A Cold Treachery

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

R utledge gave Greeley the order to release Belfors and then went back to the hotel.

Where was the missing revolver? Had Elcott taken it? Had the boy? Was it lying somewhere in the snow even now? Or had Gerald hidden it so well that no one had found it yet?

“You canna' take Elcott into custody until you know,” Hamish warned him.

There was no way of judging who had pulled the trigger…

He walked into the hotel kitchen, his face grim.

Elizabeth Fraser looked up from the potatoes she was peeling, and set the knife aside as she saw his expression.

“What's happened?”

“God knows-Nothing. As soon as I find one bit of evidence, it's ambiguous-I don't know how to weigh it. You shouldn't be doing that. Not with your hand!”

“Yours doesn't look much better,” she told him, pointing to the holes in his palm. “How on earth did you hurt yourself?”

He looked down at his hand. “I-was clambering over rocks, and I must have cut it.”

“You didn't do that sort of damage on a stone. Here, let me see.”

“No, it's all right.” He took off his coat. “Why did you come here for Harry Cummins? What's between the two of you?”

She laughed. “Nothing but gratitude. I needed sanctuary and his wife needed a-companion. We served each other's purposes. He loves her, you know. But she won't let him. She holds him at arm's length, and it drives him mad sometimes. He was fond of Grace. She was young and pretty and lively. What he had once loved in his wife. The contrast was painful. He longed for his wife to be herself again.”

“Are you telling me Cummins fell in love with Grace Elcott?”

“Of course not. She was a reminder of what he'd lost. That's all. It was like holding up a mirror to the past. He said to me once that he had asked too much of his wife. And he bore the guilt for that. But he wanted more than anything for her to-come back, as it were.”

“He told me that her family had turned away from her because she'd married him.”

“Yes. One of the tragedies that have driven a wedge where there shouldn't be any.”

“Why did they turn against her? What had he done?”

“I can't tell you-this is a personal secret. It has nothing to do with murder!”

“Then I'll go directly to Cummins.”

“No-you mustn't! He isn't aware that I know. And he mustn't learn how I discovered the truth. It will hurt him.” She made a deprecating gesture. “It was in a bout of drunken self-pity that Vera told me. She asked me afterward if she'd said anything out of line. ‘Betrayed any family secrets,' was the way she put it. And of course I had to tell her she hadn't. It would have sent her directly to the bottle again if she'd realized-” She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. “I respect Harry. I respect how much he's suffered. Don't ask him! ”

“Then you must tell me and let me decide for myself whether it's important information or not.”

Her face judged him, and he could feel himself flush under her scrutiny. “I understand that we have five unsolved murders,” she said quietly. “Six, for all we know! But it doesn't give you the right to hurt people. That makes you no better than the killer.”

He found himself wanting to plead with her for understanding, as if her good opinion mattered to him. What was it about this woman, bound to a wheeled chair, that made a man feel the need to stand tall in her eyes?

Before he could say anything, she went on in the same quiet voice. “It wasn't what he'd done. It's what he was. They were furious with her for marrying a Jew. Even though he'd changed his name and didn't practice. No one else knows-except me.”

“Edward the Eighth had a number of Jewish friends.” But even as he said it, Rutledge knew that that had done little to change the stigma for ordinary people.

“They were rich. It-made a difference.”

“And so the Cumminses moved here, where he could pass as a Gentile, and build a respectable life.”

“Until the war, when no one had the money for holidays. Nor the spirit. The hotel-like Urskdale as a whole-counted on walkers. When they didn't come, life was hard for everyone here.”

“What brought you north?” he asked again. “If it wasn't Harry Cummins?”

“A broken heart,” she answered. “But that's none of your business, Inspector.”

M rs. Cummins was sitting in the small parlor, forlornly leafing through an album of photographs. A fire was blazing on the hearth, and the room for once felt reasonably warm. She looked up as Rutledge came in. “I'm so sorry, I shouldn't be in here-this room is always reserved for our guests. But it's so much easier to heat than anywhere else.”

“Why not enjoy it?” Rutledge asked. He sat down in the chair on the far side of the hearth from her. “You're our hostess.” He paused and then said, “Have you always lived in Urskdale?”

Hamish broke in repressively, “It's no' right to take advantage of her!” But there were things Rutledge needed to know. And he could see that Vera Cummins was especially vulnerable just now. As if sitting in her own parlor had reminded her of what had been-or ought to be.

“Oh, no, I came from London. Kensington,” she told him. “Do you know it?”

“Yes, indeed. Does your family still live there?”

A frown shadowed her face. “I don't know. They haven't told me. We aren't-close.”

“Did Miss Fraser know them?”

“No, I asked her that when she first came here. But she didn't. Elizabeth's family lived in Chelsea. Near the hospital, in one of those lovely old houses. I should have liked to live there after we were married. But of course Harry wasn't-happy in London.”

“And so you came here.”

“Actually we went to Warwick first. But it didn't work out. We had no friends to speak of. It was very lonely.” She smiled wryly. “I didn't know the meaning of that word lonely until we came here.”

“Why?”

“We weren't born here. My grandfather was from Buttermere, but he's been dead for years. Oh, people were nice enough, but they kept us at arm's length. Harry needs people more than I do, and I could feel that weighing on him.”

But he thought she, too, had missed being a part of what social life there was here. “Is any of his family still living?”

“Oh, no. That's why he-could do what he did. Walk away, so to speak. There was no one to hurt. But it hurt him inside, I know it did. I thought perhaps he blamed me…”

He could see, watching her face, the toll life had taken on her. “Were you grateful for Miss Fraser's help while Harry was away in the war?”

“At first I was suspicious. I thought he'd sent her here to kill me.”

“Kill you?” Rutledge asked in astonishment. “Why on earth-”

“Because she'd already killed someone. Didn't you know? I thought a policeman would.”

E lizabeth was quite frank about it, when she came,” Mrs. Cummins went on. “She said it wasn't fair if I didn't know. She'd told Harry, too. Harry's always collected lost sheep. I saw him a time or two talking with Josh Robinson. For all I know, he thought I was one of his lost souls. No, that's not true, not at first. We loved each other very much.” She raised a hand to her forehead as if to clear her mind. “I sometimes forget that.”

“Did you mind that he was a Jew?” Rutledge asked gently.

“How did you know?” she asked in astonishment. “Is it so obvious?”

He smiled, while Hamish called him traitor to his promise. “I'm a policeman, after all.”

“Yes, of course. But you seem too nice to be a policeman. Elizabeth tells me you're such a gentleman. She's quite fond of you.”

“Harry-” he reminded her, embarrassed.

“No, I didn't care if he was a Hottentot! My father cared, though. He told me he would never speak to me again if I married beneath me-that's how he saw it!-and of course I didn't believe him.” Tears came to her eyes. “I didn't even have a trousseau. I wasn't allowed to take anything from the house except the clothes I stood up in.”

“That was cruel of him!”

“Was it? I've wondered if I was the one who was cruel-to disobey him.”

Shifting the conversation, Rutledge asked, “Did you get along well with Miss Fraser, after she came here?”

“Everyone loves Elizabeth. I envy her that. Even Harry loves her, after a fashion.” She sighed. “I think more than anything Egypt changed Harry. I think being so close to Palestine made him realize what he'd lost. He wrote long letters to me about how much he wanted to go to Jerusalem. And I couldn't answer them. I was so terrified that Palestine would take him from me!”

She set the book aside and stood up. “I could fight another woman for him. But I couldn't fight his heritage. I kept hoping that that man Lawrence, the one in all the newspapers, would see to it that the Arabs got all of Palestine and the Jews were thrown out. It was the only way I'd ever win the battle for Harry's soul.”