A cold treachery - Charles Todd [89]
“And how am I to do that? With this leg? I'd hardly make it to yon sheep pen, and I'd be exhausted and in pain. You'd be no better off than you are now, and I'd be worse.”
“It's possible someone came into Urskdale by that track—”
“It hasn't been used in years! How was he to know it was there, in the first place? And how did he manage to find it, in a storm like that one?”
Hamish said, “The woman is right. It isna' possible.”
Rutledge answered him. “Anything is possible.” But he wasn't aware until the words were out of his mouth that he'd spoken them aloud.
“You're no' thinking clearly—”
But Maggie had taken the comment in stride. “That's right. Men can fly now, can't they? But it's not likely I ever will. And it's not likely this late in the day that you'd manage to see any footprints even if you found the old drift road. The snow's melted all week. The rain took a good bit of it off the heights. It's a wild-goose chase.”
“Is there anyone else who could take me where I want to go?”
“Gerald Elcott might have known where to look. Drew Taylor might—”
“Taylor?” Rutledge asked quickly. “Is that his last name?”
“That's right. You know him then?”
“He took me up the fell that rises behind the hotel. For a better look at Urskdale.”
“You might ask him, then. But I'm no use to you. And my soup's on the boil and will be all over the floor if I don't go in and see to it.” She turned and went back into her house, closing the door firmly behind her.
Rutledge swore.
“Taylor's no' uncommon a name.”
It was true. He turned the motorcar gingerly, then paused to look at the prints of Wellingtons in the snow around the sheep pen beyond the shed.
Surely on virgin snow, tracks might still be visible—
He drove down the farm lane faster than was safe, in a hurry to get back to Urskdale.
Drew Taylor lived in one of the houses that straggled out of the village just beyond the church. It was stone, low to the ground, and seemed to belong to a generation long gone.
Rutledge had got Taylor's direction from Elizabeth Fraser, asking her if Taylor had had any sons in the war.
She shook her head. “He never married. He's not the sort—if you wanted the perfect lighthouse keeper, it would be Drew. He prefers his own company.”
Knocking at the door now, Rutledge looked at the garden that lay to one side of the house. It was well kept, the autumn's debris cut and taken away, the roses set in the one sunny corner heavily mulched far up their stems. Behind the house he could see barns, sheds, and, higher up the long shoulder of the hill, grazing sheep.
After a time Drew came to the door, opening it to stare at Rutledge.
“I've come for information,” the policeman said.
Taylor waited.
“I've just spoken with Maggie Ingerson. She tells me you might know how to find the old drift road that led over the mountains to the coast.”
“It was closed by a rock fall in my father's father's time,” he said.
“To sheep, perhaps. What about one man? Could he find the way in and make it over the slide?”
“What's this in aid of?”
“It's important to be certain no one came into—or went out of the valley—that way. Where no one could see him.”
Drew grunted. “Late in the day to be looking for signs of that. Snow'd covered any prints long before we got up there to the rock fall. Just as it had the boy's. Besides, a stranger would have to know where the beginning or the end of the track was, wouldn't he? To find his way? He wouldn't be likely to stumble across the old road and just like that, know what it was or where it led. Not this time of year.”
“But it could be done. If you were set on reaching the valley by the back door? And someone had told you how.”
“It's possible,” Drew grudgingly answered him, unwittingly using Maggie Ingerson's words. “But not likely.”
“Then show me, if you will, what we're talking about.”
The man shrugged. “Well, then. I'll just get my coat.” He shut the door in Rutledge's face and was gone for some five minutes. When he came back, he was wearing heavier shoes, a scarf, and his thick coat.