A Cold Treachery

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

J anet Ashton closed her fingers over her find. “All you have to do is look for a coat with a missing button-”

“I don't believe you found it there!”

“Why not? Because you overlooked the button earlier? It's sheer folly for me to play that game. Oh, I know you think I was as likely to have killed them as Paul-or Josh. But you can't have three murderers in a family, can you? If you have to choose, who will it be-?”

She broke off as the horse gently blew, as if it had picked up a scent it didn't like.

“Shhh-” Rutledge said, turning off his torch and stepping swiftly to the barn door.

There was someone above the shed, on the hill.

Rutledge slipped to the shed and laid his hand across the horse's nose, to keep it quiet, all the time talking to it in a low voice as he urged it out of sight.

Janet Ashton was beside him. “Who is it?” she demanded in a fierce whisper. He could feel her shaking as her hand came to rest on his arm. “I could have run into him!”

“Shhh-” he said again. “Here, hold on to the horse. Don't let him make a sound!”

And he was gone, out of the shed and into the starlit yard.

Above him he could see movement, but the line of sight here wasn't as good as it had been in the upper floor of the house.

But the figure didn't seem to be moving towards the hut. Instead he seemed to be looking at the house from the fell. Searching for a better angle.

What was it he wanted? A man, surely-not a boy.

Hamish said softly in his ear, “Taylor, the escaped prisoner.. .”

Was it? Rutledge waited, silently urging whoever was there to come down the hill and into his line of sight.

But he stayed high, watchful as an animal. His attention was focused on the house still, and Rutledge realized that he would be hard to see from Hazel Robinson's bedchamber. The line on which he seemed to be moving was bare rock, brought to the surface by the rain and the sun's warmth. A shadow on a shadow, he thought, like a fish in a pool.

And then, finally, he was coming down.

Rutledge ducked out of sight, and said to Janet Ashton, “Stay here with the horse. Whatever happens. If he's armed, he might fire at anything that moves.”

“Don't leave me here,” she begged. “I don't want him to find me!”

“He won't. You're safest here.”

He was back at the shed door, listening.

The crunch of boots could be heard indistinctly. All at once, the sound stopped. And then turned away, moving fast.

Rutledge swore under his breath.

A good soldier could sense danger. Could sense the shift in the silence that told him someone else was there, concealed and menacing. Whatever alerted the man on the slope, he was taking no chances. By the time Rutledge started up the track, the man was lost in the darkness.

He could crouch down and stay unseen, like a rabbit outwaiting the fox. It would be impossible to spot him until one was nearly on top of him…

Nevertheless, Rutledge thought, I've got to find him.

But it was useless. After an hour of trying, Rutledge was forced to give up.

When he came back to the shed, he discovered that Janet Ashton was gone.

But who was the other shadow up there on the hill? Where had he been heading, the house or the hut, before something had alerted him to his own danger? What would he have done, left to his own devices?

I t was just before dawn when the sound of the motorcar roused Rutledge from an uneasy sleep.

Sergeant Miller, square and sensible behind the wheel, said, “I hope it was worth missing sleep over, this wild scheme of yours.”

“It was a quiet night,” Rutledge answered him.

Miller grunted. “That's as may be, sir. You were lucky. Anything could have happened out here, and you had no way of summoning help.”

W hen he got to the hotel, Rutledge stepped into the barn and looked at Harry Cummins's mare. She was standing in her stall, asleep.

When he touched her neck, he could tell she'd been ridden, the sweat still stiff there in the hairs.

That explained how Janet Ashton had come to and returned from the farm-bareback, because with her sore ribs she couldn't have tossed a saddle over a mount's back.

Then how did the other night stalker get there? And what had brought him, if not the lure of the candle purportedly found in the hut?

W hen Rutledge came down to the kitchen for hot water to use to shave, Janet Ashton was sitting in the predawn darkness, holding a cup of tea.

“I suppose you intend to arrest me now. Returning to the scene of my crime.”

“You could just as easily have run into the murderer as you did me. And he could well have circled back while I was out there on the fell.”

She inadvertently shivered. “That never occurred to me, or I'd have stayed here. Are you going back today to look for tracks?”

“That won't do much good. The search party made it impossible to tell who was coming or going.”

“And so now you can't decide whether to take me into custody or trust your judgment that the other idiot out there in the night was the man you want.”

“I'm prepared to arrest both you and Elcott and then let the courts make sense of it!”

She caught the edge in his voice. “You haven't thought, have you, that Paul and I might be in this together…”

He took the candle stub from his pocket. And the cuff link he had kept.

“The boy broke this, either by accident or in a fit of temper. Do you know who gave them to him?”

She didn't need to look at it. “Hugh gave them to Josh on his birthday. Grace let him keep them in his own room. It was a mistake, I can see that now.”

“Why would he want to destroy them?”

“I expect he felt Hugh had deserted him. By not coming here and taking him back to London. Perhaps Hugh is right, Josh was unhappy and vengeful. But that doesn't make the child a killer.”

R utledge's loud knock at the door woke up Paul Elcott well before eight o'clock.

He came to the door of the licensed house with his hair tossled and his pajamas shoved into his trousers. Rutledge looked down. His feet were bare.

“What is it? What's wrong?”

“I want to have a look at your boots.”

“ Boots? Good God, man, are you mad? It's barely morning!”

“Nevertheless.”

Elcott led the way up to his quarters and opened the door to the wardrobe. “There they are. The other pair is by the bed.”

In the close quarters of the room, Rutledge could smell the gin. It permeated the bedclothes and Elcott himself.

He lifted each shoe and examined it.

Dry, clean except for paint smears on one pair, and not newly polished.

“Are these all that you have?”

“I'm not a rich man!” Elcott said defensively. “That's the lot.”

“I'd like to look at the coat you were wearing at the funeral.”

“Search the wardrobe and be damned!”

Rutledge found the dark cloth coat and ran his hands down the side where the buttons belonged.

One was missing.

How had the coat fit at the church? He tried to bring back the image of Elcott standing there beside Belfors and his wife. Could the button have been missing then? In the rain, streaking coats and hats with long dark shafts of wet, such things would have been difficult to note.

But he made no issue of it, putting the coat back where he'd found it.

“When did you start drinking?” he asked instead.

“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.

H is 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-”

R utledge 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…”

M aggie 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.