Charles Todd - A Cold Treachery

She cursed her bad leg. She daren't go into Urskdale village to listen to the gossip. The journey there and back would put her in bed for a week. Longer. The London policeman had come three times. Suspicious, wanting to know about the old drift road that went over the Saddle and through the narrow cut that led south. A child could never have made that journey, not in summer even. What was it about the old road that intrigued the policeman? That one man could pass there, without being seen in the village?

Closed to sheep it might be, but her father had made his way over the rocks when he was sixteen, and found the way to the coast. His father had given him a lashing with the leather belt for frightening his mother by disappearing for several days. But he'd had pocket change with him and bought a small pillow slip with Morecambe Bay embroidered on it to beg forgiveness, saying that he'd not realized it was so far to walk.

It was the only time her father had ever left the dale. He'd told her once that the sea wasn't much to look at and he'd decided that roaming didn't suit him after all…

She went to the cupboard where her father had kept his belongings. The boy, idle now, watched her as she rummaged through the shelves. Frustrated, she leaned against the wall for a time until she could muster the energy to begin again.

And then she had a better idea and went out to the barn, dragging her foot after her as she searched for the clothes that had belonged to the sheep man who had died at Mons. A flat cap… leather, like some of the Londoners wore. Or so he'd said, jauntily clapping it on his head and laughing at her. She'd told him he looked a fool, but he had laughed again and said, “The girls in shops don't think so.” She called him cheeky, and had turned away, hiding her smile. But she had understood why the girls in the London shops found him dazzling…

Sentimental she was not, though he had been a wonder with the sheep, a blessing after her father's death. She took the hat out of the suitcase it had lived in for the duration of the war and carried it back to the kitchen. The boy was curious, but she didn't tell him what she was planning.

An hour with an old cloth and saddle soap made the hat look better, and she turned it this way and that, studying it.

It would do.

She took it back outside and tossed it into the snow that had drifted higher against the shed.

When the Londoner came back, she was ready for him.

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.