A Cold Treachery

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

R utledge 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…

F ollet 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?”

A t 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. ..”

R estless 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.

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.

The storm had once covered every footprint. But even in this light he could squat on his heels and see fresh tracks. The hobnails of Drew Taylor's boots. The worn pattern of Cummins's Wellingtons. His own shoes. Miss Ashton's smaller soles. Beyond them the prints made by the search parties climbing the fell.

If the snowfall had been lighter, Greeley might have caught his man simply by tracking him. Case closed.

Rutledge turned to the house and his hand was already on the latch to the yard door.

Hamish was saying something, and he stopped to listen, but under the voice was something else. A memory.

He tried to bring it back. And lost it in Hamish's last words.

“Ye've got til teatime tomorrow. Ye canna' afford to sleep.”

R utledge lay awake another hour, reviewing all he'd seen and done here in Urskdale, raking through his actions and his unconscious observations.

By four in the morning he had drifted into an uneasy sleep, drained by his failure.

And when dreams came, they were mixed and morbid, as if in punishment.

He could see the boy running, dragging his feet, and the Elcotts lying dead in the snow, scattered like soldiers after an attack, limbs bent and bodies trampled by sheep. Overhead an artillery barrage lighted the sky, and he could hear Hamish calling the boy's name, pointing to the mud where Rutledge could see his footprints clearly in bloody snow.

The artillery barrage was louder, the shells exploding in his face, and he came out of deep sleep with a start, his heart pounding in time with the pounding on his door.