A cold treachery - Charles Todd [48]
“I know you of all people wouldn't give up, Tom Hester, if there was any chance at all! But I can't help but think the lad's out there and terrified, so terrified he won't come out and be found for fear what's hunting him is the killer. He'll stay in that hole like a wounded animal, and it's up to us to do the finding.”
Another searcher demanded, sourly, “Where's this hiding place, then?” He swept his arm across the landscape. “We've looked and looked, and there's nothing out there! The killer found him before we did, and it will be spring before the body comes to light! If it ever does.”
Rutledge, listening, could sense the feeling of frustration and the exhaustion that depressed these men, and he said, without raising his voice, “I believe you've done all you could. I disagree with Inspector Greeley. I think the time has come to call off the search.” Greeley turned in dismay.
The farmer, listening behind the men in his yard, spoke up. “How would you know? This isn't your country.”
“I've walked here in summer—” Rutledge began.
Greeley was staring, angry now, as if feeling betrayed.
The farmer grunted. “Summer, is it? That's as different from winter as the moon is from the sun!”
“I'm as aware of that as you are. But if you, the people who know this landscape, have run out of answers, then I must respect your decision—”
There was a furious denial that they had run out of anything. The first speaker, Tom Hester, said with some heat, “I tell you, we've looked—!”
Greeley answered, “So you have—”
The farmer said, “The weather's broken. The light is better. We'll give it one more day—”
There was agreement among those nearest the motorcar. In the end, they set their mugs on the steps of the farmhouse and began to move off again, shoulders bent and heads down, but willing after a fashion.
Greeley watched them go. “Damn it, Rutledge, for a time I thought you were stabbing me in the back.”
“They had to want to go,” Rutledge answered. “They couldn't be driven to go.”
It was the Cumberland and Westmorland temperament. Greeley had to acknowledge that.
They turned the motorcar in the muddy yard and went on to the next place where searchers had gathered, and the next. Only the last group refused to start again. As one man said, “You haven't been up there. Nothing could survive that storm, much less a lad Robinson's age. Not up there. And we've searched every house, every barn, every sheep pen, and every rock. I tell you, he's not there, nor never was, and I'm telling the truth as I see it!”
In the event, the man was wrong.
He had indeed searched—but he had reckoned without the canny knowledge of a woman who trusted no one and nothing but her own wits.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was late in the morning when the frightened child came bursting out of the room where he'd slept and into the kitchen where the fire was already warm enough to take away the night's chill.
A woman sat at the table, her face red from windburn, her eyes tired and sunk into their sockets.
Skidding to a halt, the child stared at her as though half expecting her to turn into an ogre before his eyes.
She stared back. The dog, wandering in to flop down by the stove, heaved a sigh as if duty done.
“Hungry, are you? There's porridge on the stove. I'm lame, you'll have to fetch it for yourself. And there's ewe's milk in the pitcher. It's all I've got.”
The boy stood there, mute.
“My name's Maggie. It's what my father called me. I never liked it. What's your name?”
He shook his head.
Maggie shrugged. “As you like. But the food's there, if you're of a mind to eat.”
His eyes were darting around the room, still wide with fright as he backed towards the outer door.
“There's nobody else lives here, if that's what you're wondering. Unless you count seven