A Cold Treachery

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

M iss Fraser sat at the table cradling her injured hand as she gave Mrs. Cummins instructions on preparing the meal. It would be a little late, she wryly told Rutledge as he brought in the last of the coal scuttles.

“No matter-”

Harry Cummins put his head in the kitchen doorway. “Mr. Rutledge. I'd like to speak to you.”

Rutledge set the scuttle by the parlor hearth and turned to shut the door as Cummins stood by the cold hearth. The man was uneasy, his eyes moving around the room as if he'd never seen it before.

“I just heard you'd asked London for information about a list of people living in Urskdale…”

News passed quickly. Damn Ward!

“Yes, that's true.” Rutledge dusted his hands and added, “It's not an unusual request. Routine, in fact. But the constable was out of line if he told you the names.”

“But people may have secrets that aren't-in any way connected to murder.”

“I have to be the judge of that,” Rutledge replied.

“What do you do with the information collected for you? Do you make it common knowledge-do you, for instance, tell Inspector Greeley? Or anyone else?”

Rutledge's attention sharpened. “What's worrying you, Cummins?”

“I-I'm not worried. It isn't that. Curiosity… it's just curiosity.”

Hamish said, “He wouldna' ask if it wasna' something that mattered.”

“Well,” Cummins went on, summoning a smile. “I daresay dinner will be a little late. I apologize.”

“There's no need.”

“I'm not much of a hand in the kitchen. It isn't something…” His voice trailed off. “I'll just see if there's anything I can do. Thank you for bringing in the coal-I'll see to it myself from now on.”

And he was gone, leaving the parlor door wide. Currents of cold damp air made the flame in the lamp on the table flicker and dip.

Rutledge said aloud, to Hamish as well as to the shadows, “I wonder how well he knew the Elcotts…”

T he potatoes were not thoroughly cooked, and the meat was tough. But the people around the table said nothing about that as they ate their meal in silence. A gray-faced Hugh Robinson had been allowed to join them, and he kept his eyes on his plate as if ashamed of his earlier emotional outbreak.

It was Rutledge who turned to Elizabeth Fraser and cut the roast mutton for her and buttered her bread. She thanked him with her eyes but said nothing. Her bandaged hand was paining her-he could tell from the way she held it close to her body, cushioning it.

Mrs. Cummins was chattering about the food, begging everyone to let her know whether it was to their liking. Cummins toyed with his meal, and Hugh Robinson ate mechanically. Janet Ashton answered Mrs. Cummins at first and then fell silent. The ticking of the kitchen clock and the shifting of the coals in the stove filled the room, and the sound of the rising wind.

Hamish, stirred into life by the uncomfortable atmosphere, said, “It wouldna' be sae cheerful at a wake.”

The wind was moaning around the eaves as they finished their flans. Mrs. Cummins began to clear away the dishes. Her husband rose to help her, his sudden cheerfulness forced and uncomfortable as he took them from her and stacked them by the sink. A fire had been lit in the small parlor, and he promised the tea tray there in a few minutes.

Janet Ashton was the first to leave the kitchen, and after a moment Rutledge followed her. As she went into the parlor, she said out of the blue, “When will we be allowed to bury our dead? It would be a kindness, if you'd tell Hugh.”

“I'll speak to Inspector Greeley tonight,” Rutledge replied. “There's no reason why you shouldn't make arrangements for a service.”

Hugh Robinson was on her heels but appeared not to have heard the question. He sat in his chair like a lump, speaking only when spoken to.

Rutledge added, “You understand that you won't be allowed to leave. Even if the roads are passable.”

“I didn't expect we could,” Janet Ashton answered tartly.

E veryone had gone to bed and the house was quiet when Rutledge brought himself up out of deep sleep. He had learned that trick over the months and years in the trenches, where it was too dangerous to light a match to see the time. An internal clock worked nearly as well, allowing him to snatch sleep where he could and still wake up for a change in the watch or the next attack.

He got up, dressed, and then walked silently down the passage towards the kitchen. The fire had been banked, and the air was already chilly. He pulled on his boots, then buttoned his coat.

Letting himself out the kitchen door, he kept to the shadows as far as a small shed, and there leaned his back against the rough wall facing The Knob. He had borrowed field glasses from Elizabeth Fraser, glasses kept for summer guests, and he warmed them under his coat as he waited.

And for the next five hours he kept watch on the heights.

A little after four in the morning, he gave up. Hamish had been telling him for an hour that no one would walk this way, but he was reluctant to leave too soon.

By that time his feet were icy in his boots and his face where the scarf didn't cover it was stinging with the cold.

Why had someone been out there on the heights last night and not tonight? A lost sheep-a shortcut home?

Then why had it disturbed a plain man like Henderson to see a shielded light just here?

“Because,” Hamish said in the darkness, “it was too close to the Elcott farm.”

Rutledge made his way back to the house and shook the snow off his boots before stepping inside.

Elizabeth Fraser was there in her chair, her hand raised in alarm as if expecting him to attack her.

Hamish had already hissed a warning, and Rutledge recovered first.

“What on earth are you doing here at this hour?” he demanded, taking off his hat so that she could see his face more clearly.

“Oh, my God, you frightened me!” she was saying, catching her breath on the words. “Where have you been? What's happened?”

“Nothing has happened. I-couldn't sleep-”

“No, that's not true,” she challenged him, her voice still trembling. “There was someone out there-”

He wheeled to look over his shoulder, then turned back to her. “I didn't see anyone. I was walking back from the shed, passing the barn-”

She shook her head. “Not by the barn-it looked like a dog-and someone following it. Hunched over, staring at the ground.”

“If that's true,” he said, unable to keep doubt out of his voice, “you shouldn't have been here, you put yourself at risk. If someone had seen you-”

She heard his doubt. “I can't believe I dreamed it. It was real!”

“I don't understand how he could have slipped past me.” But he wasn't sure that that was true. Standing there, cold and tired, his attention had wandered in the last half hour.

He looked back at the night, the silent fell rising above him, the looming shapes of outbuildings, the stark patterns of white snow and dark shadows.

A dozen men could be hidden there…

And yet his sixth sense, which had made a difference between life and death for four years of war, told him there was no one in the yard.

When he turned again, she was looking up at him, her face a white oval in the pale light of the snow.

“It's happened again,” she said in a whisper.

“Another murder?” he asked quickly.

“No.” She spun her chair, maneuvering it around the table, where the light couldn't reach her. Out of the darkness she answered him. “I-see things sometimes.”

“What are you telling me? Imagination? Dreams-”

“I don't know.” He thought she was crying. “It's a curse. I can't be sure what it is. Sometimes my eyes play tricks. Or my brain. I don't know,” she said again. “I wish I did. But it was so real. I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything but watch.”

But Rutledge thought he understood. She had been walking in her sleep. It was, perhaps, what he had seen before, on his first night at the hotel. Her restless mind, driving her, sent her out of bed and on missions of its own, and this time, inadvertently, he had awakened her by coming in the door.

“I wouldn't worry about it, if I were you,” he assured her. “You're safe now, and there was nothing out there but shadows moving with the clouds. Would you like a cup of tea? Something warm to send you back to sleep again?”

“You don't believe me,” she said forlornly.

“My dear girl, I do believe you. I've known men at the Front who saw whole armies coming towards them across No Man's Land. Straining their eyes to see how far away they were, and giving the alarm when there was nothing there. It's caused by anxiety when you know the enemy is forming up to attack, and the wait seems to tear at your nerve endings until you'd rather face it now than later.”

“I have no enemy waiting to attack.”

“We all do,” Rutledge told her. “Sometimes it's just a fear of ourselves.”

She was silent for a time. Then she said, “What is your enemy?”

He almost told her, there in the dark, where he couldn't see her face and she couldn't see his. But he was afraid to put his fears into words, and have to live with them tomorrow in the light of day.

“The war,” he said finally. “And living when so many died.”

“Yes. I understand that.”

He could hear her turn her chair towards the passage door. “Will you latch the outer door for me, Mr. Rutledge?”

“Yes. Good night.”

“Good night.” Her voice came softly to him from the passage.

He stood there in the kitchen, feeling alone and terrifyingly empty.

T he next morning, before anyone else had walked in the yard, Rutledge went out to look for prints. But the rain had begun at first light, and any that had been made in the dark were washed away. Even his own.

N ecessity in the North was the main consideration in all matters.

And the rector who came every other Sunday to the little stone church to preach to the handful of villagers collected there in the cold sanctuary was called on to bury the dead while he was here. Mr. Slater was a middle-aged man who appeared to have a dour outlook on life, his eyes pouched and his eyebrows sprouting dark wiry hairs above the rims of his spectacles.

He went off to dine with Dr. Jarvis, and at two o'clock was prepared to conduct the funeral of the five victims of Urskdale's unknown killer.

There were a number of people present-not as many as Rutledge had anticipated, but Inspector Greeley, standing with him in the back of the unadorned plain stone nave, tried to explain. “Stock need tending to.”

“But if the Elcott family was well liked, I'd have expected half the village to be here. Stock or no stock.”

The line of coffins before the altar was heartbreaking. The twins would be buried with their mother, who had died trying to protect them. Hazel had her own small casket, and someone had found a bouquet of white silk roses to place on the top. The empty space where her brother might have been seemed to stand out with a cold clarity, as if pointing out the failure of the men of Urskdale to find his body.

The rector spoke of Fate, and the need to be prepared to meet Death, since no one knew when and how it might reach out to pluck its next victim. Rutledge, listening, considered it a macabre funeral oration, raising the specter of a murderer roaming the dale in search of new prey. Even Inspector Greeley seemed to shiver at the images the thin voice carried to every cranny of the church.

And then, with surprising compassion, the rector addressed each of the family members in turn, painting a warm portrait of each of the five victims that may or may not have been true.

Rutledge, observing the mourners with a policeman's eye, read nothing in their features except sympathy as they sat patiently through the service. For the most part, they appeared to agree with Mr. Slater's words, and once or twice he saw women resorting to their handkerchiefs as the rector touched a chord of memory. Children, restless beside their elders, stared at the rafters and the single stained-glass window, and sometimes at the coffins. There were a number of boys close in age to Josh Robinson. Rutledge noted them, and saw nothing in their behavior to indicate they kept any secrets about their missing classmate. Mrs. Haldnes sat upright, as if in judgment, with her own sons around her. Mrs. Peterson had not come. The Hendersons were there, with a young child who fidgeted in pain. Henderson put his arm around the boy and drew him closer, as if afraid of losing him.

It was a somber party who gathered under dripping umbrellas in the churchyard. Beyond the yews, someone had scraped away the snow, and the sexton had managed to dig three graves in the soggy earth. With no flowers and the sun hidden behind heavy clouds, the rain an uncompromising drizzle now, and the rector reading the last words of hope and resurrection as if they were a curse, the depression of the mourners only deepened.

It was a bleak service, the wind howling around their shoulders, the ground gaping cold and hard. The rector was hoarse, his voice barely audible and half buried in his black muffler.

Paul Elcott stood as if alone, head bowed, face scourged with grief. Nothing in the slump of his shoulders and the tight grip of his hands on the bone handle of the umbrella indicated that he was comforted by the service.

Beside him was Hugh Robinson, face unreadable, his emotions locked too far away to be touched. His eyes weren't on the coffins but on the heights, as if saying good-bye to his son as well as his daughter.

Farther away, closer to the yews, Janet Ashton also stood alone, the veil borrowed from Mrs. Cummins shielding her. Rutledge couldn't read her thoughts behind the dark folds of silk, but her black-gloved hands held her body as if her ribs were aching and she felt the cold deeply.

Elizabeth Fraser was there, in her chair. She bit her lip once during the final words of interment, and ran a gloved finger over the raindrops that glistened on the black robe across her knees. Once she looked up and caught his eyes on her, and seemed disconcerted for a moment.

Harry Cummins had attended, but his wife hadn't come to the graveside, pleading dizziness. He frowned as he watched the coffins sink into the wet earth, and something made him glance towards Elizabeth Fraser as if he could sense what she was thinking.

Belfors, the ironmonger, was there with his wife. She was a fair woman with gray eyes, tall and slender and carrying her years well. They had brought Paul Elcott in their carriage. Friends and neighbors formed a ring around the raw earth, their faces a blend of sadness and uneasiness.

Hamish said, as the rain pattered down gently on Rutledge's umbrella, “It's no' verra comforting. I'd ha' had a piper for my funeral.”

Rutledge winced, thinking that Hamish must be close enough to stand under the spread of black silk with him.

“No pipers here,” he said under his breath. But the mountains ringing the valley and the wide expanse of black water in the lake would have echoed the chilling skirl and sent it back again a dozen times.