A cold treachery - Charles Todd [91]
With good light and steady nerves, it would be possible to clamber over the fall. Just.
And sheep were not stupid, as someone had pointed out to him earlier. No bellwether or dog would risk seeing the flock trapped here. And it would take blasting and long weeks of digging to make even a single track through the debris.
Rutledge looked at it, and then began to fight his way up the shambles of rock and loose scree.
“Here—!” Drew Taylor began, and then fell silent.
Rutledge struggled upward, slipped and banged a knee, found his footing again, and moved on. He was young and agile. But the snow was heavy, making handholds hard to pick out. And then without warning, he began to fall as a single rock moved under his boot and dislodged its neighbors as well. With nothing but his fingers to break his descent, he bumped down the hidden obstacles and landed hard on his back.
For an instant he lay there, winded. Drew came hurrying across to him, but Rutledge waved him away. There was a scrape on his cheek, his shins had been bruised in five or six places, and an elbow ached. But nothing was broken, and gathering his feet under him again, he stood.
“That was foolish,” his guide scolded him. “Break a leg, and who's to drag you out of here, with darkness coming on?”
Rutledge clapped his hands to dust the snow off his gloves and then brushed down his coat and his trousers. His hat had gone rolling, and he picked it up. The palm of his right hand was stinging and he took off his glove to look at it. There were bloody punctures in a half-moon crescent.
“What the hell—?” he began, reaching for his handkerchief to wipe away the blood.
It was an odd wound for a rock to make. And it looked like nothing he could identify.
Turning back to where he had fallen, he considered the ascent he'd tried to make. By instinct, he'd taken the line of least resistance. Closest to the wall—and the lowest point. The most logical place.
After a moment he began to dig in the snow where he'd landed.
Drew squatted on his haunches to watch.
It took several minutes to find what his hand had come down on hard enough to break the skin in five places.
He held it up for Drew to see.
A heel from a boot. With the nails still embedded in the leather. He turned it over and matched it to the wounds on his palm.
“Someone has climbed over this slide. Or tried. The question is, when?”
“Last summer, I'd say. We had a number of Cambridge lads here. Not much money and not overmuch sense. We brought one of them down with a broken ankle. From The Knob. In my book, he was lucky he didn't break his neck!”
By the time Rutledge had reached the hotel again, the moon had risen, casting a cold silver light over the fells, etching them against the sky. It was very late.
Every bone in his body ached. All he wanted was his bed, and a night's sleep. His hand stung where the nails had gone in, two of them deeper than the others, as his weight had come down there first. It had been difficult to crank the car when they reached the Elcott farm. But Drew Taylor had been eager for them to be on their way, as if he expected the ghosts of the dead to come out of the kitchen door in their bloody shrouds.
Paul Elcott's carriage was gone, and the house was dark. Moonlight touching the upper windows gave them an eerie brightness, almost as if someone had lit the lamps in the bedchambers.
Up on the fell, something was moving. A line of sheep slowly made their way to a place flat enough for them to settle for the night.
And then Drew Taylor said into the silent darkness, “He must have stood about here, where we are, that night. The killer. He could have seen that the lamps were still lit in the kitchen, and known where to find the family. Or