Charles Todd - Legacy of the Dead

“I will not hear another word! I will not believe that that child in Duncarrick is my son’s bastard! I don’t care who the mother was!”

Like so many bereaved fathers, Fiscal Burns had kept a holy image of his dead son in his heart-the dutiful, honorable young man who had died bravely for King and Country. Reared in another age, believing in other ideals, he could not contemplate the possibility that love had clouded duty in his son’s last days. It would be a betrayal of that pure image, born of the child the fiscal had watched grow up to manhood and march off to war. A Tennyson knight in khaki.

“There’s no dishonor here. He’d have married Eleanor Gray. But he died before she could tell him she was carrying their child. I cannot, in good conscience, believe otherwise.”

Rutledge stood as he finished saying it, then thanked the fiscal for tea before adding almost as an afterthought, “I don’t know what will become of that child in Duncarrick. But if he is abandoned by everyone, it will be sad. His bloodlines appear to be impeccable.”

As he walked out of Burns’s office, disregarding Hamish and the heavy silence he’d left behind him, Rutledge was well pleased with the seeds he’d sown. Turning his car around, he headed back to Duncarrick.

He told himself he’d spiked the guns of Alex Holden. If Lady Maude did come to accept her grandson at the end of Fiona’s trial, she’d find herself with two contenders for the boy’s father. And there was some safety in numbers.

In Duncarrick, Rutledge considered his next move.

If Alex Holden was as clever as it appeared he was, it would require more than an inspector of police arriving at his door to shake his nerve.

On the other hand… single-minded people often were victims of their own intense preoccupations. It was where they were most vulnerable.

It was late the next afternoon before his opportunity came.

Rutledge had lain in wait in the filthy, half-decayed stone pele tower, where he could watch the drive that led to the Holden farm.

When a motorcar came barreling down the drive and turned toward the town, Rutledge could see quite clearly that Holden was alone behind the wheel.

He gingerly climbed out of the tower, brushed himself off, and set out on the long walk in to the farmhouse.

Extensive and attractive gardens had been laid out around it, with trees forming a screen in front of the vast stables that ranged back to the pastures beyond. Jacobean in style, the house had a wide terrace leading to the door and handsome gables rising above the old glass in tall windows. The property had been made more fashionable a hundred years earlier, with lawns and beds and vistas, Rutledge thought, but the core was much older.

He crossed the terrace with long strides and rapped at the door. An elderly woman in a black dress came to answer his knock, and looked at him with a disparaging expression. He realized that there was still straw on his shoulders. Grinning, he said, “I’ve come to see Mr. Holden. Rutledge is the name.”

“Mr. Holden isn’t in, I’m afraid. We don’t expect him back for another two hours.”

“Ah. Then perhaps I might speak with Mrs. Holden.” The tone of his voice was pleasant but firm. This was not a request to be rejected.

“She isn’t feeling well today, sir.”

“Then I shan’t keep her long.”

The maid invited him into the cool, high-ceilinged hall, dim after the sunlight on the road. It was Scottish baronial, with banners hanging from the rafters and targes ringed with pistols and dirks and swords, like sunbursts on the stone between the high windows. The furnishings were more comfortable, a long table by the door and a grouping of chairs around the cold hearth that took up half the side wall. The maid asked him to wait there, and Rutledge walked around studying the array of weaponry. It was, he thought, real-not Victorian replicas of lost family heirlooms.

Many of the swords were claymores, the dreaded double-bladed weapon of the Highland Scots, capable of cleaving a fighting man in two. The blades were rough-edged in places, as if they’d met with bone. Battle swords, not dress swords. He moved on to look at the dirks. They were the famous skean dhu s, the black knife of the Highlander, worn in the cuff of the stocking.

He smiled, looking at them. Not the elegant ones with cairngorms in the hilt and stags carved in the sheath-these weapons were plain and deadly, with horn to fit a man’s hand in the handles and blades honed to razor sharpness.

The Scots under his command had taught him how to use them-a London policeman who could wield them now with the best of Mrs. Holden’s ancestors. It was, he thought, a commentary on war, that from farmers and sheepmen and workers in the whiskey distilleries a man dedicated to preserving law and order had learned how to kill silently. Not a skill to be proud of…

He was studying a collection of flintlocks when the maid returned and led him to a back sitting room, where Mrs. Holden was lying in a chair with her feet on a low stool. She smiled at him and offered her hand as the maid closed the door behind him. “I have to thank you again for rescuing me. Have you come to see how I’m faring?”

“Yes. You look much better.”

“I endured a very firm lecture from the doctor. I’m trying to mind his instructions. May I offer you something? Tea? A sherry?”

“Thank you, no. I’ve come to talk to you about your husband.”

Her face flushed with surprise and wariness. “I’m afraid I can’t speak for him. Would you care to come another day?”

He smiled reassuringly. “I shan’t ask anything he wouldn’t feel comfortable telling me himself. He was in the war, I think?”

“Yes. Nearly the entire four years. It was a very long war for him.” Something in her face told him it was very long for her as well.

“I’m trying to find anyone who might have served in France with Captain Burns. The fiscal’s son. Can you tell me if your husband knew him?”

She seemed relieved. It was a very simple question. “I’ve met the fiscal myself once or twice at the home of the Chief Constable. But I don’t believe I’ve ever met his son, nor have I ever heard my husband speak of the Captain as a friend. I believe, in fact, that he was killed in France.”

“Yes, that’s true. I expect my informant was wrong. I was told by a man in Durham that Captain Burns had been acquainted in London with someone from Duncarrick. Both men were recovering from their wounds and they had been out to dine on at least one occasion with friends of Eleanor Gray.”

This was a name she knew. “I’ve been told that she’s the woman Miss MacDonald is accused of killing. How sad!” But the words didn’t have the right ring to them, as if they were spoken because it was expected of her. Not because of any deep-rooted sympathy.

“How well do you know Miss MacDonald?” he asked.

“Not-I told you before, I hardly knew her. To nod to on the street. To speak to in a shop. That was all.” She gestured with her hand, as if inviting him to look at the difference between her home and The Reivers. “We moved in different circles.”

“A pity. I’ve interviewed her often, but I can’t seem to break through the wall of silence she’s erected around herself. Nor will anyone help me. She will likely hang.”

Mrs. Holden smothered a cry.

Hamish called him callous and cruel, but Rutledge had a message he wanted conveyed to Holden. And this was the only way to do it. If Fiona meant nothing to Mrs. Holden, it would not be a lasting hurt.

“Surely-” she began, then stopped.

“I wish I could tell you differently. I wish I could prevent it. There’s no hope now. She’ll go to trial before the year is out.”