A cold treachery - Charles Todd [96]
But there was no revolver inside.
Elcott slowly raised his eyes to Rutledge's face. “I swear—I never touched it!” he said in a strained voice.
“Then where is it now?”
“God knows—your guess is as good as mine. With children in the house, Gerry may have taken it out and hidden it in the barn or somewhere, thinking they wouldn't find it. He never told me—he wouldn't have. I—I was foolish once. I did something— I don't know why it isn't here!”
Motive. Opportunity. Means.
Paul Elcott could have taken the revolver at any time. While the twins were being christened. While his brother was out on the slopes with the sheep. While Grace was in the village doing her marketing. On Sunday morning when the family went to worship in the church . . .
Hamish was saying in the back of his mind, “Gerald Elcott couldna' reach it in time. If it was there.”
But Josh Robinson might have known where it was. Children were often more aware of what was happening around them than adults recognized. Gerald might even have shown him the revolver, hoping to give his stepson a sense of pride in his new family. Little dreaming that one day the child would take it out and use it to murder his family.
“Are you going to take me into custody?” Paul Elcott demanded, his hands automatically shutting the little desk. “I didn't do it. I swear before God!”
There was a long moment of silence in the room. Elcott's face, locked in fear and uncertainty, waited. Then he bent to set the box again in the bottom of the chest, set the rest of the contents on top, and closed the lid.
Rutledge said, “I'm not taking you into custody now. There isn't enough evidence. Yet. But I warn you against leaving Urskdale.”
Paul Elcott straightened up and said with desolation in his voice, “I don't have anywhere else to go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Rutledge gave Greeley the order to release Belfors and then went back to the hotel.
Where was the missing revolver? Had Elcott taken it? Had the boy? Was it lying somewhere in the snow even now? Or had Gerald hidden it so well that no one had found it yet?
“You canna' take Elcott into custody until you know,” Hamish warned him.
There was no way of judging who had pulled the trigger . . .
He walked into the hotel kitchen, his face grim.
Elizabeth Fraser looked up from the potatoes she was peeling, and set the knife aside as she saw his expression.
“What's happened?”
“God knows—Nothing. As soon as I find one bit of evidence, it's ambiguous—I don't know how to weigh it. You shouldn't be doing that. Not with your hand!”
“Yours doesn't look much better,” she told him, pointing to the holes in his palm. “How on earth did you hurt yourself?”
He looked down at his hand. “I—was clambering over rocks, and I must have cut it.”
“You didn't do that sort of damage on a stone. Here, let me see.”
“No, it's all right.” He took off his coat. “Why did you come here for Harry Cummins? What's between the two of you?”
She laughed. “Nothing but gratitude. I needed sanctuary and his wife needed a—companion. We served each other's purposes. He loves her, you know. But she won't let him. She holds him at arm's length, and it drives him mad sometimes. He was fond of Grace. She was young and pretty and lively. What he had once loved in his wife. The contrast was painful. He longed for his wife to be herself again.”
“Are you telling me Cummins fell in love with Grace Elcott?”
“Of course not. She was a reminder of what he'd lost. That's all. It was like holding up a mirror to the past. He said to me once that he had asked too much of his wife. And he bore the guilt for that. But he wanted more than anything for her to—come back, as it were.”
“He told me that her family had turned away from her because she'd married him.”
“Yes. One of the tragedies that have driven a wedge where there shouldn't be any.”
“Why did they