Charles Todd - Legacy of the Dead

Time could have turned this into a rowdy pub on the outskirts of town, but the inn had managed, somehow, to retain a certain dignity. Because two women had had the care of it?

“I canna’ think why they’d persecute a lass with such a dowry as the inn,” Hamish was saying. “They’d be more likely to want their sons to wed her.”

And that, too, was a question worth considering. It all kept coming back to that: Why had the town united so easily against this woman?

On impulse, Rutledge shut off the engine and got out, crossing the road and walking down into the inn yard, where the stables and outbuildings stood.

They were in a fair state of repair. With little work done during the war and no money after it to tackle major improvements, upkeep spoke well for the management.

He was poking about in the stable, looking for the cabinet where Inspector Oliver had discovered the first set of bones, when a loud voice said, “Here! What do you think you’re doing!”

He turned to find a tall, heavy-shouldered man of middle age standing in the doorway, arms akimbo, staring at him with harsh dislike. Shadowed by the doorway, his face was dark and ugly but had a strength to it as well.

Rutledge, well aware that he was trespassing, replied peaceably, “I’d heard that the inn might be for sale.”

“There’s no decision been made to sell or not sell,” the man said.

“I see.” Rutledge turned, having found what he was looking for, the part of the wall pulled down to bring a skeleton to light. The cupboard, deep enough to start with, had been made shallower to conceal the grave behind it. A careful bit of work-a hundred years ago trouble had been taken to make the spot seem ordinary, unsuspicious. It must have been quite a shock for Inspector Oliver to discover that his “corpse” was nearly as old as the inn.

Rutledge began to walk toward the man blocking the exit. It made him uneasy to have his way closed-even in the relative spaciousness of the stable, he could feel the claustrophobia it invoked. The air seemed thick, suffocating “Tell me about the owner-” He broke off. After being buried alive in the impenetrable mud of a shell crater, weighed down by Hamish’s body, Rutledge had come to hate being shut in-confined in any fashion. Traveling on trains, sleeping in a small room, seeing himself cut off from escape through a door or down a stair-the need for space was so urgent that it ignited a rising panic. Even here he could feel the sudden dampness of sweat on his face, the difficulty breathing, the awareness of hideous danger “You’ll be wanting to speak to the police, then,” the man told him bluntly but didn’t elaborate. His stance was intentionally threatening now, belligerent, as if he sensed Rutledge’s sudden uneasiness. Rutledge felt his own muscles tensing.

Rutledge replied, “A woman, I understand. What has she done to find herself of interest to the police?”

“None of your affair, is it?” At last the man moved out into the sunlight, and Rutledge followed, his breathing still uneven.

Damn this, he swore, fighting the claustrophobia. Keep your mind on what you’re doing, can’t you?

But Hamish, too, was responding to the man’s aggressive stance, asking if he had believed the innuendoes and the letters-or was incensed by them. Rutledge thought, It was difficult to tell. He was a man who showed little in his face; he would not be easy to interrogate.

“Does she have any family? Heirs?”

“None.” Uncompromising. Cold. Then, grudgingly, “None that I know of.”

No mention of the boy. But he would inherit nothing… would he?

“Then I’ll be on my way.” Walking back toward the inn, Rutledge could sense the man’s stare boring into his back between his shoulder blades.

If this was any example of how the townspeople felt about the woman who owned this property, it was evident that she had somehow made abiding enemies.

Which didn’t fit into the picture of her that McKinstry had so glowingly painted.

Who was the woman in the eye of a controversy that might well end with a hanging?

Rutledge realized suddenly that he didn’t even know her full name. Not that it mattered, he thought, but it was an indication that whatever crime she had committed-from lying to murder-she had somehow lost her identity because of it. As if, by refusing to call her by name, Duncarrick could finish what they had begun back in June-shunning her until she was without reality and finally disappeared.

What had this woman done to stir up such dark passions?

It was odd, he thought, crossing the quiet street to his car. First the venomous letters and then the one to the minister-Elliot? The finding of one body that didn’t match the crime, and another that did. Persistence, patience-and what else? Luck? Or persecution?

It smacked of the latter. Hamish, in the back of his mind, agreed.

Rutledge stopped before turning the crank and looked back at The Reivers. The accused owned this inn. Did someone covet it? She had a small child to provide for, never mind whether it was rightfully hers or not. Did someone covet the child? Or want it taken away to punish the accused, a twisted revenge for a real or imagined grudge? And these were the more obvious reasons for wanting the woman in prison and out of the way. What others might there be? Was there something in the inn that no one knew about, which mattered to another person? Or was it something in the past of the accused that put another person in jeopardy? Hanging was a certain way of silencing her.

He found himself thinking of the child again. Torn away from its mother, from the only home it had known, put to live with strangers. There was a cruelty in that.

Then why hadn’t she lied to protect the boy? “I don’t have my marriage lines-my husband took them, to show the Army…”

Why hadn’t she left the town as soon as the shunning had begun? But he thought he had the answer to that-the shunning had reduced custom at the inn to the point that she might not have had the money to go away. Had that been the intent of it-?

The woman’s voice behind him startled him. “Are you looking for someone?”

Rutledge turned and removed his hat. Hamish, responding to his surprise, was suddenly alert, watchful. She was tall and plump, dressed in black but young, perhaps twenty-four or -five. A little girl of six or seven held her hand.

“I was admiring the inn. I’d heard it might be for sale.”

The woman shook her head. “Early days to know that!” She turned to the door of the house in front of which he’d left his car. A neighbor, then…

“I understand the owner is to stand trial on some charges.”

Her face hardened. “She is.”

He found himself asking, “Do you know the name of her barrister? I might speak with him.”

“Armstrong’s his name, but he doesn’t live in Duncarrick. Jedburgh, I think I was told.”

Rutledge smiled down at the little girl. She smiled shyly back. He wondered if she’d played with the child living in the inn but couldn’t ask in front of the mother. And as if the thought had sprung from his mind to hers, the girl said in a soft, sweet voice, “I used to play with him. The little boy at The Reivers. But he’s gone away. I miss him.”

“Hush! You were told never to speak of that again!” the woman commanded, and the child turned her face into her mother’s skirts, flushing with shame, as if she had transgressed horribly.

The woman opened the house door and went inside, shutting it firmly behind her. Shutting out Rutledge and his questions. Unwilling to gossip-to speculate-or to defend.

Rutledge drove back to Trevor’s house rather than take a room at The Ballantyne, unwilling to move himself into Duncarrick until he’d spoken with Oliver. It was a courtesy, but often small courtesies lubricated the wheels of change. The long drive gave him time to think. That evening over dinner, he told David Trevor how he had spent his day.