A cold treachery - Charles Todd [25]
But it wasn't the sea, it couldn't be. A walled pen, then, for the sheep who wintered on the fells. He could smell them now, the heavy odor of wet wool. The bellwether often took the flock to shelter when weather came down. Or the owner and his dog would drive them here, where, huddled together, their own warmth would see them through. It was easier to find and care for them when they weren't scattered about the hillsides, nearly invisible humps in the snow.
With a last spurt of effort he clambered up and over the rough stone wall and slipped in among them. Snow-covered himself, he could crouch here and be safe for a little while, until he got his wind back and the snow slacked off. If anyone came, the sheep would know it before he did.
The shapes closest to him sneezed in alarm as they caught his scent. But they were accustomed to men, and when he made no move to drive them out into the wind, they accepted his presence. Sidling back towards him seeking the shelter of the wall on their own account, they surrounded him and eventually included him as one of their own. Unthreatening and in need, in this storm.
Their warmth as they pressed around him in the lee of the wall saved his life.
The house creaked with the cold wind. The rooms were chill and damp. Rutledge wandered into the little parlor reserved for guests, and considered lighting the fire laid ready on the hearth.
But the kitchen was warmer, Elizabeth Fraser seemed comfortable enough in his company, and the men sent to report came by habit to the kitchen door, their heavy boots and rough clothes unsuitable for the parlor.
He stepped into the cold street, leaving the front door ajar, and looked out at the lake. It lay perhaps a quarter of a mile away. Ice and snow rimmed the edges, and the water seemed dark and secretive in the uncertain light. From the Elcott farm it would be impossible for the boy to reach Urskwater . . . but it was a place where a small body could be carried, weighted with whatever the killer had to hand. How long would it take for a child to float back to the surface?
Where was Josh Robinson?
Was he a red herring, already long dead, his body hidden while the killer slipped back into the ordinary life of Urskdale? Or had his murderer disappeared over the fells and into safe havens where no one would think to look?
What could the boy tell the police, if he were found alive? An eyewitness . . .
Or had he come on the scene long after his family had been shot, and simply lost his way in the snow trying to find help?
It was easy to make assumptions . . . but there would be no answers until Josh Robinson was found.
Terrible questions remained. Would there be other killings? What had set a man on the road to such destruction? What had been done to him, real or imagined, that lighted the dormant fuse of such anger? And would he turn on another neighbor next, when some small slight or uncertainty began to haunt him again? Or was he simply a man with a secret to be protected at any cost? Had Gerald Elcott stumbled onto something too vile to be overlooked? The storm might have given even a reluctant killer the perfect excuse to be absent—the perfect timing for murder.
“I'll just go and have a look at the sheep, before it's any worse out there. . . .”
But that would mean someone reasonably close by, within reach of the Elcott farm. It might even be someone who had no need to explain his absences. Or—someone who lived alone and was accountable to no one?
Rutledge remembered what Elizabeth Fraser had told him about the people of Urskdale only a few hours before.
“They don't have much to give, except perhaps trust, and when that's betrayed, they do know how to hate—”
Whose trust had Gerald Elcott betrayed? What had he done that would drive a man to kill Grace Elcott and her children as well?
Until he saw that farmhouse kitchen for himself, his experience and intuition had nothing to work with, except the reactions of others. And secondhand knowledge was never to be trusted.