Charles Todd - Legacy of the Dead

But it was the wrong question. Her face fell. “Mr. Elliot recognized it and made me take it off. He said it was unbecoming to ape one’s betters.”

Hamish swore. Rutledge felt a strong urge to throttle Elliot. It was, he thought, an intentional cruelty. “Did you tell Miss MacCallum what he’d said?”

“Oh, no!” she said, horrified. “I couldn’t! I was too embarrassed. I said only that he was very kind.”

As she had just told him that Constable McKinstry was very kind.

Driving out of Duncarrick, Rutledge was trying to decide how much weight to give to what Dorothea MacIntyre had told him about the brooch. On the whole, he thought, she was honest and without guile. Confronted, as when he’d asked her about McKinstry and Ealasaid MacCallum had asked about her interview with Elliot, she told lies out of a deep-seated fear of provoking anger. The girl wanted so desperately to please. It was her first-and only-need.

Hamish, taking up another matter, said, “I never gave Fiona a ring. I couldna’ tie her to me, going off to war. The bracelet was a gift to remember me by, but didna’ bind her.”

Rutledge had not married Jean in 1914 for the same reason, using the war as an excuse to put off their October wedding. And in the end it had been the right decision. He felt cold now, thinking about living with a woman who hated him-or hated what he had in her eyes become: a broken stranger.

He wondered if Eleanor Gray might have regretted not marrying Robbie Burns when he was home on leave…

There was a woman sitting along the road just by the pele tower. Something about the droop of her shoulders told him she wasn’t well.

He searched for a name and came up with it. Mrs. Holden. Her husband was the sheep farmer… Rutledge braked and came to a stop just beside her. “Are you in trouble?” he asked. “Can I take you somewhere?”

She smiled ruefully.“The doctor tells me to walk if I intend to regain my strength. But I don’t have the strength to walk…”

“Then let me take you home-or to the doctor, if you’d prefer that.”

He got out of the car and helped her up from the low stone she’d found to sit on. Under his hands her shoulders felt frail.

Lifting her into the car, he settled her in the passenger seat. She was white from even that simple exertion.

“I’m so sorry to be such a nuisance!” she said breathlessly. “It’s silly of me to overdo my strength and put strangers to such trouble.”

Shutting her door, he examined her face. And didn’t like what he saw there. “Let me take you into Duncarrick. I think you ought to see your doctor.”

After a moment, her eyes closed, she nodded. “Yes. I need to lie down. He’ll be glad to let me lie down for a while.”

Rutledge backed the car around and said, “Would you like me to find your husband and bring him to you?”

“No, I thank you. He’s in Jedburgh today. Dr. Murchison or one of my friends will see that I get home. Talk to me if you will. And just let me listen. It takes my mind off the weakness.”

How does a policeman make pleasant conversation with a near-fainting woman? He said, “I’ve admired the pele tower. The way it was constructed. I understand it’s on your property. I’d be interested in hearing its story. What role it played in the days of the Border raids.”

She smiled a little. “My father is the person you should have spoken to.”

“Did he write a history of Duncarrick?” It was often the retired gentleman or rector who collected the legends and tales passed down by word of mouth for generations and turned them into a chronicle of sorts.

“He never got around to it, I’m afraid.”

A few sentences more and he’d exhausted the subject of the tower. Rutledge cast about for a new topic. “The name of the inn we’re just passing. The Reivers. I wonder who chose that. Did the MacCallums have riders in their ancestry?” Riders-reivers-raiders, he thought. Euphemisms for the same bloody trade of Border warfare.

Drummond was just coming out of the inn with Ian MacLeod, returning from feeding the cat. The child looked up, eyes shining, and pointed with excitement to the car. Rutledge waved but didn’t stop.

Drummond was glaring after him with murder in his face.

The woman, staring ahead with unseeing eyes, bit her lip. She was in no shape to answer his trivial questions.

“Hold on,” Rutledge said gently, touching her hands where they lay trembling in her lap. “We’re nearly there.”

But he had to carry her into Dr. Murchison’s office, her head against his shoulder and her body so light, it was like a feather in his arms.

The nurse came to meet him, having seen them arrive. To Mrs. Holden, trying to smile as she apologized for all the trouble she’d caused, she was all warmth and sympathy.

“My dear!” she said, half scolding, half crooning, as though to a child. “Have we overdone our strength again? Come lie down for a bit and then the doctor will take you home again.”

She led Rutledge down a passage, not into the sitting room he could just glimpse through a door that stood slightly ajar. Opening another door, she gestured to an elderly sofa that stood under the back windows. While the nurse fetched a pillow, Rutledge settled Mrs. Holden gently among its cushions, then took the light blanket that had been folded across the high back and spread it over her feet and limbs. As the nurse lifted her head and slipped the pillow beneath it, Mrs. Holden smiled. A wavering smile, and rueful as well.

“I’m so sorry-” she began again.

Rutledge took one of her hands and held it in both of his. “Nonsense. Feel better.”

He turned and walked out of the room. The nurse, after a word to Mrs. Holden, followed. She thanked the Inspector for being a Good Samaritan and opened the outer door for him.

“Not at all,” Rutledge said. “She seems very weak. Is it serious?”

“The doctor feels it isn’t. She caught a chill this spring when she undertook the charity bazaar and was left with a cough. She’d had influenza last year, a very serious case, and was slow recovering from that. Dr. Murchison is trying to rebuild her strength. And sometimes she feels well enough to come into town. The influenza took the heart right out of people. A shame, really.”

“Yes. A shame.” He remembered Hugh Fraser’s words. It was like a medieval plague…

Turning the motorcar around again, Rutledge drove away from the town once more and headed in the direction of Glencoe.

He made another brief stop in Brae to speak to Mrs. Davison. She asked him for news of Fiona, but as he had nothing cheerful to tell her, he said only, “I assure you, we’re doing everything we can.”

“Then if it isn’t good news, what does bring you back again?”

They were in the parlor, and the boys, happy to see him, were clinging to the arms of his chair while the little girl climbed confidingly into his lap. Mrs. Davison reached out for her, but he said, “No, let her stay. I don’t mind.”

The child curled herself against his chest and began to play with the fob on his watch chain.

“I need to ask you about some jewelry that Fiona MacDonald owned. A brooch with a large cairngorm in the center-”

She nodded before he could finish his description. “Yes, I remember it. A lovely piece. She said it was a wedding gift from her father to her mother. She didn’t wear it often. She was afraid, playing with the children, that it might be pulled off or lost. She also had a bracelet from her fiance, which she allowed my daughter to try on when she’d been especially good.” She smiled indulgently. “You can see that young as she is, she has a taste for gold.”

He looked down at the fair curls catching on his vest buttons. “It’s natural,” he agreed. “Had her fiance also given Fiona a ring?”