A cold treachery - Charles Todd [71]
Grace Elcott must have walked often through the countryside, adding to her store. He tried to picture her, holding her daughter by the hand, her son running ahead, going out to search for something new with each season.
But she had worked hard as well, cooking, making her own bread, hanging out the wash, ironing the clothes, cleaning the house, sweeping out the kitchen . . . and never complained. Transplanted from London to a harder life, perhaps, than she'd expected.
He put the album back in its place and went on. The toy soldiers in Josh's room, the dolls in Hazel's, painted an ordinary picture of life here. He found a small coral necklace that had belonged to the little girl, wrapped in pretty paper and kept in a velvet box. A birth gift from her parents? But in Josh's room there was a pair of gold cuff links, broken and stuffed behind the head of the bed. . . .
Rutledge held them in the palm of his hand, wondering what they represented. A gift from his stepfather, secretly rejected? Or merely broken by an active boy who was afraid to tell his elders what had become of them?
In the parlor were books, Peter and Wendy and several volumes of explorations. A Bible. A book of household hints. A chess set and board. A pipe rack with a tin-lined tobacco box beside it. A small sewing basket with needles and embroidery threads in gay colors. A folded tea towel with an unfinished pattern along its border—a vase of violets with leaves trailing . . .
Domestic life. Ordinary, comfortable.
Rutledge remembered the hat with its cabbage roses. Grace Elcott had possessed a sense of style. A pretty woman, who had attracted two husbands.
Had she been afraid of Paul Elcott because he coveted not only his brother's farm but also his brother's wife?
He went back up to Hazel's bedroom to look again at the photograph of Janet Ashton. Where did she stand in this scene of death? The only revolver he'd found was hers. . . .
He was studying her petulant face when he heard Paul Elcott's voice from below.
“Inspector Rutledge? Are you still here?”
He went to the head of the stairs and called, “Yes. What is it?”
“It's Inspector Greeley. He's come looking for you. There's been trouble at the hotel.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Inspector Greeley was pacing the yard when Rutledge came around the corner of the house.
“You're a hard man to find!” Greeley said.
“What's happened?”
“It's a ruddy nightmare. Robinson tried to kill himself. It was all Elizabeth could do to stop him! She's cut, too. A straight razor—”
Rutledge swore. “All right. I'll meet you there.”
He cranked the car and got in behind the wheel. Greeley, behind him, turned his carriage and prepared to follow.
Rutledge drove fast, sending a spray of snow, meltwater, and mud behind him as his tires bit into the road.
Was it a bit of histrionics—or had Robinson let his grief get the best of him?
Hamish said, “If he cut the lass, it wasna' dramatics.”
“Damn the man!” Rutledge snarled. “It serves no purpose, not here. Not now. He should have waited until his children were buried. He owes them that much.”
But grief had many faces, and here was a man who had suffered through a prisoner-of-war camp after a bloody war. He had come home to a family that had, for whatever reasons, forsaken him. Now they were dead. And even in that, there was no peace.
Hamish grunted, as if agreeing with Rutledge's thoughts. “War changed us.”
And the simple words carried a wealth of misery.
The back door stood wide. Rutledge could hear anxious voices from the kitchen and crossed the yard in long strides.
Hamish, his voice seeming to echo against the fell, said, “She's come to no harm