A cold treachery - Charles Todd [74]
Mrs. Cummins came down to help prepare the meal, and Rutledge left the women to their work. He had sat for an hour with Elizabeth Fraser, silence between them, her thoughts turned inward. He had offered what he could, his presence, without intruding.
Hamish, uneasy and withdrawn, was a third party in the room.
Just before Mrs. Cummins had come in again, Miss Fraser had said, as if closing the door on whatever was on her own mind, “Did you learn anything this morning? You seemed so hopeful as you were leaving. I could feel it.”
“Not much, I'm afraid.”
“Perhaps you aren't looking in the right place?”
“That's what Maggie Ingerson said to me.”
“Miss Ashton is convinced that she's right about Paul Elcott.”
“It would be convenient for her.”
“Convenient? An odd choice of words, surely, Inspector! I don't see what she might gain from blaming him!”
But he said nothing. After a moment, Miss Fraser commented tentatively, “You must find out who did this horrible thing—as soon as you can! Urskdale won't be the same even so, but we have a better chance of putting events behind us if there's an end to it.”
He couldn't tell her that he already had too many suspects—and far from enough proof against any one of them. He couldn't tell her that he was stumbling in the dark, looking for answers, no better than Inspector Greeley before him. And what if there was someone else out there, a stranger whom no one had seen in the storm—or worse, someone in the dale who had killed wantonly and could possibly kill again. . . .
He dared not concentrate on any one possibility to the exclusion of others. It would be too dangerous. This wasn't London, where constables across the city could keep an eye on each suspect and report daily. Here there were no eyes. And there was a good deal of empty landscape where people could move at will.
He admitted to himself that he didn't want the killer to be the child. It was too monstrous a thing to have done.
Hamish reminded him, “Aye, but ye ken, the duty of a policeman is no' to feel a partiality. It will blind you to what must be done.”
Rutledge had done his best to be impartial in Preston. Odd to think that if the trial had been finished only a day early, he wouldn't have been sent north. He'd have been halfway back to London before the bodies had been discovered.
But if the trial had ended a day early, the fate of young Marlton might have been very different. The long and serious debate by the jurors as they considered the evidence was all that had spared him from the hangman.
As for duty, Rutledge understood that all too well. He had sent young, green men into the heat of battle, because it was their turn to fight. He had had to close his eyes to the fact that they would surely die. In the end, chance had made the final choice. Or so he had tried to tell himself as he reported the long lists of the dead and missing.
The Scots under him had sometimes sat with a bowl of water on a black cloth, searching for a sign of what lay ahead. He never knew if it had worked.
What would he ask of the water, if he sat over a bowl right now? Where was the child? Or—who was the murderer?
Better by far for the snow to have swallowed up Josh Robinson than for him to be brought in for trial.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Greeley was at his office, his face haggard with fatigue. Even handing the investigation over to Rutledge had done nothing to alleviate his own involvement, and he seemed to carry around with him the haunting question of responsibility: Had he failed in his duty by not bringing in the killer himself?
As Rutledge walked in, he got up from behind his desk and said, “Dr. Jarvis tells me he's all right. Robinson.”
“I have a feeling it won't happen again.”
Greeley sighed. “I tried to persuade him not to look at the bodies—for this very reason. The loss alone was enough to drive any man mad.”
He fished