Charles Todd - Legacy of the Dead

“No, it wasn’t clever. But I think it was useful. He knows something, that man-or is afraid he knows something. And it must be damning, or he would have stepped forward in the beginning!”

“He lives next door-he might have seen what he shouldn’t.”

Rutledge shook his head. “Whatever it is, he won’t be made to talk.”

He found the cat, carried her to the bedroom where he had seen the indentation on the pillow, and set her there. She curled herself around, lay down, and began to spin, her purr a heavy sound in the silence.

“Fiona?”

Rutledge said the name aloud. The cat turned and looked toward the door of the bedchamber, ears pricking. But there was no one on the stairs. She went back to kneading the pillow, her eyes half closed.

Suddenly claustrophobic, even in the large, sunlit bedroom, Rutledge turned and left.

Rutledge returned the inn’s key to McKinstry and went back to The Ballantyne. There was still a quarter of an hour before luncheon was served, and he went up to his room. Opening the door, his mind on Drummond, he stepped inside and then stopped. The hackles on the back of his neck rising in warning, he closed the door quietly behind him and stood there, just inside the empty room.

Hamish said, “It’s no’ the same-”

Someone had been here.

Not the maid. She had come and gone while he ate his breakfast. Even if she’d returned with fresh towels or to close the windows, his mind would have recorded that without thinking about it.

This was different.

And instinct told him it was not a friendly intrusion. Something below the level of conscious thought had pricked down his nerves. The war had taught him to heed instinct…

He moved around the room, carefully searching with his eyes but touching nothing. Whoever it was had been very thorough, going through his belongings with painstaking attention to where each item had been before. But he-or she-had made certain that Rutledge would know his privacy had been invaded. His shirts in the drawer of the chest. His shoes on the rack in the wardrobe. The way his ties were folded… Each had been moved. Each had been put back very nearly where it had been. But with just enough change to catch the eye of a man looking for change Because the atmosphere had changed. It was alien. Hostile.

Drummond?

Rutledge hadn’t survived four years in the trenches without learning the skills of the hunter-and developing the sixth sense that kept the hunted alive.

Nothing had been taken. He was sure of that. The intent had been to show him his own vulnerability, not to steal.

It was, in a way, a gauntlet thrown down.

And not as a challenge.

More a very coldly calculated threat.

I can touch you-but you cannot touch me.

It was the first mistake that had been made in what had been-to this point-a very skillful game.

Rutledge was joined at lunch by Inspector Oliver.

He made a circuit of the dining room, greeting first this person and then another, once stopping to listen to a man by the window and then laughing quietly as if he appreciated the humor of what had been said.

Hamish said, “There’s a man wi’ something on his mind.”

Finally arriving at Rutledge’s table, Oliver pulled out the empty chair on the other side and signaled to the middle-aged woman who was serving this noon. She came over, smiling, and said, “Would you like the menu, then, Inspector?”

“Thanks, Mary.” He nodded as she handed it to him, then turned to Rutledge and said affably, “What’s that you’ve ordered? The roast ham?”

“Yes. It’s quite good. Who are the people over there-the table by the fireplace?” He had seen the man out by the pele tower. But his interest was in the woman-he had questioned her about Fiona.

Oliver peered in their direction. “That’s Sandy Holden. Landowner. Had a horse farm, now trying to get by with sheep. He’ll make it. A good man.”

“And the woman?”

“His wife, of course. Madelyn Holden.”

“She looks as if she might be ill. Lungs, at a guess.”

“Good God, no. She nearly died from the influenza last autumn. Hasn’t got her strength back yet. The doctor says it will come with time, but Sandy frets about her. It’s been almost a year, and she’s no better. Shame, really. She was one of the finest horsewomen I’ve ever seen.” He turned to the menu. “It’s the ham, then. Or-there’s stew. They put turnips in the stew here. I’m fond of turnips.” He set the menu aside and added, “I hear you drove to Winchester. On this business or another?”

“On this business. We found someone who remembered Eleanor Gray from her schooldays and had kept in touch. Until, that is, the spring of 1916, when Eleanor was expected to spend a weekend at Atwood House. But she called Mrs. Atwood at the last minute and said that she and a friend were driving to Scotland instead.”

“Ah!” Oliver looked keenly at Rutledge. “Friend. Male or female?”

“An officer she’d met some time before. At least we think it’s the same man. He had enough leave left to make the journey. She came with him. No one has seen or heard from her since, as far as I can discover.”

“Are you certain about the timing? Eleanor Gray couldn’t have borne the child in the spring!” He shook his head. “This Mrs. Atwood has got it wrong, I think.”

“I could die- ” Rutledge could hear Mrs. Atwood’s light voice repeating the words. No, she hadn’t got it wrong. Eleanor’s mood had aroused her jealousy. And later her guilt.

But he said aloud, “She needed a place of refuge for the next four or five months. Someone may have let her have the use of a house or flat.”

“I see what you’re getting at. If she’d stayed on in London, her little secret wouldn’t have been a secret very long.” Oliver gave the matter some thought. The people by the window got up to leave, distracting him. He said, “I had wondered, you know. How a woman like that could spend dreary months in some out-of-the-way Scottish village. Made no sense. Well, I saw the house she grew up in, it was a bloody palace! A flat now, in Edinburgh or Inverness, that’s more likely! But surely it would have been easier to find someone in London to rid her of the child.”

“She was too well known in London. She was too well known in medical circles particularly.”

“There are back streets where such things can be done discreetly.”

“At a price. She might have feared blackmail.”

“Then why not in Glasgow-Edinburgh-Carlisle? She’d not have given her right name or her direction. Easy enough if she’d had a mind for it. Such things went on in the war. She wouldn’t be the first-or the last.”

Rutledge thought of the clinic and Dr. Wilson but said, “Perhaps she wanted the child. Or, at the very least, wanted it to live. And as soon as that was accomplished, she walked away from it.”

“Then you’re saying that the accused had no need to kill the mother-the child was hers for the asking!” Mary came to take Oliver’s order, and he settled for the stew.

“Yes. It fits the timing.”

“Then why hasn’t she turned up since? You’re off the mark! Eleanor Gray is dead, and we’ve found her bones.” Oliver leaned back in his chair and scanned the room. Without looking at Rutledge, he asked, “What’s this I hear from the fiscal, that you want to take the accused to Glencoe?”

He had finally got to the subject that had brought him here.

“She knows the terrain far better than any of us do. I’d like to confront her with her crime. And watch what happens.” There were other reasons. He had not let himself think of them.

“Her lawyer will tell you it’s not on.”

“Then let him come as well.”