A cold treachery - Charles Todd [108]
Josh Robinson: Revenge. The twins had tied his mother more closely to Gerald Elcott, and Josh had run away once, missed school often, and from what the schoolmaster had said, was unhappy in the North, with few friends to make life bearable. And when he'd been told he was too young to live with his father, had he decided that the only way to be free was to murder his family?
There was Bertram Taylor as well, who had carried a grudge against Gerald Elcott. And Hugh Robinson, who had been forced to give up his own family through no fault of his own. And even Harry Cummins, who had been attracted to Grace. But if that were true, why kill her? Or had her happiness embittered him, sending him there in the snow to wipe out a family he envied?
Hamish said, “Hav' ye no' thought of the wife? Jealous of the woman who had caught her own man's eye?”
Far-fetched though it might be, Rutledge added Vera Cummins to the list. For frail as she seemed, there was a tenacity and a force under her drunkenness. She loved Harry, doubted him, was troubled by him—and failed to live up to what he had wanted from her.
He looked in his papers for the reply received from Sergeant Gibson on his earlier query. An unexpected answer, but Vera Cummins had confirmed it.
Elizabeth Fraser had been tried and found not guilty of murder.
The charge was killing the man she was engaged to marry.
A bare-bones report from Sergeant Gibson, with none of the flesh that lent humanity to a case.
The victim, Ronald Herring, had been a conscientious objector. The K.C. had pointed out that perhaps Herring was a moral coward, and the accused had been ashamed of his convictions. When he refused to release her from her engagement, she had taken matters into her own hands. Or in Sergeant Gibson's words, “rid herself of a man who didn't have the backbone to step aside.”
Tried and found not guilty . . .
But perhaps the jury had been sympathetic.
Conscientious objectors and cowards, even men who had suffered from shell shock, were despised by people who had watched sons and fathers and brothers mown down in France. Women had been particularly hard on those they felt were malingering. Many had handed out white feathers to any man not in uniform, and a special uniform had been designed for those given medical discharges, to protect them from harassment.
He had hoped that it wouldn't be necessary to ask for the details of the case. Elizabeth Fraser was bound to her chair. She couldn't possibly have reached the Elcott farm in the snow.
Yet he had seen her standing. And she herself had told him that the doctors had found no physical reason for her disability.
Mickelson would probe into the case. He had to forestall that.
Rutledge put aside his papers and went to the kitchen, hoping to find her alone. He could hear the voices of Cummins and Robinson from the small parlor, and walked quietly past.
Mrs. Cummins was in the kitchen, trying to find something in one of the drawers of the dresser. She looked up as Rutledge came into the room and said fretfully, “I can't seem to find my scissors—I was sure they were here just this morning!”
“Let me search in the drawer for them.”
He went through the detritus of twenty years, a magpie's nest of things that had no other home. A broken spoon, stubs of pencils, a bit of torn lace, part of a steel hat pin, and lengths of colored thread. In the bottom, tangled in string, was a small pair of embroidery scissors.
She took them as if he'd handed her the Grail, holding them to her breast.
He happened to look up at her face just then, and saw something in her eyes that chilled him. He nearly reached out to take the scissors back again.
It struck Rutledge that she had played a role for years. The drunken, needy wife, who clung to her husband and bound him to her with pity. Terrified he wouldn't come home to her, terrified