A cold treachery - Charles Todd [132]
By the time Maggie had the porridge on the table, Josh was asleep.
It was two o'clock in the afternoon before the boy woke up. Maggie had spent most of that time trying to persuade Rutledge to leave him where he was.
He opened red-rimmed eyes, puffy from crying and sleep, and stared at Rutledge without emotion.
For hours Rutledge talked to him. About Sybil, about the sheep, about Maggie, about Westmorland and London, what-ever he could think of that had nothing to do with murder or policemen.
It was long after midnight before Rutledge, nearly hoarse by that time, got a response.
Josh looked up at him and said: “Will you hang me now?”
Rutledge said, “You can't be hanged. You're too young. And I don't know what you've done to deserve such punishment. I wasn't there—”
Maggie stirred, unwilling to force the child to relive what had happened that night in the snow.
“I was,” Josh said, simply. “I killed them. All of them. Murderers always hang. It's what he told me. My father.”
For several seconds Rutledge sat without moving. And then he said, “Gerald was the last to die, then?”
Maggie got to her feet and went to the sink, where she leaned on her hands and stared out the window.
The boy shook his head. “No. He was the first. And then—then Hazel. After that, Mama. And the babies. He let me go then, told me they'd come and find all the bodies, and I'd be hunted down like a mad dog and hanged. I ran. He had the revolver against his head, by that time. And I heard the shot before I'd gone very far. But his voice came after me, over and over, no matter how hard I ran, telling me it was my fault, all my fault for not wanting to come and live with him. But Mama understood, and wouldn't make me do it. I was so scared she'd die when the babies came, and they would send me to London after all. Mr. Blackwell had told her that's where I belonged. And Paul, he said none of us belonged here, that we weren't Elcotts at all, even though Mama had married Gerald and Gerald called me his boy. And Greggie Haldnes told me I ought to go back to London and stop putting on airs at his school—”
He went on, spilling out a litany of small indignities and mistreatment and insults that had made him tragically vulnerable.
“Did you tell these things to your mother?”
He shook his head. “Dr. Jarvis said I mustn't worry her, that having twins was dangerous, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for what happened then.”
Rutledge nearly swore, biting off the words.
“Are you sure it was your father, in the kitchen that night? Are you sure you didn't just imagine him, because you wanted him so much?”
Josh shook his head again vigorously, and rolled up the sleeve of his heavy shirt.
Maggie caught her breath in shock.
Deep bruises, only just turning green and yellow, ringed his thin arm in the shape of a man's fingers gripping hard.
“He made me watch. He held on to me and made me watch—”
By the time Rutledge had stemmed the tide of confession and helped Maggie feed Josh Robinson and put him to bed in her father's room, he was hardly able to keep his own eyes open. He could see in his head the horror that the boy had carried for more than a week, the images raw and frightful. But the last hours had taken their toll. When he came back to the warmth of the kitchen and sat down in Maggie's chair, he said to her, “I'll rest for half an hour. And then I'll go and do what has to be done.”
“Yes. It's for the best. You look like I feel. I'll just lie down a bit myself.” She lowered the flame on the lamp, banked the stove, and then went into her room, shutting the door.
The silence in the room, the ticking of a clock somewhere else in the house, and the warmth finally overwhelmed Rutledge, and he slept.
It was nearly three quarters of an hour later when he woke and couldn't remember where he was.
The room was dark, the lamp blown out. As his eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he got up and held a match to the wick, cupping his hand around