Dutch courage, the gin. It's left over from last summer's stock.”

  Rutledge stood in the middle of the room, noticing that it was warmer than usual. “Have you had your breakfast?”

  Elcott swore. “I got up about six and made myself a cup of tea. There's no law against that, the last time I looked.”

  But a stove would dry boots very efficiently. Was that when Elcott had begun drinking, to cover his night's activities?

  Elcott went on, “I thought you'd be at the farm, by this time, spade and torch in hand. Looking for whatever it is you expect to find there.”

  “How did you get on with Josh?”

  “Well enough. I told you, I thought Gerry was a fool to take on a ready-made family. And I didn't like the boy. But that's not to say I'd harm him.”

  “But the Robinson children were no threat to you, were they? They couldn't inherit from their stepfather.”

  “I asked Gerry about that. How things stood. I mean, it's one thing if the children are Elcotts by blood, quite another if they have no ties to the land or to Urskdale. He told me the farm wouldn't be left away from our line.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “There wasn't much choice, was there? But yes, I think he was telling the truth. He was bred to that land, more than I ever was. Josh was ten. He had no ties here, except his mother and sister. It might have been different if the boy was a babe in arms—”

  He stopped, realizing what he'd all but said. “Have you finished what you came for, Inspector?”

  “I'd like to see the kitchen, if you don't mind.”

  “I do mind, but that's beside the point. You know the way.”

  Rutledge examined the small kitchen. Any rags that might have been used to clean shoes would have gone into the fire.

  Hamish was complaining, “For all your fine lies, you've got nowhere!”

  There was a bit of mud under the table, where Elcott might have sat in the chair drawn up to it.

  But there was no way of telling whether it had come from walking in from the stable or from climbing the fell.

  Rutledge thanked Elcott and left.

  His next call was on Hugh Robinson. The man was already dressed and having breakfast in the kitchen. Rutledge quietly went to his room and looked at his boots.

  Nothing.

  He went back to Robinson and said, “Did you go to the farm last night?”

  “The farm? God, no. If I never see it again, it will be soon enough.”

  “I thought perhaps you might have wondered if your son was there, hiding. And went to look for him.”

  “I'll admit I thought about it—” He broke off as Elizabeth Fraser wheeled herself into the room.

  “Harry isn't feeling well this morning. I knocked and he told me he thought he felt a migraine was coming on.”

  “You'll no' see his boots this morning!”

  Her bandages had been changed and were thinner. But she couldn't lift the heavy teapot, and Rutledge poured a cup for her. She thanked him.

  Robinson went on, “I don't know whether to mourn my son—or hold on to a slim thread of hope. What do they do to children that age, if there's been murder done? I can't sleep for thinking about that. Surely they don't hang them—and prisons are no place for a boy. What do they do?”

  Rutledge found himself thinking of the young man who had just been committed to an asylum. As an alternative, it offered little hope to a grieving father. Yet it had seemed to be a kinder choice to that man's parents. “It will be left to the judge to decide what's best,” he answered, watching Elizabeth Fraser's face. “That's his duty. Mine is to sift out the truth from the evidence. Where is Miss Ashton?”

  “Still asleep, I expect. I saw her as she let herself in after a long walk. She says she finds it hard to lie down with her ribs still aching. And she's grieving for her sister. I saw her in the churchyard when I was doing my marketing yesterday.”

  Mrs. Cummins opened the door and then stopped on the threshold as if uncertain of her welcome. She was more than a little tipsy, her eyes wide and not very focused, her hand trembling on the knob.

  “I had the most awful dream last night,” she said to the room at large. “I was here in the kitchen and something came in that door from the yard. I could see it, but I didn't know what it was. The room was dark, and I was so afraid. I—I could see blood everywhere. And I didn't want to die.”

  Her voice broke on the last word, and Elizabeth went swiftly to her, to comfort her.

  “It was only a dream,” she told the other woman gently. “There was no one here. No one had come to hurt you.”

  “Still—it was so vivid—”

  Elizabeth took her trembling hands. “You don't have anything to fear, Vera. Inspector Rutledge is here—he'll protect us from any harm.”

  “But he wasn't here. I went to his room and he wasn't here! I wish I knew where Harry had put his revolver. I'd sleep with it under my pillow—”

  Rutledge went back to the ruined hut as soon as he could. Climbing with Hamish's voice in his ears nearly masking the crunch of snow, he could feel the mantle of fatigue settling over him.

  “You canna' hope to gain anything with such tricks! It was foolish.”

  “If I'd caught whoever walked here last night—”

  “But you caught the lass instead. And ye believe her!”

  “I don't believe her.”

  “Aye, but ye looked for a missing button on yon coat.”

  “Elcott has been out here painting day after day. She could have gone into The Ram's Head at any time and twisted one of the buttons off. He wore heavy sweaters painting, not his one good coat.”

  “Do you ken, you're always making excuses for the lass!”

  “I'm not making excuses for anyone—”

  “Aye, and ye've no' arrested anyone!”

  They had reached the hut, and Rutledge dug deep between the stones where he had hidden the broken cuff link.

  His fingers searched diligently, working at their task with care.

  But where the cuff link had been hidden, there was nothing.

  The question was, what had been done with it? And who had taken it?

  Janet Ashton, Paul Elcott, or a player who was not even on the board yet?

  Hamish said, considering the implications, “It wasna' taken to condemn the boy. And a stranger wouldna' ken where to look.”

  “It might well have been Hugh Robinson. He may be regretting his rash confession about his son and decided to conceal evidence. Sparing the boy's memory.”

  “It would be a kindness . . .”

  Maggie had found it hard to wake the boy in the middle of the night, but she got him out of bed and into the Wellingtons as he grumbled, half asleep still.

  “We must see to the sheep. And it's better, with people lurking about all the day long, to do that after dark. I told you.”

  But he held back.

  “What's wrong? Are you afraid of the dark, then? There's nothing out there to hurt you. And Sybil will be with you. She's worth an army! Look at that tail wagging! Do you think she'd let you go into danger?”

  The boy's hand went to the thick soft fur at the dog's throat, behind the collar. His fingers smoothed and kneaded the fur. And then he took the pail from Maggie and went out into the cold night.

  Maggie stood outside the door to keep watch. Half afraid he might run away if given the chance, half afraid something would pounce out of the darkness at him.

  “Which is the most ridiculous thing—” she scolded herself.

  But she couldn't bring herself to go inside until she saw him coming back, lugging the pail, with Sybil at his heels.

  Once the dog stopped
to sniff at a patch of snow, and the boy turned to it. With his back to her, Maggie couldn't tell whether he'd spoken to the dog or simply touched her head. She trotted along beside him then, seemingly undisturbed by the fact that he was mute.

  Sybil's love was uncritical and unconditional.

  Maggie sighed with relief when they were safely in the yard once more.

  “What will Sybil do when he's gone?” she asked herself as she held the door wide. “And what will I do?” was the thought that followed on the heels of the first. She brushed it away, angry with herself.

  The boy was going nowhere. She and her ax would see to that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Greeley had sent a message to the hotel, enclosing a telegram for Rutledge.

  “The baker's boy,” the message read, “brought this with the morning post. And I've also had reports from the police along the coast. The latest known query about the old road to Urskdale was last summer.”

  “It closes the door on the man, Taylor,” Hamish pointed out.

  “Not necessarily,” Rutledge answered as he opened the telegram. He stood stock-still, staring at the printed words.

  CHIEF CONSTABLE UNHAPPY WITH PROGRESS. YOU ARE RELIEVED. MICKELSON WILL BE IN NORTH NEXT TRAIN.

  It was signed “Bowles.”

  “Aye, and I'd warned you,” Hamish told him bluntly.

  Relieved . . .

  It had never happened before, though Bowles had sometimes blustered and threatened as panic overcame reason. Mickelson was one of his cronies. What would the man do?

  With Bowles breathing down his neck, Mickelson would wrap the inquiry up quickly, smoothly, ruffling as few feathers as possible in the course of his duty. Josh Robinson would be pronounced the killer. There would be a brief sensation in the press, and Bowles would make sad pronouncements on the state of young people since the war, so many men killed, women left to enforce standards . . .

  It would read well, and there would be further comments at speaking engagements, pointing to the role of the Yard in bringing swift justice to those who broke the Sixth Commandment. One of Bowles's favorite texts.

  Nothing would be said about breaking the Ninth Commandment, with regard to bearing false witness.

  Elizabeth Fraser, who had handed him the message, asked softly, “It's bad news, isn't it? I'm so sorry. You'll be making an arrest, then.”

  He was still lost in thought, but he heard her last words.

  “The Yard will, yes,” he answered. Folding the telegram, he shoved it in his pocket, then said briskly, “I have work to do.”

  In his room, he sat down at the small writing table under the windows and began to make a list of what he knew—and what he didn't.

  On balance, the facts were evenly spread out before him. The spur towards murder was weighted evenly under each name.

  Janet Ashton: Jealousy. When her sister had refused to go back to her first husband and leave Gerald free to marry again, had the plot to kill been set in motion?

  Paul Elcott: Greed. He'd had no problem with his brother's marriage to a widow with children of her own. But when the twins were conceived, there was the impediment to his inheritance of High Fell. When they were delivered safely and thrived, he must have been desperate, as The Ram's Head fell apart around him.

  Josh Robinson: Revenge. The twins had tied his mother more closely to Gerald Elcott, and Josh had run away once, missed school often, and from what the schoolmaster had said, was unhappy in the North, with few friends to make life bearable. And when he'd been told he was too young to live with his father, had he decided that the only way to be free was to murder his family?

  There was Bertram Taylor as well, who had carried a grudge against Gerald Elcott. And Hugh Robinson, who had been forced to give up his own family through no fault of his own. And even Harry Cummins, who had been attracted to Grace. But if that were true, why kill her? Or had her happiness embittered him, sending him there in the snow to wipe out a family he envied?

  Hamish said, “Hav' ye no' thought of the wife? Jealous of the woman who had caught her own man's eye?”

  Far-fetched though it might be, Rutledge added Vera Cummins to the list. For frail as she seemed, there was a tenacity and a force under her drunkenness. She loved Harry, doubted him, was troubled by him—and failed to live up to what he had wanted from her.

  He looked in his papers for the reply received from Sergeant Gibson on his earlier query. An unexpected answer, but Vera Cummins had confirmed it.

  Elizabeth Fraser had been tried and found not guilty of murder.

  The charge was killing the man she was engaged to marry.

  A bare-bones report from Sergeant Gibson, with none of the flesh that lent humanity to a case.

  The victim, Ronald Herring, had been a conscientious objector. The K.C. had pointed out that perhaps Herring was a moral coward, and the accused had been ashamed of his convictions. When he refused to release her from her engagement, she had taken matters into her own hands. Or in Sergeant Gibson's words, “rid herself of a man who didn't have the backbone to step aside.”

  Tried and found not guilty . . .

  But perhaps the jury had been sympathetic.

  Conscientious objectors and cowards, even men who had suffered from shell shock, were despised by people who had watched sons and fathers and brothers mown down in France. Women had been particularly hard on those they felt were malingering. Many had handed out white feathers to any man not in uniform, and a special uniform had been designed for those given medical discharges, to protect them from harassment.

  He had hoped that it wouldn't be necessary to ask for the details of the case. Elizabeth Fraser was bound to her chair. She couldn't possibly have reached the Elcott farm in the snow.

  Yet he had seen her standing. And she herself had told him that the doctors had found no physical reason for her disability.

  Mickelson would probe into the case. He had to forestall that.

  Rutledge put aside his papers and went to the kitchen, hoping to find her alone. He could hear the voices of Cummins and Robinson from the small parlor, and walked quietly past.

  Mrs. Cummins was in the kitchen, trying to find something in one of the drawers of the dresser. She looked up as Rutledge came into the room and said fretfully, “I can't seem to find my scissors—I was sure they were here just this morning!”

  “Let me search in the drawer for them.”

  He went through the detritus of twenty years, a magpie's nest of things that had no other home. A broken spoon, stubs of pencils, a bit of torn lace, part of a steel hat pin, and lengths of colored thread. In the bottom, tangled in string, was a small pair of embroidery scissors.

  She took them as if he'd handed her the Grail, holding them to her breast.

  He happened to look up at her face just then, and saw something in her eyes that chilled him. He nearly reached out to take the scissors back again.

  It struck Rutledge that she had played a role for years. The drunken, needy wife, who clung to her husband and bound him to her with pity. Terrified he wouldn't come home to her, terrified he might have sent his mistress to live with her for the duration of the war, terrified that his sacrifice for her might have been greater than his love for her, Vera Cummins had become someone Harry couldn't leave because he believed he'd been responsible for who and what she had become.

  The tyranny, Rutledge thought, of the weak.

  She glanced away, as if fearful that she'd somehow betrayed herself.

  “I don't know what we'd do here without you,” she said bleakly. “You don't know how frightened I am sometimes. It's so lonely here, so much empty space beyond my windows . . .”

  Her voice trailed off as she started for the door.

  “Mrs. Cummins—”

  “Yes, Inspector?” She was poised to hurry on.

  “I'd like to speak to Miss Fraser, if you'd ask her to come to the kitchen.”

  She tensed. “Is there anything wrong? It was I
who burned the toast again this morning—”

  He smiled. “No. It's—my hand. I hurt it, and I'd like her opinion about seeing Dr. Jarvis. Unless you'd care to look at it?”

  “Oh, no! I'll just call Elizabeth—”

  She went hastily out of the room, and he crossed to stand by the window, trying to force his mind to blankness, to seal off what he was feeling and thinking.

  By the time Elizabeth Fraser wheeled her chair into the room, he was in control of his emotions.

  “Vera tells me your hand is hurting you—”

  “That was only an excuse. I know it's cold in the dining room but we can be more private there. Would you mind?”

  She searched his face. “What's wrong?”

  “Will you come with me?”

  Wheeling her chair towards the dining room door, she replied, “I think I know what it is you want to ask.”

  He held the door for her and watched her roll the chair to one side of the hearth.

  “I told you once that it must be difficult to pry into the secrets of people you suspect. I told you too I thought it was rather horrid.”

  “Yes.” It was all he could say.

  “Tell me first why you think I could be capable of killing Gerald and his family.”

  “I don't suspect you—”

  “You suspect all of us. I can see it in your eyes, watchful and giving away very little.” She studied his face. “It troubles you, doesn't it, to hunt people down.”

  “I did enough of it in the war.”

  “All right. What do you want to know?”

  “About your trial.”

  “I was acquitted. You can't try me twice for the same offense.”

  “I never suggested . . .”

  “No.”

  “Look. The Yard is sending someone else to take over this inquiry. He won't be as—kind. I'd rather end the investigation before he arrives. I need to know why you were tried.”

  “Someone else? Was that the bad news—” After a moment she went on with such sadness in her face that he wanted to stop her and tell her he was wrong, he didn't need to know.

  “Ronald was a man of the utmost integrity. I respected and admired him. We'd known each other for two years when he finally asked me to marry him. But then the war came along. And he refused to serve. He said that killing—for any reason—was wrong. That it was a last resort that governments chose to avoid working out a settlement in which they might lose something. It was horrible—the way he was treated. He got the white feather over and over again, until he was afraid to go out without a uniform on. But he stood by what he believed. And I honored him for that.”