CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

E lizabeth Fraser found Rutledge still in the dining room. She had brought with her a pot of tea and some sandwiches, a cup and saucer, and the sugar bowl and creamer.

“Everything looks better on a full stomach,” she said, edging her way through the door, the tray balanced on her lap. He hurried to help her, taking the tray from her and setting it on the tea cart by the hearth.

“Tea. The English panacea for everything short of the end of the world…”

She looked up from spooning sugar into his cup. “You're trying to be clever. Arresting Paul. Is it working?”

“Yes. No.”

“Who really killed Gerald and his family?” She handed him his cup. “Or do you even know?”

“There's something I've seen-”

“Then it's all right.”

“You don't understand.” He bit into the sandwich of roasted pork and realized that he was hungry. “What's the most common thing to be found in Urskdale?”

“Sheep,” she answered readily, and he smiled in spite of himself.

“Yes, all right, the next most common thing?”

“Rock. Of all kinds. Slate. Basalt. Volcanic.”

“And it doesn't show tracks. And even if it did, the snow would have obliterated them.”

“That's true, but-”

He took the broken heel out of his pocket. The ring of nails gleamed dully.

“So that's what cut your hand!” she exclaimed, staring at it.

“Indeed. Someone lost this, and you can't walk on rock with a damaged shoe. After a time, it takes its toll on the foot and the ankle. If you'd come all the way from the coast and had to walk out again, what would you need straight-away?”

“A shoemaker. Barring that, a new boot. But you'd have to send to Keswick for it.”

“Yet I've looked, and no one had a damaged boot.”

“And there wasn't time to replace it…”

“Exactly.”

She tucked the tea cozy over the pot and thought about it. “If you're saying that this damaged shoe belonged to the killer, I know where he could find a new boot. If they were of a size. Gerald's.”

Rutledge smiled. “Hamish was right. He'd said something about asking the woman.”

She was perplexed. “Hamish?”

“Never mind. I'm going to be out for a while. Say nothing about the heel, will you?”

H e drove to the Elcott farm. Without Paul there to paint, the house had taken on a forlorn air. As if it had been abandoned.

Rutledge walked into the kitchen by way of the yard door. The smell of paint was still heavy in the air. And without heat the room had a chill that was permeating. As he pulled off his gloves, he tried to picture it as he'd first seen it. With bloodstains marking where five people had died.

No one had stepped in the blood. No one had stopped to make certain that each of the victims in this room had died. It was the last thing a child would attempt to do. An adult would be aware of the blood on the floor and avoid it. Especially with a torn heel.

There was a rectangular wooden box by the yard door which held an assortment of shoes. Wellingtons in various sizes, heavier boots for walking across the fells. And a pair of pattens for gardening.

He went through them one by one, matching them up into pairs.

And all the pairs were there. Each had heels, worn in some cases, fairly new in others, and a few caked with mud.

Rutledge stood looking at them for a moment, as Hamish said, “He wouldna' be sich a fool as to tak' only one…”

“Then where is his cast-off pair? The one with the missing heel and its mate? Am I on the wrong track?”

Hamish didn't answer.

“The barn, then.”

“Aye, but what if the heel was lost as he left the dale?”

“We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Rutledge carefully piled the shoes back into the wooden box and went out, shutting the door behind him.

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.

H amish 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…”

M aggie 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.

R utledge 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.

Загрузка...