A Cold Treachery by Charles Todd Read Free Book Online

to Keswick, where he's been courting a lass.”
    “Thank you, but I must be on my way,” Rutledge replied with sincere regret. “They're expecting me in Urskdale.” He set his cup on the table and went out to the motorcar to bring in the empty Thermos.
    As Follet refilled it, Rutledge reconfirmed his directions before stepping out into the cold, windy night. As the farmhouse door swung to, Bieder, the dog, followed the interloper all the way to the motorcar, head lowered and a deep growl in his throat to emphasize a personal dislike for strangers. “I'd not like to come across you unexpectedly,” Rutledge commented as he put up the crank and went around to the driver's side. “Murderer or no.”
    Hamish said,
It's a pity the slaughtered family didna' have a dog like yon.
    “I doubt that it would have mattered, if he was armed. Or the killer might have been known to the animal.” Rutledge turned the motorcar with some difficulty and went back down the farm lane in his own tracks. Miss Ashton was safe. He hadn't far to go to his destination. He'd had a chance to warm himself and the whisky had given him second wind. He should have felt revived, eager to go on. But as the darkness encompassed him, isolating him in the bright beams of his headlamps, he could feel the mountains again, out there like Russian wolves beyond the campfire's light. It was a trick of the mind, nothing more, but he was thrown back into the war, when in the darkness an experienced man could sense movement in the German trenches, even when there was no sound, nothing to betray the congregation of enemy forces before a surprise attack.
     
    A s it happened Rutledge reached his destination ahead of the dawn. But not before he'd taken half an hour to backtrack to where he'd found the wrecked carriage. The policeman in him, the training that even war hadn't blunted—in fact had honed—made him thorough. Earlier, the need to safeguard Miss Ashton had been his only priority. Now he could examine the scene.
    The wind had died and with it the squalls of snow. With his torch in his hand, he surveyed the overturned vehicle, thinking that by this time—if he hadn't come along the same road—Janet Ashton would be dead.
    “She was verra lucky,” Hamish agreed. “And who will res-cue us?”
    Ignoring the jibe, Rutledge got out to walk warily to the road's edge. His policeman's brain was registering details even as a part of his mind was picturing himself pinned under the overturned motorcar. It would have been, he thought, an easier way to die than most, to fall asleep in the cold night air. Was this the fate of the missing child? It would be ironic indeed if the weather had claimed the murderer as well! A fitting justice, in a way.
    What appeared to be a valise was just a white hump beyond the place where he had trampled the snow to get Janet Ashton out of the carriage. It had been tossed some feet away by the impact of the carriage's tumbling fall. And the off wheel, he noted, was cracked. But the horse, tangled in its traces, was pointing in one direction, the vehicle in another. It was nearly impossible to judge where Miss Ashton had been heading when she had skidded wildly off the road. And he hadn't thought to ask her. She had seemed so vulnerable—detached from the tragedy that had taken place in Urskdale but a victim of the same storm. The miracle wasn't that someone had found her in time, but that she had survived at all. It had been a nasty spill. Satisfied, he flicked off the torch.
    Hamish said as Rutledge returned to the idling motorcar, “If she had broken her back, you couldna' ha' dragged her up that slope.”
    “No.” Moving her could have killed her or crippled her terribly.
    Releasing the brake, Rutledge turned the motorcar with great care and continued on his way.
    But Hamish, responding to the weariness that still dogged Rutledge, was in a mood to bring up unpleasant subjects.
    He ranged from the case just ended in Preston to the