Charles Todd - Legacy of the Dead

Rutledge asked, more as a shot in the dark than with the expectation of an answer, “In London, did you by any chance know Eleanor Gray?”

She shrugged. “I knew who she was. But we moved in different circles. I had no interest in becoming a suffragette. I didn’t find it an attractive prospect to be dragged off to prison and force-fed by beefy matrons with a taste for sadism.”

“Is she still in London? Or has she gone elsewhere?”

“The Honorable Miss Gray was as unlikely to confide in me as Fiona MacDonald is. Why, is she a friend of yours? Is that why you’re looking for her?” She studied him with interest, deciding that he was a very attractive man despite the thinness and the haunted eyes. “Men did seem to interest her more than women did. It was odd, she could collect them by the droves if she was in the mood to talk. Women bored her. Eleanor Gray was one of those people others gossiped about. What she did, what she wore, where she went. I doubt if a quarter of it was true, but it was fun to pass along. But you haven’t answered my question.”

Rutledge smiled. “No, I’ve never met her. Did you ever hear gossip that she was preparing to become a doctor?”

“No, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had. She was a very handsome woman, she had more money than she knew what to do with, and her bloodlines went back to William the Conqueror-or Alfred the Great, for all I know. And yet-there was something that burned in her. A passion. I was never told what it was, but she seemed to waste a good deal of energy on makeshift enthusiasms. Like suffragism. And then the war itself. She was always manning one of the canteens for soldiers, always visiting the hospitals, writing letters for the wounded, always pushing for better care, better conditions. I’ve heard she was a superb horsewoman, too, and was rabid about the treatment horses received at the Front.”

“You know a great deal about a woman you’ve never met.”

She shrugged again. “I was envious, if you want the absolute truth. And so I listened when people talked about her. If I’d had her money and her breeding, I’d have married well and never set foot in this shop. Now, I have a hat that must be finished by this afternoon. Is there anything else you want to know?”

“I understand that Dorothea MacIntyre lives above your shop-”

“She does, and you’ll leave her alone, do you hear me? She goes in lively terror of half the town as it is, and it won’t help to have the police harassing her. She thinks Fiona and her aunt Ealasaid walk on water. Well, that’s as may be. In my humble opinion, Ealasaid should have been taken out and shot for putting that girl into Mr. Elliot’s vicious clutches!”

“In what sense, vicious?”

“Dorothea is a silly goose who never did any harm to anyone, and all he can think of is whether she has unconfessed sin on her soul. On the subject of sin, he’s worse than the Inquisition, that man! And she’s driven to despair thinking that nothing she does is worthy of him. That’s why I offered her a room here-I thought it would be the ultimate cruelty for her to live under Elliot’s roof. It has been an inconvenience and a hardship, but I take great satisfaction from the fact that when she’s here, she isn’t scrubbing and hauling coal and cooking and washing up and fetching the laundry back from Mrs. Turnbull’s, not to speak of the other heavy tasks he puts on her. All because he’s too miserly to hire another girl. He took her in, you see, when she had no work, and he never lets her forget the duty owed him for that kindness!” Her eyes blazed.

He was on the point of asking if Fiona MacDonald’s child could have been Dorothea MacIntyre’s, and then stopped himself. Mr. Elliot’s housekeeper was no guardian of secrets, her own or anyone else’s.

The Bedrock of police work was the statement, A record of every witness questioned, scrupulously preserved in evidence.

Rutledge walked back to the station and asked Constable Pringle if he might read statements taken down when Inspector Oliver interviewed everyone who had received one of the letters denouncing Fiona MacDonald.

Pringle handed him a thick file box and said tentatively, “They’re in proper form, sir.”

“I’m sure they are.” He smiled, took the box, and moved one of the chairs nearer the door, giving himself a semblance of private space. Sitting down, he untied the red string. Pringle went back to his own work, glancing up from time to time. As if, Hamish growled, Rutledge were not to be trusted.

Ignoring that, Rutledge lifted out the papers inside and began going through them.

Mrs. Turnbull, laundress. “I’m a respectable woman. I don’t have anything to do with the likes of her. ” Question: Have you ever done her washing? “No, I have not, and I thank God for it!” Question: Why, then, would someone send you such a letter? “Because they know I’m a good Christian, that’s why. And I’d lose custom if it got around that I was taking in washing from whores!”

Hamish, incensed, swore.

Mrs. Oliphant, neighbor. “It was a warning to mind where my husband was of an evening. But I didn’t need it, did I? Hadn’t I seen her slipping out of the inn late at night, while her aunt was still alive?” Question: Did you speak of this to Miss MacCallum? “I did not. She was ill, dependent on Fiona. It seemed a cruelty.” Question: Do you know where Miss MacDonald went when she left the inn so late? “I’m a decent woman, I don’t go prowling about in the dark.” Question: How often did she do this? “I saw her with my own eyes four, or maybe even five times.” Question: What direction did she take? “It was always the same, away from the town.” Question: How can you be so sure it was a lover Miss MacDonald went to meet? “Because I went out to that pele tower the very morning I found the letter on my doorstep. To see for myself if it was true. I found a bed of straw where a part of the roof had tumbled down and left a dry corner behind a heap of stone. And it smelled of lavender-that’s her scent!” Question: But you wouldn’t have thought to go to the tower if the letter hadn’t suggested it. “Oh, I’d wondered, right enough! Where else might a whore have some privacy?”

Hamish said bitterly, “Can ye no’ see that it’s what they want to believe?”

Or someone had been a step ahead of Mrs. Oliphant, and set the scene she was expecting to find…

Mrs. Braddock, neighbor. “I’ve seen how my husband looks at her! He’s often offering to do work at the inn. But he isn’t eager to keep up his own house, is he? I’ve been after him to paint the kitchen for six months.” Question: So you believed the letter you found? “When it said my daughter was playing with a bastard and learning nasty things at the inn? Yes, I did. I had sometimes watched Ian while Miss MacDonald was out, and she’d returned the favor. He’d been no trouble at my house, but how was I to know what went on in hers?”

The silence from Hamish was thundering.

Mr. Harris, shoemaker. “She’d come in for her shoes, and was polite as you please. I never guessed, until the letter came! I’d known Ealasaid MacCallum for fifty years-she was a good woman, a good Christian. She wouldn’t have allowed such things to go on. It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is!” Question: Had you visited the inn? Before the letter came? “Aye, that I had. It was a respectable place for a pint of an evening. There was always good company, and a man could sit and talk with his friends. The Ballantyne, now, it’s all well and good, but crowded. You can hardly hear a word said to you!” Question: And while you were sitting in The Reivers, there was no indication-as far as you knew-that Miss MacDonald might be using the upstairs rooms for indecent purposes? “I should have guessed when Fiona took over tending bar herself. None of the MacCallums ever had! I said to Mrs. Harris, it’s not right, mark my words, no good will come of it. Ealasaid would never have agreed to it. Fiona blamed it on the war, and necessity, help being so hard to find, but it still wasn’t proper.” Question: Did Miss MacDonald ever offer you an opportunity to visit upstairs? “I’m a married man!”