A cold treachery - Charles Todd [79]
“If you'd married Gerald, it would have been the same.”
Caught off guard, she answered tartly, “If I'd married Gerald, he'd have stayed in the South!”
“He owns land here. He'd have wanted to come back and run his sheep; you couldn't have kept him away forever.”
“But then I wasn't in love with him, was I?” she countered.
“I don't know.”
She turned to stare at him, then took a deep breath. But whatever she was on the point of saying, she stopped herself.
“Why do you live in Carlisle, if you hate the North?” he went on.
“I told you. I was worried about Grace. I came up here to keep an eye on her. It's the only thing that could possibly have brought me here!”
“I expect,” Rutledge said, “that if it came to a choice, the local people would prefer to see you charged with the murders of your sister and her family. You'd be taken away and hanged rather than Paul Elcott, and life could go on here as it had before. A very tidy ending.”
“Is that why you haven't told Inspector Greeley whatever it is you suspect?”
“I don't know what I suspect,” he told her honestly.
“That's probably true. You prefer to sit here in the comfort of this kitchen, with the soft, sweet voice of Elizabeth Fraser in your ear!”
Angry, he stood quickly and said, “You have no reason—”
“It's my sister who is dead. My niece and nephew as well. And what have you done since you came here? Nothing!” She was suddenly angry, too. “It wasn't poor Josh who killed them. You know that as well as I do! But you won't take the killer into custody. If you do, you'll have to leave Urskdale; your work will be done. And so—for now—Paul Elcott goes free. What are you afraid of? Your own judgment? What's wrong with you? The war? Were you wounded? Is that what makes you doubt yourself?”
When he didn't answer, she said, “My sister Grace was very much like Elizabeth Fraser. Don't you care about her? Or a little girl who had all her life ahead of her? Hazel was only seven!”
He had himself under control again. He said, “You're the only one with a revolver—so far. I can't prove that Josh Robinson had access to one. If he did, it makes a lie of your story that you came here in that storm to bring one to your sister. And the same is true of Paul Elcott. If he's the murderer, where's the weapon?”
“Somewhere out there in the snow. You'll never find it—he didn't expect you to find it. And if you wait for the weapon, you'll wait until spring. Summer.” She shook her head. “Josh is dead. All of them are dead. I close my eyes at night and I hear them crying out to me. I want someone to pay for their pain and my grief. I want someone to remember that they were avenged.”
“Justice isn't vengeance,” Rutledge replied.
She looked him in the eye. “As far as I'm concerned, it's the same.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Miss Fraser sat at the table cradling her injured hand as she gave Mrs. Cummins instructions on preparing the meal. It would be a little late, she wryly told Rutledge as he brought in the last of the coal scuttles.
“No matter—”
Harry Cummins put his head in the kitchen doorway. “Mr. Rutledge. I'd like to speak to you.”
Rutledge set the scuttle by the parlor hearth and turned to shut the door as Cummins stood by the cold hearth. The man was uneasy, his eyes moving around the room as if he'd never seen it before.
“I just heard you'd asked London for information about a list of people living in Urskdale . . .”
News passed quickly. Damn Ward!
“Yes, that's true.” Rutledge dusted his hands and added, “It's not an unusual request. Routine, in fact. But the constable was out of line if he told you the names.”
“But people may have secrets that aren't—in any way connected to murder.”
“I have to be the judge of that,” Rutledge replied.
“What do you do with the information collected for you? Do you make it common knowledge—do you, for instance, tell Inspector Greeley? Or anyone else?”
Rutledge's attention sharpened. “What's