A cold treachery - Charles Todd [1]
Had Gerald looked at Hell? He'd said the trenches were worse—
He sat down on a bale of hay, and dropped his head in his hands, trying to regulate his breathing and hold on to his senses. He should have sent the sergeant back alone. He'd been mad to think he could face that slaughter again.
After a while, Sergeant Miller came across to the barn, and the doctor was with him, carrying a lantern. Elcott lifted his head to nod at Dr. Jarvis. He cleared his throat and said, “They didn't suffer, did they? I mean—no one lingered—”
“No. I don't believe they did,” the doctor answered quietly, coming to stand by him and lifting the lantern a little to shine across Elcott's face. He prayed it was true. He couldn't be sure until the autopsies. Without moving the bodies, he'd been able to find only a single gunshot wound in each, to the chest, with resulting internal trauma. Sufficient to kill. A surge of sympathy swept Jarvis and he reached out to press Elcott's shoulder. The bloody dead were this man's family. His brother, his brother's wife, their children. An unspeakable shock . . .
The doctor himself had been badly shaken by the scene and found it difficult to imagine how he would answer his wife when she asked him why the police had come to fetch him in the middle of his dinner. Nothing in his practice had prepared him for such a harrowing experience. It was, he thought, something one might see in war, not in a small, peaceful farmhouse. At length he said gently to Elcott, “Let me take you home, Paul, and give you something to help you sleep.”
“I don't want to sleep. I'll have nightmares.” Without warning Elcott began to cry, his face crumpled and his chest heaving. His nerve gone.
The doctor gripped the weeping man's shoulder, and looked to Sergeant Miller over his head. “I wish I knew what's keeping Inspector Greeley—his wife told me he'd gone to see if the Potters needed help getting out. I hope to God he hasn't stumbled on anything like this!”
“We'll know soon enough,” the sergeant replied.
They listened to the sobbing man beside them, feeling helpless in the face of his grief.
“I ought to take him home,” Jarvis said. “He's no use to you in this state. You can wait for Greeley. When you're ready for me, I'll be with Elcott.”
Miller nodded. “That's best, then.” He glanced at Elcott, then jerked his head, moving to the door. Jarvis followed him. The two men stood there in the late afternoon light, gray clouds so heavy that it was difficult to tell if dusk was coming, or more snow. It had been a freak two-day storm, fast moving with a heavy fall, and the skies still hadn't cleared. The roads were nearly impassable, the farm lanes worse. It had taken Miller a good hour to reach the house, even following in the ruts left by Elcott's carriage.
“There's one still missing.” Miller pitched his voice so that Elcott couldn't hear him. “I daresay Elcott's not noticed. I've walked through the rest of the house. He's not there.”
“Josh? By God, I hadn't—Is he in the outbuildings, do you think?” Jarvis shivered and glanced over his shoulder at the unlit interior of the small barn, with its stalls, plows, barrows, tack, and other gear stacked neatly, the hay in the loft, filling half the space. Two horses and a black cow watched him, ears twitching above empty mangers. “Gerald Elcott was always a tidy man. It shouldn't take long to search.”
Miller counted on his gloved fingers. “Elcott penned his sheep, against the storm. I could see them up there to the east of Fox Scar. Stabled his horses, and brought in the cow. At a guess, then, he was alive this time Sunday, when the snow was coming down hard and he knew we were in for it. But the cow's not been milked since, nor the stalls mucked out, nor feed put down.”
“That confirms what I saw inside. I'd say they've been dead since Sunday night.” Jarvis frowned and stamped his feet against the cold, torn. “I should stay until you've found Josh. In the event there's anything I can do. . . .”
“No, take Elcott back. If the rest are dead, the boy is as well. I'll manage.”
The doctor