A cold treachery - Charles Todd [112]
For a long time it seemed to follow an erratic course, and with the map in his mind, Rutledge could tell when it veered off to stop at the sheep pens, the deeper crevices, and the old ruins.
Searching for what? A revolver? A child? Or perhaps some other bit of evidence that the police were not aware of?
But Rutledge wanted to find out.
Hamish, standing watch with him in his mind, kept up a running commentary, reminding him that time was short and that Mickelson could arrive the next morning, or in the afternoon. “Better to finish what needs to be done, before the wrong person is hanged.”
“I'm doing my best—”
“You havena' used your eyes, they're too blinded by the woman.”
“I tell you, there's no key!”
“Aye, but there is. Think, man, you're no' this puir a policeman!”
“All right, then. Tell me what I've missed!”
“Go back to the woman!”
“She's not a suspect. She was acquitted.”
“Aye, and you're too blind to see what I'm saying—”
The disembodied lantern had come some distance from town now. Rutledge swiftly retraced his own steps to the motorcar and cranked it. Getting in, he heard Hamish say, “The headlamps.”
But Rutledge hadn't turned them on. Driving blind in the darkness, praying not to plow into a ewe on the roadside, he pushed his speed as much as he dared. For a moment Urskwater shimmered in a white sheet, before the moon raced under another bank of clouds. He could understand, he thought, why the Norse and the Danes had woven Nature into their stories, giving it a sinister life of its own. He'd been told on one of his visits to the region with his father about the Old Man who haunted the fells of Urskdale, and he wondered how many people like Mrs. Haldnes kept their shades lowered at night and never looked out. If Henderson hadn't been driving his son to the doctor's surgery—
The village loomed ahead, dark and quiet. Long before he reached the hotel, he stopped the motorcar and left it standing, striding quickly the rest of the way. Once he stumbled in a rut left by a cart, and cursed under his breath.
He made his way around to the back of the hotel, letting himself in the kitchen door, as he'd come out.
Elizabeth Fraser was there in the darkness.
“Dear God,” he said, startled.
“I heard you go out,” she said softly. “I thought you'd like something warm to drink when you came in.”
“There's—business I must attend to first. But thank you.”
He went past her chair into the passage. When he reached Hugh Robinson's room he stopped to listen to the low roll of snores inside. Opening the door silently, he looked into the room. Robinson was sleeping on his side, his face turned away towards the only window. But there was no mistaking him.
Rutledge went on to Janet Ashton's door. He couldn't hear anything beyond the panels and gently opened it half an inch. She lay with her face turned to a long streak of moonlight coming through the window. As he watched, the light faded and there was only the slim shape under the blanket and a pale oval framed in dark hair.
He shut the door again, and made his way silently out of the house to where he'd left the motorcar. He drove it into the hotel yard and left it there. Then he walked down through the town. There was a lamp lit in the doctor's surgery as a night-light, but the rest of the house was dark. Shops were shuttered, and the streets were empty. The ghostly shape of the church tower was lost against the bulk of the mountain behind it. Across Urskwater, a dog barked, and the sound traveled to him clearly. Another answered closer to the village.
He might have been the only man left alive in this alien world, he thought. But try as he would to walk softly, his boots crunched on the ridges of dirty snow and icy mud under his feet, and anyone lying awake could hear the sound of his footsteps echoing in the night. The last thing he wanted were lights coming on as curious heads lifted shades to see who was about.
The Ram's Head was dark, but he tried the door. Locked. In Urskdale, until the murders,