Charles Todd - A Cold Treachery

But she smiled. “I like the stillnesses. And the wind. I like the wildness. Everything is pared down to the bone in a place like this. It's a wonderful antidote for self-pity. I'm as bad as the summer walkers, aren't I? They come only for ‘splendid vistas and noble panoramas.' I should be telling you that I admire the hardiness of the people or the bracing climate. Something unselfish and fine.”

She watched him pace restlessly, his mind on the search parties.

“You aren't used to waiting, are you?” she asked.

“No. I'm afraid it shows.” Hamish, still agitating in the back of his mind, was keeping him on edge, and the wait for Greeley was beginning to get on his nerves. There must be people he could speak to, evidence he could begin to pull together. But most of the men of Urskdale were out there on the fells, beyond his reach. And the killer could very well be among them. Had Greeley taken that into account?

A gust of wind came round the corner of the house and brought with it a shower of snow from the roof over their heads. Reluctantly Miss Fraser turned her chair and went back inside. After a moment, Rutledge followed her, closing the door and latching it.

“You know these people, do you?” he asked. “Here in Urskdale?”

“You mean, do I know any of them well enough to point my finger at one and call him a murderer?” She drew her chair to the window, where a rare patch of pale, early sun was reaching through the clouds. She turned her face up to it. “Yes. I suppose I do.”

He crossed the room and found a chair near the table, taking up one of the napkins there and folding it into triangles and then squares. It soothed his restlessness, a contrast to her peacefulness. How had she learned to accept her disability so tranquilly? Or was it a hard-won lesson, a victory he knew nothing about? “It may be that there was no outsider…”

“I hope I don't know anyone who could kill like that,” she began pensively. “A grudge simmers, doesn't it? It grates and warps a man until he can't bear it any longer. Short words-angry looks behind someone's back-glares in the butcher shop or at the smithy. Something he's feeling seeps out, surely? But I can't remember ever seeing anyone show that kind of animosity towards Gerald Elcott. I don't recall anyone telling me that they'd overheard a quarrel or seen indications of bitterness or envy. I don't want to think that someone could conceal such anger so well. It smacks of madness, doesn't it?”

“Even madmen have reasons for what they do.” Rutledge remembered Arthur Marlton, the prisoner in the dock in Preston. “Look at it another way. Why the Elcotts? They seemed to have lived a rather ordinary life. Not very different from a dozen other families, surely? Then suddenly someone sweeps down on them in a fury and destroys them. Where did this fury come from? Was it directed at them? Or were they merely the closest target?”

“The Elcott family has deep roots here. And it's true old resentments are nursed, kept alive for years.” Her back was still to him. “I've told you, this is a hard land, and the people on it are hard as well. They don't have much to give, except perhaps trust, and when that's betrayed, they do know how to hate-”

She was interrupted as the kitchen door opened and a man came in, his boots in his hand.

“Morning, Miss,” he said to the woman in the chair, before turning to the man at the table. “You're Inspector Rutledge, then?” His eyes scanned Rutledge from head to foot, as if expecting to find a Londoner wanting in the sheer physical ability to cope with the demands of the North. What he saw seemed to satisfy him, and he held out his free hand.

He was tall and gangling, heavily dressed for weather, his face burned a deep red from the wind. But his gray eyes were clear enough. “My name's Henderson. I've come from the group that's been searching”-he caught sight of the map on the table and walked over to stab a finger at a location-“just here. We've seen nothing. Spoke to this house-this one-this-this, and this. They've not seen nor heard anything suspicious. No strangers about. And they're all able to account for their time two days ago. Three, now. Four.”

“And do you believe them?”

“It's hard not to. The whole family tells the same story, all the while looking straight at us. I'm a shopkeeper, not a policeman, and uncomfortable risking my livelihood pushing those who frequent my shop too hard. Still-I'd say they were telling the truth.” He glanced at Miss Fraser and back again. “Surely what was done leaves scars? You'd have to read something in a man's eyes, if he was guilty of such a crime! And what woman would want to lie for him, knowing he'd slaughtered the children as well?”

Which was, Rutledge thought, a perceptive comment and very much what a policeman would be looking for, asking questions of potential suspects. The eyes were sometimes unable to mask emotions that the muscles of the face could conceal with greater ease.

You'd have to read something in a man's eyes, if he was guilty of such a crime!

But not all killers had a conscience… He had learned that, too, in Cornwall.

H enderson stayed only for a cup of tea and then was off again, to be followed within the next hour by three more messengers from the search parties. Each, hovering over the map, filled in another area of countryside, giving the details of what they had seen and where they had searched and how they'd found the isolated inhabitants in their path. Rutledge noted each man's information in pencil.

One of them said wearily, “It's not that we aren't doing our best. It's just that there's too much ground to cover, and no certainty whether the boy was there before us. Or will come there after we've passed the place by. We keep an eye to the skyline as we go, and to the slopes. We find ourselves wondering if the murderer is watching us from behind a boulder or in a fold of the land. Even at night, when we know he must be out there somewhere, maybe wanting young Josh as much as we do, and hoping we'll lead him to the lad, we feel uneasy. Nobody falls behind in the search party. Even the stragglers keep up.”

“Anyone missing?” Rutledge always asked. “Unaccounted for?”

But the answer was always the same: “Not that we can discover. So far.”

Another man reporting in said, “People are locking their doors for the first time in years, barring them as well. Out of fear. You can be sure we make noise, coming into a yard-knowing we're being watched. No one wants a shotgun going off in his face!”

Hamish said, “They ken the terrain. They ken the name of every male in the district. If he's no' a stranger, then the killer has to be one of the searchers, if no one is missing!”

Rutledge followed the various parties along the tracks, jotting names beside each square that marked a farm, sketching in the sheep folds and ruins mentioned in the reports, noting the contours and shape of the valley. Information, Hamish reminded him, that was useless to a man in a kitchen by the warmth of a stove.

It was a challenge, and Rutledge resisted it.

Elizabeth Fraser put it best, when the men had gone again. “You aren't in London. You can't bring London experience to bear up here.”

“I know.” But Hamish, stirred by Rutledge's own tension, was goading him.

There's a child somewhere in the cold…

S ome time later he came to a barrier, and his numbed mind tried to identify what his hands and his feet could feel: hard, icy stones blocking his path. Beyond them he could see the snow moving, like an ocean of heavy flakes.

But it wasn't the sea, it couldn't be. A walled pen, then, for the sheep who wintered on the fells. He could smell them now, the heavy odor of wet wool. The bellwether often took the flock to shelter when weather came down. Or the owner and his dog would drive them here, where, huddled together, their own warmth would see them through. It was easier to find and care for them when they weren't scattered about the hillsides, nearly invisible humps in the snow.