A cold treachery - Charles Todd [68]
Before he could walk up the flagged approach to the kitchen door, it opened, and a woman stepped out to stare at him.
She was middle-aged, her hair pulled back in a knot behind her head. It had been fair once but now was streaked with gray, though her eyes were a startling blue. She leaned on a cane as if walking was difficult, and there were deep lines of pain in her face. Behind her a black dog stood guard, growling, warning him to mind his manners.
“I'm Inspector Rutledge—from London,” he began. “I'm looking into the deaths of the Elcotts.”
“Maggie Ingerson,” she answered with a brief nod.
“I've come to speak to Mr. Ingerson, if I may.”
“He's been dead for ten years. My father. You'll have to make do with me, if there's anything you want to say.”
“You live here alone?” Rutledge asked, glancing up and judging the size of her farm. In the hazy light he could just see one of the sheep pens that lay high on the shoulder of the fell rising some distance behind her house, a snake of stones already standing out above the banked snow. “It must be hard work to keep up this place on your own!”
“The man who helped me until 1914 got blown up at Mons. There hasn't been anyone else who could do what needs to be done. I've seen to it myself.” It was said without rancor, but something in her eyes told him that she resented the war and mourned the man dead in France.
“I've come about the search for young Robinson, Gerald Elcott's stepson.”
“I guessed as much. Have they found him yet?”
“Not yet. No.”
She had a stillness about her that spoke of self-sufficiency without self-pity. A plainness, as if her life had not left much time for frills. She was wearing Wellingtons, a man's thick corduroy trousers, and a man's heavy coat. The red plaid shirt under it, visible at the collar, seemed her only concession to femininity, as if there was no time to waste on something there was no one about to appreciate.
“I'd like to ask if you heard or saw anything the night of the storm. If your dog barked for no reason—if you found any tracks the morning after the storm passed—anything that might help us locate the boy. You're not that far from the Elcott farm.”
“On paper, that may be. You have to take into account the elevation as well. Until the search party arrived, I didn't know I should be listening for anything out of the ordinary. And the wind was that fierce, you couldn't hear yourself think. The dog and I stayed by the fire and left the sheep to fend for themselves.” She indicated her cane. “There wasn't much else I could do.”
Rutledge could feel a rising thread of wind that seemed to come from the heights and gather strength as it rolled down towards them. The woman seemed not to notice it, as if inured to the cold. She was, as Hamish was saying in the back of his mind, of sturdier stock.
“I understand that not far from here there's a track that leads over the mountains and down to the coast road.”
“Not so much a track as an old drover road. I daresay I could find it on a good day. I don't know many who could. It's not been used in a hundred years.”
“Did anyone pass that way on the night of the storm?”
She laughed shortly. “It's not like London, Inspector. An army could have marched that way, and I wouldn't have seen them. Or heard them.”
“Your dog might have.”
“Sybil isn't the adventurous sort. I let her out, she does what she has to do, and she comes back in. She's a working dog. If whoever walked that track had two legs and didn't smell of sheep, she'd ignore him. Whatever he'd done.”
Rutledge shaded his eyes to study the spectacular scenery that surrounded the farm. There was a beck tumbling down a rocky defile on the far side of the farm, disappearing in the direction of the lake. Far above, a ragged shelf leaned down crookedly towards the jumble of fallen debris that had once been a part of it. And higher still, the rounded shoulder of the fell turned and ran towards a