Charles Todd - A Cold Treachery

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.

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…”