Charles Todd - A Cold Treachery

Follet and Rutledge watched them go. “There's my son's bedroom, at the head of the stairs, if you're agreeable to staying what's left of the night. He's over to Keswick, where he's been courting a lass.”

“Thank you, but I must be on my way,” Rutledge replied with sincere regret. “They're expecting me in Urskdale.” He set his cup on the table and went out to the motorcar to bring in the empty Thermos.

As Follet refilled it, Rutledge reconfirmed his directions before stepping out into the cold, windy night. As the farmhouse door swung to, Bieder, the dog, followed the interloper all the way to the motorcar, head lowered and a deep growl in his throat to emphasize a personal dislike for strangers. “I'd not like to come across you unexpectedly,” Rutledge commented as he put up the crank and went around to the driver's side. “Murderer or no.”

Hamish said, It's a pity the slaughtered family didna' have a dog like yon.

“I doubt that it would have mattered, if he was armed. Or the killer might have been known to the animal.” Rutledge turned the motorcar with some difficulty and went back down the farm lane in his own tracks. Miss Ashton was safe. He hadn't far to go to his destination. He'd had a chance to warm himself and the whisky had given him second wind. He should have felt revived, eager to go on. But as the darkness encompassed him, isolating him in the bright beams of his headlamps, he could feel the mountains again, out there like Russian wolves beyond the campfire's light. It was a trick of the mind, nothing more, but he was thrown back into the war, when in the darkness an experienced man could sense movement in the German trenches, even when there was no sound, nothing to betray the congregation of enemy forces before a surprise attack.

A s it happened Rutledge reached his destination ahead of the dawn. But not before he'd taken half an hour to backtrack to where he'd found the wrecked carriage. The policeman in him, the training that even war hadn't blunted-in fact had honed-made him thorough. Earlier, the need to safeguard Miss Ashton had been his only priority. Now he could examine the scene.

The wind had died and with it the squalls of snow. With his torch in his hand, he surveyed the overturned vehicle, thinking that by this time-if he hadn't come along the same road-Janet Ashton would be dead.

“She was verra lucky,” Hamish agreed. “And who will res-cue us?”

Ignoring the jibe, Rutledge got out to walk warily to the road's edge. His policeman's brain was registering details even as a part of his mind was picturing himself pinned under the overturned motorcar. It would have been, he thought, an easier way to die than most, to fall asleep in the cold night air. Was this the fate of the missing child? It would be ironic indeed if the weather had claimed the murderer as well! A fitting justice, in a way.

What appeared to be a valise was just a white hump beyond the place where he had trampled the snow to get Janet Ashton out of the carriage. It had been tossed some feet away by the impact of the carriage's tumbling fall. And the off wheel, he noted, was cracked. But the horse, tangled in its traces, was pointing in one direction, the vehicle in another. It was nearly impossible to judge where Miss Ashton had been heading when she had skidded wildly off the road. And he hadn't thought to ask her. She had seemed so vulnerable-detached from the tragedy that had taken place in Urskdale but a victim of the same storm. The miracle wasn't that someone had found her in time, but that she had survived at all. It had been a nasty spill. Satisfied, he flicked off the torch.

Hamish said as Rutledge returned to the idling motorcar, “If she had broken her back, you couldna' ha' dragged her up that slope.”

“No.” Moving her could have killed her or crippled her terribly.

Releasing the brake, Rutledge turned the motorcar with great care and continued on his way.

But Hamish, responding to the weariness that still dogged Rutledge, was in a mood to bring up unpleasant subjects.

He ranged from the case just ended in Preston to the letter that had come from Scotland the day before Rutledge had traveled north. This had invited him to spend the Christmas holidays with his godfather, David Trevor. And he had answered that the weather was too uncertain to plan on driving north in December.

“It couldna' be any worse than this night.”

Rutledge argued for a time and then fell silent, unwilling to be drawn again.

Hamish was not satisfied, and kept probing at what he knew very well was a sore subject. It was not David Trevor that Rutledge was avoiding but his houseguest, the woman Hamish should have lived to marry…

The stars were just visible as Rutledge drove into the small community hugging the roadside. Shops and houses mingled against the backdrop of the lake on the right and in the shadow of high peaks to his left. The main thoroughfare was churned into muddy ruts, freezing over in the predawn cold and cracking under his wheels. Another quarter of an hour or so, and it would be morning. But now the windows were dark, the streets empty. The door to the police station was shut, and no one answered his call as he stepped inside. He went back to the idling motorcar and began to search for his lodgings.

A long ridge loomed above the village, its irregular outline smooth in the darkness, the rocky slopes shapeless under their white blanket. As if concealing their true nature. Below, Urskdale was oddly quiet, almost withdrawn. Rutledge soon found the rambling stone house that served as the local hotel-hardly more than a private home with rooms to let in the summer for walkers.

Someone had shoveled out the drive after the earlier storm, and the new fall was not as deep. Rutledge made the turning with ease and continued past the side of the house into the yard behind it. Here there was a motley collection of vehicles between the stable and the sheds-carts, wagons, and one carriage-left helter-skelter as if the arriving searchers had been in great haste. Muddy tracks led from the yard towards the sloping land beyond, soon lost in the darkness.

As Rutledge got out of his motorcar, a light came on in a ground floor window and someone peered out through the curtains. He walked around to the front of the house. After some time the door opened, and a woman asked, “You're the man from London?” Wind swirled up in their faces as she looked up at him.

She was seated in a wheeled invalid's chair, her lower limbs covered by a soft blue blanket, and he found himself thinking that she had been brave to open the door to a stranger when there was a killer at large.

“Inspector Rutledge. Sorry to arrive so late-or so early. The roads-”

She nodded. “Do come in.” With accustomed ease she turned her chair and made room for him. “I'm Elizabeth Fraser. All the able-bodied men are out searching for the child. Mrs. Cummins, whose house this is, asked me to keep a fire in the kitchen and the kettle on. She's not well, and I've been staying with her. Inspector Greeley arranged for her to put you up while you're here.”

He stepped past her into the hall and watched as she latched the door behind him before expertly guiding the chair ahead of him through another door that led to the rear of the house. He could feel the warmth as he followed her down a passage, as if a stove was beckoning him.

Or was his mind dazed with exhaustion?

Holding another door for her, he found himself in the kitchen.

It was bright with color, the walls a soft cream and the curtains at the windows a faded dark green that complemented the floral-patterned cushions on the chairs around the table. A door led to an entry from the yard.

“Would you care for a cup of tea?” She gestured to the kettle on the stove.