A Cold Treachery

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

W hat does a man say to a child who may be a killer? What could mitigate the nightmare that must be locked in his mind?

“Ye willna' have a second chance,” Hamish warned quietly.

“Josh? My name is Rutledge. You may call me Ian, if you like. I've come from London to find you-”

Rutledge stayed where he was, and kept his voice level, as if there was no danger in the confrontation between them. Feeling his way.

The defiant face drained of color and the boy began to shake. But the ax was still clenched in his hands.

“'Ware!” Hamish cautioned.

Rutledge quickly revised what he was about to say. “I was a soldier, like your father. I've been through some rough patches in the war,” he went on. “But nothing like you've been through. If you will let me come in and talk-”

“He's mute,” Maggie said, just behind him.

“Fair enough. I'll ask you a few questions, Josh, and you can nod your head or shake it, to let me know if I'm right or wrong. I'm not here to harm Maggie Ingerson. She's a very brave woman, and I have a high regard for her.”

“Ask him if he'll go away again and leave us as we are,” she told Josh. “Then you'll know where he stands!”

The boy's eyes switched anxiously from Rutledge's face to hers and back again.

“She knows I can't go away,” the policeman answered honestly. “For days now we've been afraid that you were dead. We were worried, we searched everywhere, well into the night sometimes. Your aunt Janet is in Urskdale, at the hotel. More than anything she wants to know you're safe. She's grieved for you, fearful that you'd lost your way in the snow or were hurt, unable to call for help. And your father has come from Hampshire-”

A shriek of anguish was ripped from the child, and he slammed the door so hard it seemed to bounce on its hinges.

And Rutledge, moving swiftly towards it, heard the fever pitch of his anger from inside.

“You're lying-you're lying!” he shrilled over and over again, and they could hear the ax striking the floor in rhythm with the words.

T hey stood in the cold, side by side but without speaking until the thuds stopped and the screams became broken sobs. It seemed, Rutledge thought, like hours before silence fell, and he looked at Maggie.

“Go in and comfort him.”

“He doesn't like to be touched.”

“All the same-and leave the door wide.”

She finally did as he asked, opening the door with some trepidation, and a wave of warm air thick with the smell of cooked porridge washed over them. The boy lay on the floor, his arms around the dog, the ax forgotten. But in the floor were raw gouges where he had pounded the edge into the wood.

“Sybil has done more than I ever could,” Maggie said, a forlorn note in her voice. She stooped to brush the tear-wet hair out of the child's face and he flinched.

Rutledge stepped in behind her and managed to shut the door. The heat of the room was stiffling after his long night in the cold. He pulled off his coat and set it with his hat on a pail by the door.

Maggie had gingerly retrieved the ax and held it now as if she was debating using it.

Rutledge knelt on the floor. “I could do with a bowl of that porridge,” he said, “and a cup of tea. You won't need that.” He nodded to the ax.

She looked down at the blade of the ax and then set it aside. But she didn't move.

“I won't hurt him. Go on. Make his breakfast, and I'll share it. I need to reach him, and that may be the best way.”

Reluctantly she went to the dresser and found three bowls. Rutledge looked at the curled-up figure of the boy, and then gently picked him up in his arms. It was as if Josh had burrowed so deep into himself that he wasn't aware of what was happening, for he put up no resistance. Rutledge carried the child to the chair where Maggie usually sat-where her father before her had sat, although Rutledge wasn't aware of that-and settled down, still holding the boy.

By the time Maggie had the porridge on the table, Josh was asleep.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon before the boy woke up. Maggie had spent most of that time trying to persuade Rutledge to leave him where he was.

He opened red-rimmed eyes, puffy from crying and sleep, and stared at Rutledge without emotion.

For hours Rutledge talked to him. About Sybil, about the sheep, about Maggie, about Westmorland and London, what-ever he could think of that had nothing to do with murder or policemen.

It was long after midnight before Rutledge, nearly hoarse by that time, got a response.

Josh looked up at him and said: “Will you hang me now?”

R utledge said, “You can't be hanged. You're too young. And I don't know what you've done to deserve such punishment. I wasn't there-”

Maggie stirred, unwilling to force the child to relive what had happened that night in the snow.

“I was,” Josh said, simply. “I killed them. All of them. Murderers always hang. It's what he told me. My father.”

F or several seconds Rutledge sat without moving. And then he said, “Gerald was the last to die, then?”

Maggie got to her feet and went to the sink, where she leaned on her hands and stared out the window.

The boy shook his head. “No. He was the first. And then-then Hazel. After that, Mama. And the babies. He let me go then, told me they'd come and find all the bodies, and I'd be hunted down like a mad dog and hanged. I ran. He had the revolver against his head, by that time. And I heard the shot before I'd gone very far. But his voice came after me, over and over, no matter how hard I ran, telling me it was my fault, all my fault for not wanting to come and live with him. But Mama understood, and wouldn't make me do it. I was so scared she'd die when the babies came, and they would send me to London after all. Mr. Blackwell had told her that's where I belonged. And Paul, he said none of us belonged here, that we weren't Elcotts at all, even though Mama had married Gerald and Gerald called me his boy. And Greggie Haldnes told me I ought to go back to London and stop putting on airs at his school-”

He went on, spilling out a litany of small indignities and mistreatment and insults that had made him tragically vulnerable.

“Did you tell these things to your mother?”

He shook his head. “Dr. Jarvis said I mustn't worry her, that having twins was dangerous, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for what happened then.”

Rutledge nearly swore, biting off the words.

“Are you sure it was your father, in the kitchen that night? Are you sure you didn't just imagine him, because you wanted him so much?”

Josh shook his head again vigorously, and rolled up the sleeve of his heavy shirt.

Maggie caught her breath in shock.

Deep bruises, only just turning green and yellow, ringed his thin arm in the shape of a man's fingers gripping hard.

“He made me watch. He held on to me and made me watch -”

B y the time Rutledge had stemmed the tide of confession and helped Maggie feed Josh Robinson and put him to bed in her father's room, he was hardly able to keep his own eyes open. He could see in his head the horror that the boy had carried for more than a week, the images raw and frightful. But the last hours had taken their toll. When he came back to the warmth of the kitchen and sat down in Maggie's chair, he said to her, “I'll rest for half an hour. And then I'll go and do what has to be done.”

“Yes. It's for the best. You look like I feel. I'll just lie down a bit myself.” She lowered the flame on the lamp, banked the stove, and then went into her room, shutting the door.

The silence in the room, the ticking of a clock somewhere else in the house, and the warmth finally overwhelmed Rutledge, and he slept.

It was nearly three quarters of an hour later when he woke and couldn't remember where he was.

The room was dark, the lamp blown out. As his eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he got up and held a match to the wick, cupping his hand around the flame until it had caught. Settling the chimney in place again, he stood where he was and looked around the room.

All was as it should be. Maggie Ingerson's door was shut, as was the boy's. Sybil lay by the yard door, head on her paws, but her eyes gleaming in the glow of the lamp. He glanced at his watch. Too late to wake Mickelson or Greeley. He'd have to fetch his car soon and bring it around His eyes swung back to the yard door.

The ax was gone.

He crossed the room in four strides and flung open Maggie's door. Blankets were piled on her bed in the shape of her body, the coverlet drawn over them. In the dark it seemed she was sleeping, but a shaft of lamplight spilled across her pillow from the kitchen. And she wasn't there.