A cold treachery - Charles Todd [124]
When she went back inside, the boy was standing there with the ax in his hands.
Rutledge 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.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Rutledge 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 . . .
Follet 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