A Cold Treachery

by Charles Todd

  The barn took a long time to search. He worked methodically, his mind busy with all the possible hiding places. Dust rose from the corners as he dug out old spades and tools, a yoke for a team, chains of various lengths, the broken wheel of a barrow, and an assortment of oddments that had sat idle and unused for generations. He raked out the stalls, searched the mangers, went through the tack room, and then found the ladder to the loft. It was in a far corner, buried under damp and rotted straw, that he finally found what he was looking for: a heavy walking shoe without a heel. And its mate.

  Hamish said on the drive back to Urskdale, “Ye ken, this still doesna' prove much.”

  When he had tried to fit the heel onto the shoe, the match had been good. And he looked at the size of the shoe. It would fit most men, he thought. Well enough to make walking comfortable over a long distance. He himself could wear them.

  But Hamish was right, that the wearer was still in doubt—the time of losing the heel still in doubt. What if it had been Gerald himself, out searching for one of his sheep, who had worn these? Or his father, for that matter.

  Rutledge had gone back to the house and measured the sole of the boot against the larger Wellingtons and leather shoes in the box.

  Close enough . . . They could indeed be Gerald's.

  Once in town, he went straight to the police station and asked to see Paul Elcott.

  “Would you try on these shoes for me?” Rutledge asked as he opened the door.

  He stared at them. “What on earth for? They aren't mine.”

  “Just try them, if you please.”

  Elcott unlaced his own boots and put his feet into the pair Rutledge had brought, then stood up.

  “They fit well enough.”

  “They're yours, then?”

  Elcott laughed. “They couldn't be mine. They're London made, at a guess. I've never been able to afford boots like these. Gerald's, then. He bought clothes for himself in London before he came home again. Afraid what he owned wouldn't fit any- more.”

  “Then he'd have no reason to hide them,” Rutledge said, and was gone.

  He asked Harry Cummins and Hugh Robinson to try the fit next. Robinson's feet were nearer to the size of the boot than Elcott's, but on Cummins they were nearly a perfect match.

  Cummins looked down at them. “A shame they've lost a heel. I could do with a new pair . . .”

  Maggie Ingerson came to the door at the sound of Rutledge's motorcar pulling into the yard at dusk.

  “You again,” she said.

  “I want to ask you about that old drift road over the fells—”

  “I've told you what I know. You'll have to be satisfied with that, unless you can speak to the dead. My father claimed he took it once. But that was before I was born, so I can't be sure whether or not it was the truth or bragging.”

  “Why did he take it?” Rutledge watched clouds slide down over The Long Back.

  “For a lark, I expect. That was the way he was.”

  “How long do you think it would take to reach the coast?”

  “I can't answer that. In daylight and good weather? The better part of two days. It's not so far as the crow flies, but there's the elevation to consider. In heavy snow, longer than that. You're not thinking that boy could have got out by the road?”

  “No. I doubt he had the strength to walk that far.”

  “Then someone coming in.”

  “Yes.”

  She pointed towards the sheds up the rise from the barn. “Then you might want to go look at what Sybil brought me last night. I left it there by the shed when I fed the sheep.”

  He switched off the motor and got down to walk up the hillside towards the shed. The prints of a dozen Wellingtons went up and down ahead of him, mucking up the snow. It was hard to separate them now, overlapping in the slush and mud.

  When he had reached the shed, he turned and looked back at her.

  “That's right, just there. Maybe a little to your left . . .”

  He looked around at the snow by the shed, and saw that something had been dropped in one place.

  Pulling it out, he could see that it was a leather cap.

  Hamish said, “Ye've got the boots, and now the cap. That's how he came and went.”

  Rutledge slapped the snow off the hat and examined it. He would have sworn it was made before the war, when leather was better quality.

  Taylor? He'd been in prison, he wouldn't have had access to newer clothes . . .

  He walked back to the woman standing there leaning on her cane, watching him.

  “The dog brought it? From where?”

  “How am I to know? I sent her to bring in some sheep that were straying towards the Petersons'. That was two nights ago. She came back with this in her mouth. If it belongs to Peterson, you'll oblige me by taking it back to him. I'm not well enough to get there and back.”

  “You're certain that the dog went in that direction?”

  “Sybil's been running sheep for seven years. She does what she's told, and there's an end to it.”

  “Thank you, Miss Ingerson. I'll speak to the Petersons.”

  She watched him drive back down the lane, well satisfied.

  When she went back inside, the boy was standing there with the ax in his hands.

  Rutledge stopped to speak to Mr. Peterson, finding him sweeping tracked snow out of his barn. He greeted Rutledge warily and waited for him to explain his business.

  When Rutledge showed him the cap, he answered forthrightly: It didn't belong to him.

  “But that's not to say the Haldnes boys weren't making free with my property. They're a rowdy lot, and up to any manner of mischief.”

  And so he called next at the Apple Tree Farm, and showed the cap to Mrs. Haldnes. She was trimming a pie to set in the oven for dinner and wiped her floured hands on her apron before taking the cap. She examined it as closely as if she were a prospective buyer. And when she'd finished, she handed it back to Rutledge.

  “Never saw that before, that I know of. Not the sort of things my lads wear. Where did you say you'd found it?”

  But he hadn't said, and didn't answer her a second time, much to her chagrin.

  A pair of boots. A cap. But not the man who had worn them. A pity, Rutledge thought as he turned into the hotel yard and switched off the motor, that neither of them would clear Paul Elcott . . .

  “Aye, paltry matters, until you find their owners.”

  “Owner.” Rutledge corrected Hamish out of habit. His mind was on other things.

  He fully expected to walk into the hotel and find Mickelson there before him.

  But as it happened, he'd been given one more day of grace.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Rutledge took the cap and the torn heel to his room. They would have to be handed over to Mickelson when he got there, along with any other information that he felt was pertinent.

  He stared at the cap, his mind elsewhere, and then slowly began to actually look at it.

  What was it Hamish had said not ten minutes ago? Owners . . .

  He'd grown up with dogs. They had been in his house and in his life for as long as he could remember.

  Why would a dog sent out to manage the sheep bring back the cap of a man whose scent she didn't know?

  The cur-dogs, as Drew Taylor had called them, were working animals, bred to it and trained to be an extension of their owners. In Scotland with his godfather, he'd seen a young Border collie round up geese, so strong was the instinct. The fast run . . . the sudden drop . . . the eyes that registered everything and anticipated just the right move necessary to bring a herd together, hold it, or cut out part of it. Some animals worked on whistled signals, some on hand signs, and some were so well trained to certain tasks that they could be sent out on their own.

  But he was not the expert. And he knew someone who was. . . .

  He dropped the cap into his suitcase and went back out to the motorcar.

  It was dark by the time he reached
Jim Follet's house.

  A good sheep man . . .

  Follet and his wife were just finishing their dinner and invited him to have pudding and tea with them. Bieder, no longer on guard duty in the barn, lay stretched out on a woven rag rug, head on his paws. His eyes looked up, acknowledging a stranger in the house, and then went back to whatever drowsy contemplation he'd been enjoying.

  Rutledge could see the curiosity behind the smiles of his host and hostess, but he had told them the truth when he had walked into their kitchen.

  “I'm here to learn something about your dog.”

  “My dog—or any dog trained to sheep?”

  “Any dog.”

  And then Mary Follet was asking for news of Miss Ashton, and Follet himself wanted to know what had possessed Rutledge to take Paul Elcott into custody.

  “I can't for the life of me see him committing such a horrendous crime!”

  “Early days,” Rutledge told him. “There's still much work to be done before we're certain of anything.”

  Follet didn't appear to be mollified.

  By the time they had finished at the table and Follet had carried him off to the parlor, Rutledge had given them all the news he had of Urskdale, even to reporting on the Henderson child with the bruised collarbone, and thanked Mrs. Follet for the pudding.

  Mrs. Follet had commented at length on the funeral service and how sad it was to see a family buried together. “But it was good of them to put the babies with their mother, rather than in separate little coffins . . .”

  “A kindness,” he agreed.

  Follet said, as they shut the parlor door and sat, “I daresay it's not my wife's cooking that's brought you here again. If you've put Paul Elcott in jail, then you've been satisfied that Miss Ashton is in the clear. I never knew what to think about her. Out in the storm—”

  “I'm not satisfied with anything,” Rutledge answered frankly. “And I shall have to speak to someone in Keswick before I can be sure she's in the clear. What I need at the moment is your skill with sheepdogs. How they're trained, how you work them, what they do—and won't do, while minding the sheep.”

  Follet complied, describing how he could tell when the litter was no more than ten days old which had the instinct to be a good working dog and which didn't. “But that's my years of experience speaking, you understand. Something about how alert they are, how they play amongst themselves. And I'm seldom wrong.” He smiled and turned to the subject of training, “which is little more than building on what the dog already has in him or her,” and how a younger dog could be taken into the field with a more mature animal, to learn. “The best pair I ever had were mother and daughter,” he finished. “I'll never see their like again. Cassandra and Zoe, they were called, my daughter's choice of names that year. I taught them, and they taught me. It was a rare sight, to watch them work sheep. I'd take them down to the dog trials, sometimes, for the pleasure of seeing them show up every other animal there.”

  Rutledge said, “When a dog is sent to carry out a certain task—to work—can he or she be easily distracted?”

  “Not unless the flock is in danger. We've had rogue dogs a time or two, killing where they could. But it's not something you see all that often.”

  “If your dog was working and came across—say, a glove you'd dropped—would he bring it back to you?”

  “No. Still, I had a bitch who carried about any gloves she could find. You'd have a care about where you set yours down, she'd be on to them that fast. But not while she was with the sheep. She was single-minded then.”

  Rutledge got to his feet. “You've been very helpful. I appreciate that.”

  “I'd like to know what it's in aid of. With the matter closed.”

  “Someone told me she'd sent her dog to move the sheep, and it brought back an article of clothing that could have belonged to the killer.”

  “That's possible, of course. But I'd be doubtful. He may have stopped and sniffed at it, if he'd known the owner and recognized the scent. Out of curiosity. But not while working.”

  “Can you be reasonably certain about that?”

  “I'd take an oath on it.”

  Rutledge took his leave shortly thereafter.

  And in the motorcar on the way back to Urskdale, he said aloud to Hamish, “Maggie Ingerson lied to me. The question is why. And what did she expect to gain from it?”

  At dinner Rutledge announced that he was being relieved of duty as soon as the new man arrived. This was met with no more than curiosity until he told them that the new man would require their presence until he was satisfied that the case was closed.

  “And he'll be satisfied that Paul killed my sister?” Janet Ashton demanded. “I don't see the need for another inspector to come here if there's been an arrest!” There was alarm in her face, and it quickly spread around the table as Rutledge went on.

  “I've ordered Elcott released tonight. There's insufficient evidence on which to continue holding him.”

  Consternation reigned, everyone talking at once.

  “It was a trick!” Miss Ashton exclaimed. “Nothing more than a trick!”

  Hugh Robinson said, “Are you telling me that you believe Josh—”

  Harry Cummins looked quickly at his wife, and then his voice rose over the others. “We've just been able to sleep of nights—”

  But it was Mrs. Cummins who put the cap on the discussion. “I never thought it was Paul,” she said. “I never thought he'd harm a fly! But I expect I do know who killed them. I never liked George Standish over at Hill Farm. He's always putting on airs. I wouldn't put it past him to kill anybody!”

  There was a smugness in her face as her eyes ran around the table.

  “You can't mean that!” her husband exclaimed. “You hardly know him.”

  “I've said I never liked him . . .”

  Cummins's eyes met Rutledge's over her head. Pleading in them.

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Cummins,” Rutledge said hastily. “I'll look into that myself.”

  She subsided, her attention returning to her plate. Cummins's fingers were shaking as he set down his knife and fork. He said quietly, “Standish is probably— He began taking in paying guests at the farm last summer. It rather cut into our own business. My wife was—understandably unsettled by it.”

  Elizabeth Fraser, sitting beside Rutledge at the table, added under her breath, “He's seventy . . .”

  Rutledge said, “How well did the Ingersons know the Elcotts?”

  Cummins threw a grateful glance in Rutledge's direction. “I expect they knew them as well as any of us did. I don't think there was a particular friendship. Miss Ingerson's father died some years ago—he was Henry Elcott's generation. Maggie has always been rather—reclusive. Perhaps that's the best word. There was no son; she took over the farm herself, and proved soon enough that she ran it as well as her father had before her. But it drained all the life out of her. When the man who helped her with the sheep died in the war, she did what everyone else had done: made do as best she could.”

  “That was the opinion I'd formed,” Rutledge answered. “She's forthright and apparently unflappable. If she hadn't had a problem with her leg, she might have been out with the searchers.”

  Mrs. Cummins said, “It's Dr. Jarvis's fault, that. He didn't have the sense to leave well enough alone. There is no hope of her finding a husband, crippled as she is.”

  Elizabeth Fraser flinched, but Mrs. Cummins had turned to look at her husband. “I expect she knows all about the old road over the fells to the coast. She showed Harry where it was, and how it ran. But that was years ago, wasn't it, my dear? When she was much, much prettier . . .”

  Restless in the night, Rutledge got up and dressed, then made his way out of the house. The walls seemed to close in on him, and Hamish was busily reminding him that Inspector Mickelson would arrive the next day.

  “It wouldna' be politic to stay on after he's reported to you.”

  But Rutledge ignored him.r />
  He had never dealt with a case where so many people were intent on misdirecting the course of the inquiry—each for his or her own ends. Lies, obstruction, muddled evidence, finger-pointing. As if mourning were not enough. Elcott and Miss Ashton had argued with the victims. Even Robinson was so intent on his own troubled role in the family's past that he wouldn't or couldn't look elsewhere. The ironmonger, Belfors, was protecting Paul Elcott out of habit, and because the information he could give the police was proof that Elcott knew where a revolver was to be had. Greeley wanted to live in peace with his neighbors long after Rutledge had moved on. Harry Cummins was intent on protecting his own secret. And his wife was not trustworthy as she pursued her own nightmares.

  Of them all, Elizabeth Fraser had the least to win or lose. But she, too, had a past that made her vulnerable. Would Mickelson look at that and hear the whispers that she had cared for Gerald Elcott more than she should, and decide to point his finger in her direction?

  He clenched his teeth and swore. There was nothing he could do about that now. He had had his chance to come to a suitable conclusion.

  He could see all the twists and turns of the interviews he'd conducted. He could see where each of the people involved had something to hide. Except for Maggie Ingerson. Why should she offer up a cap that had nothing to do with the south road?

  Unless she, like Belfors, saw in Paul Elcott the local man being sent to the gallows by outsiders who were glad to let him take the blame . . .

  All of them—Cummins and his wife, Miss Fraser, Miss Ashton, and Hugh Robinson—were not native to Urskdale. They would have had no defenders, if the tables had been turned. Even Follet had put in a word for Elcott and expressed his doubts about Janet Ashton.

  An independent-minded woman like Maggie Ingerson might just do her bit to set him free.

  But—who could have told her that he'd been taken into custody?

  Rutledge looked out at the snow that still lay deep in corners, against northern walls, and wherever traffic hadn't trampled it into mud.