A cold treachery - Charles Todd [90]
Rutledge had expected to be directed back to Maggie Ingerson's farm, but Drew Taylor sent him instead to the Elcotts.
They arrived to find Paul Elcott's carriage there, but Drew told Rutledge to drive on for some two hundred yards beyond the house. A broad track led to a pen where the sheep were brought in for shearing, and stopped just beyond.
They got out there.
Drew led the way past the pen, and began his steady climb up a track that was apparently clear to him but invisible to Rutledge. Other boots had packed the snow to an icy crust, indicating that a party of searchers had started from here. But after an hour or more, Taylor struck out in a different direction.
At one point when they had stopped on the high shoulder, Rutledge asked, “Did you have relatives who served in the war?”
Drew Taylor looked at him. “I'm the last of my name here. Why?”
“Gerald Elcott knew a private soldier by the name of Taylor. They served together, for a time. Or so I've just been told.”
“Gerald asked me the same question when he came back to the dale.” He turned and began to climb again. “Common enough name.”
In another hour they had reached the long ridge and made their way along it. Another rank of mountains, lower but just as rough, forked off to the south and east, towards the coast.
“On a clear day you can see the sea from here,” Drew Taylor told Rutledge. “The drift road you want cuts in over there. See how the ridge dips and flattens? You can run sheep up and over it. And horsemen could follow, if they started up from the Ingerson farm and cut over. Still, that was chancey. Mostly it was the sheep, the cur-dogs, and drovers on foot.”
“I have in mind a man, determined and alone.”
“And I've told you before, it's hit or miss. In a storm and at night—” He shook his head. “I'd not attempt it, myself.”
“They bring charabancs up to Wastwater, don't they? Filled with sightseers?”
“But that's an easier route. You'd never get one into Urskdale, save by way of Buttermere. And there's nothing at Urskdale to make it worthwhile.”
“What's that hut there, the one where the roof has fallen in?”
“A shieling, a shepherd's hut. My father's father told me that William Wordsworth walked there once, and called it a tolerable view. But whether it's true or not, I can't say.”
“And the rock fall?”
“We can reach it from here.” He described the route to take.
Rutledge followed his pointing finger. Another hour or more, at the least. And more to the point, without landmarks, how would anyone find his way from there to one of the nearby farms? The Elcotts at High Fell . . . Apple Tree . . . South Farm. The Ingerson holding. By guess and by God, if at all.
He could feel the stiffness in his knees from the climb. In snow it would have been far more difficult, and the risk of getting lost would be high.
But what if the interloper had come during the daylight hours, and stopped at the hut where Wordsworth had admired the view? Got his bearings there and then waited for dark? Who was to see him but a passing raven? The storm, catching him up, would have persuaded him that he was safe from detection. And afterward, after the murders, he had only to wait on the other side of the rock fall until the worst of the snow had abated . . .
Hamish said, “A man would have to be intent on revenge, to attempt it.”
The sun was moving faster than they were walking. But Rutledge told Taylor, “I want to see the fall. Did any of the search parties look on the far side of that?”
“To what end? It's not likely the lad could get across it!” He moved on, breaking through the crust of snow with the surefootedness of one of his sheep. After a time he pointed to where the ravens had been at the torn body of a seagull blown inland in one of the storms.
“The fate of the lad,” Hamish said. “If he got this far . . .”
Trying to stave off discouragement, Rutledge kept on. Taylor seemed tireless, his legs moving with precision over the stones and folds and loose scree that Rutledge couldn't see.
After a time they came to the rock fall that had turned this road into a footnote