A cold treachery - Charles Todd [2]
“No. God, no.” Jarvis handed the lantern to Miller and settled his hat firmly on his head against the wind. Raising his voice, he said, “Now then, Paul, let's take you home, and I'll find something to help you get past this.”
“Someone has to look after the animals,” Elcott protested. “And I want to help search. For whoever it was killed them. I want to be there when you find this bastard.”
“That's to your credit,” Miller answered him. “But for now, I'd go with the doctor if I was you. I'll see to the beasts, and there'll be someone to care for them tomorrow. Leave everything to us. As soon as we know anything, I'll see you're told.”
Elcott walked to the barn door and stepped outside, unable to turn away from the silent house just across the yard. “I wish I knew why,” he said, his voice ragged with grief. “I just wish I knew why. What had they ever done to deserve—?”
“That'll come out,” Miller told him calmly, soothingly. “In good time.”
Elcott followed Jarvis to the horse-drawn carriage that had brought the doctor out to the isolated farm. The only tracks in the snow were theirs, a hodgepodge of footprints around the kitchen door of the house, and the wheel markings of the two vehicles, cart and carriage. Beyond these, the ground was smoothly white, with only the brushing of the wind and the prints of winter birds scratching for whatever they could find.
As if only just realizing that the cart was his, Elcott stopped and said, “Dr. Jarvis—I can't—”
“Leave it for Sergeant Miller, if you will. He'll bring it back to town later. I expect he'll need it tonight.”
“Oh—yes.” Dazed, Elcott climbed into the carriage and settled himself meekly on the seat, stuffing his cold hands under his arms.
By the time Inspector Greeley had completed his examination of the Elcott farmhouse, he was absolutely certain of one thing. He needed help.
Five dead and one missing, believed dead.
It was beyond comprehension—beyond the experience of any man to understand.
In Urskdale, with its outlying farms and vast stretches of barren mountainous landscape, his resources were stretched thin as it was. The first priority was making certain that all the other dale families were accounted for, that this carnage hadn't been repeated—God forfend!—in another isolated house. And there was the missing child to find. All the farm buildings, sheep pens, shepherds' huts, and tumbled ruins had to be searched. The slopes of the fells, the crevices, the small dips and swales, the banks of the little becks. It would take more men than he could muster. But he'd have to make do with what he had, summon the dale's scattered inhabitants and work them to the point of exhaustion. And time was short, painfully short, if that child had the most tenuous hope of surviving.
Overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of what lay ahead, Greeley did what his people had done for generations here in the North: He buttoned his emotions tightly inside and grimly set about what had to be done.
It was well after midnight when he got back to the small police station that stood six houses from the church on the main street of Urskdale. The inspector laboriously wrote out a message and found an experienced man to carry it to the Chief Constable. “Make the fastest time you can,” the man was told. “It's urgent.”
On his drive back to the police station, Greeley had already compiled a mental list of the outlying farms, roughly grouping them by proximity. And then, to keep his mind busy and away from that dreadful, bloody kitchen, he had considered what the searchers would need—lanterns, packets of food, Thermoses of tea, rope. But that was easier; each man would know from experience what to bring. Locating lost walkers in the summer had taught them all how to plan.
Jarvis had said two days—that the Elcotts had been dead two days.
This madman had already had more than