A cold treachery - Charles Todd [58]
His knees were stiff and he could feel the sweat on his body under the heavy layers of clothes. The thought of walking all that way back tired him.
“I can understand the problems of the searchers,” he acknowledged. “What I'd hoped to see was something—anywhere—that the boy might have known about, somewhere he could have hidden himself.”
But the shadows on the landscape were deceptive. A boulder and its shadow could loom large as a house, a thin dark line could mark the top of a stone wall, gullies and breaks in the ground could lie smooth, filled to their rims. Gills ran black in the snow, threads of water with frosted fronds of grass or moss overhanging the icy edges. Nothing was what it seemed. The boy could lie in one of those deep crevices, and with the snow covering him, he would be invisible. Dead or alive, no one would see him.
Hamish, silent for some time, said, “It's as if the land has swallowed him up and willna' give him up again.”
“All right, go on,” Rutledge said, but Drew shook his head.
“As it is, it'll be well after dark before we reach the hotel again.”
Reluctantly Rutledge heeded the warning. But there was the motorcar, and with that he could reach a handful of those outlying farms—he could try tomorrow himself.
With a last look at the broad expanse of land all around him, the ranging hills and fells, he said, “What if the boy found shelter that first night, and survived? What then?”
“We'd have spotted his tracks. He wouldn't have moved until the snow stopped.”
“You're telling me that you believe Josh Robinson is dead.”
Drew took a deep breath, and then let it out softly. “Aye.”
The single word was as cold as the icy patches under Rutledge's boots and the chill wind that swept down from the heights.
“Keep to my tracks going down,” the older man cautioned. “As the light fades, you'll miss your step.”
And Rutledge did as he was told, well aware of the treachery of the blown snow waiting for an unwary boot. He stopped once and thrust a hand into one of those seemingly flat stretches crusted with ice after the melting during the day, and his fingers disappeared up to the elbow into a fold in the rock.
A man, he thought, could dig deep and bury a handgun under a few rocks, and we'd never find it.
And then he hastily caught up with Drew, watching the long shadows sweep down for an early dusk, and the lamps of Urskdale twinkling one after another as they were lit, like an untidy, bright necklace along the road.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dinner was late, but all the guests came to the meal, a somber gathering straining to make polite conversation and often falling silent before their own thoughts. Even Mrs. Cummins was there, toying with her food, listening to discussions no one else heard. From time to time she would interject a remark that had no bearing on anything being said.
Once or twice she asked if anyone had seen her husband, adding, “Harry is always the first to table.”
And Elizabeth Fraser would answer, “He'll be home soon, you know. He has been out with the search parties.”
But they were already making their way home, each man without hope to buoy him further. Even the final effort had failed. Word had arrived by way of Sergeant Ward in Rutledge's absence. The note had simply read, We've come to the end.
It also disturbed Mrs. Cummins that her guests were taking their meal in the kitchen, and more than once she offered to light the fire in the long dining room, where they could be comfortable. “It's such a lovely room—”
Rutledge had stepped in there earlier, to see for himself. On the western side of the building where no sun reached it until late afternoon, it had been uninvitingly cold despite the graceful stone fireplace and the ancient but beautifully polished oak chairs around the oval oak table with its lion claw feet. On the sideboard, a pair of Staffordshire spaniels had stared forlornly back at him, and the china pheasant on the lid of the huge soup tureen