A cold treachery - Charles Todd [78]
“It's not usual to see people on the fells at night?”
“Not one who hides his light.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “I wouldn't want to make trouble for a neighbor.”
“No, I understand that.”
“All the same . . . it was like someone walking over my grave! I thought it was something you might want to hear.”
“Yes, that's very helpful, Mr. Henderson. I appreciate your willingness to come forward.”
“I don't make out why it should have bothered me. But it did.”
“Can you guide me up there now, to see if there are any tracks?”
“I've already walked up. That's why I decided to come and speak to you. Mind, I wasn't able to go up until well into the afternoon. The sun had been at any footprints. All I could see was that someone had passed there before me.”
“A man? Or a woman?”
He shook his head. “There was no way to tell. The sheep move about. The underlying rock encourages the snow to melt. Prints change shape. But someone had been there.”
Henderson seemed to be uncomfortable with his decision to tell what he'd seen. After a moment, he nodded to Rutledge, clapped his hat back on his head, and was gone out the door.
As it closed after him, Hamish said, “Who moved about the fells at night?”
And Rutledge knew the name that Hamish was expecting.
But he didn't answer.
It was too late to go on to the farmhouse.
Either the revolver was still there—or it had already been taken away.
Josh Robinson must have heard the story of his stepfather's uncle. But who had inherited the famous revolver? Had the boy looked for it when his mother was occupied with the twins, or his stepfather was out in the barn or up on the fell pastures? And had the timing of the killings been set when he found that revolver, for fear that his sister's prying or his mother's quick eye might prevent him from using it?
It was a chilling thought . . .
Hamish was saying, “You didna' fancy the valleys, coming back to them in the dark. What if the lad felt the same, away from all that was familiar in London? You're no' the only one who doesna' care to be shut in by the mountains.”
What was there about this valley that had disturbed the boy? Even if he'd been unhappy at home, even if he'd had trouble making friends in a closed community he hadn't grown up in, even if he had wanted to go and live with his natural father, it didn't explain murder.
Was it Gerald's fault? What had he done to the boy? Punished him too harshly?
What might have turned the tide in a child's mind and made murder something he could contemplate?
Rutledge shook himself.
He couldn't put himself into Josh's shoes. Their experiences had been too different.
But thinking back to something the schoolmaster had said about Grace, that she refused to consider letting her son go to his father, he wondered just how long she herself would have been happy here. Had she seen her son's suffering and ignored it for fear it would feed her own?
Had the happy family façade been on the verge of collapse, and no one had realized it?
“There hasna' been another killing,” Hamish was pointing out. “Nor is there likely to be. If it was the boy.”
Then who had been walking across the heights late at night with a lantern?
Janet Ashton came in, intending to warm her hands at the banked fires in the stove. Startled to see Rutledge sitting there with the lamps unlit, she stopped and drew in her breath as if she would have avoided him if she had not come so far into the kitchen.
“I've walked until I'm cold to the bone. It didn't help,” she said after a moment. “All I've done is make my ribs ache.”
“If you'd like a cup of tea—”
“No. That is—thank you, but no.” She went to the window and stood looking up at the fell, where the westering sun was painting faint colors across the snow. “I hate this place!” she said fiercely, almost to herself. “I hate what it did to my sister—and what it does to me.”
“What did it do to your sister?”
“It was too hard a life for Grace. She was city bred, with shops and neighbors across the back fence. We'd always lived where there was some