Charles Todd - Legacy of the Dead

She cleared her throat but her voice was still husky. “And the child? What’s to become of it?”

“We thought in the beginning that the boy belonged to Eleanor Gray. But new information has come to light. I’ve traced the mother now-”

She turned very white and he went swiftly to her side, kneeling to take her hand. “Let me call your maid-”

“No!” She raised herself a little in her chair, and stared at him. “What do you mean, you’ve traced the mother?” The urgency in her voice struck him like a blow.

He said slowly, “We have a name. We have located the doctor who delivered the child. We can prove beyond question that the mother survived the birth, and was released from the clinic, where she’d been treated for rather serious complications.”

“Gentle God-so much!”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Have you told the police? Have you told Miss MacDonald? ”

“I’ve told Miss MacDonald. She denies it. But I don’t need her confirmation. I have my own.” He was no longer interested in conveying messages to anyone. As Hamish rumbled in his head, he kept his eyes on Mrs. Holden. She had come to the end of her strength. But her spirit was undaunted.

Rutledge realized with sudden anger that this woman was not ill. She had been tortured as severely as any suffering her husband had endured at the hands of the Turks. It was there, in her voice, in her face, in the stiff, angular agony of her body. She had been made to choose Her hands were shaking, and she buried them in the folds of her sleeves, where he couldn’t reach them. “I don’t believe you!”

“It’s true,” he said softly. “Do you want to hear the name of the child’s mother? Shall I tell you the name of the clinic? Shall I give you the initials on his christening gown? MEMC. Are they yours?”

She began to cry and fished for a handkerchief in her pocket, then pressed it to her eyes. “I’m childless. I feel dreadfully for this dead mother. It’s nothing more than any woman would feel-”

He waited. She began, slowly, to find the steel she needed. “You’ve upset me, I’m afraid. I must apologize. It’s the weakness I’ve suffered since the spring. Perhaps you’d better leave after all. I hope you won’t speak of this to my husband. He will only be angry with me for letting you stay when I was feeling ill.”

He admired her courage. He admired her strength. But there were other lives hinging on the truth and what he had to do must be done now.

“You are Mrs. Cook, aren’t you? And the boy is yours. Are you Maude Cook-or Mary Cook-or both? Mrs. Kerr will recognize you, and so will Dr. Wilson.”

“No! No. No.”

“The child is yours,” he repeated. “But your husband believes it’s Eleanor Gray’s.”

She lifted her eyes to stare at him, startled eyes that were wide with shock. As he watched, she bit her lip, a thin line of blood marking the place.

Rutledge said, “And you’ve allowed him to think that’s true.”

Her hands reached for him, taking his arms just below his shoulders, holding him with a fierce grip that was a measure of her need. “No- you don’t understand. He knows it’s mine. Dear God, he knows. But he can’t-he hasn’t found out these things you’ve discovered. He isn’t the father, you see! He will never have children by me, I’m ruined, I can’t have more. And he hates me for that. He hates Fiona. And most of all, he hates my child. If I ever tell him the truth, even to save Fiona, he will see that the boy is given to us to raise, and then he will take the greatest pleasure in destroying him! My husband has powerful friends-the fiscal, the Chief Constable-Inspector Oliver- barristers in Jedburgh and Edinburgh. He can arrange it. He will even claim that he was Eleanor Gray’s lover if he has to! Alex will stand there in public and lie to them all, and in the end, they’ll let him have his way. The only way that Fiona and I can truly protect Ian is for her to die and the child to be left to the mercy of strangers.”

It took him a quarter of an hour to calm her down again. She was shaking so badly, Rutledge feared for her, but when he offered to summon Dr. Murchison, she refused to let him. Instead she asked for a sherry, and he found the decanter by the window, poured her a glass, and held it while she sipped it.

A little color came back into her face. The shaking stopped. But she was beginning to think clearly again too. Rutledge asked once more about the doctor.

“No, I mustn’t call him just now. He’ll see I’ve been crying and demand to know why I was so upset. He’ll tell Alex. And Alex will question Margaret-our maid. You must leave here and I shall say to my husband that you came to ask after my health because you’d found me ill by the pele tower and were concerned.”

“Will he believe you?”

“I don’t know.” She took a deep breath. “Yes. I’ll make him believe me. I haven’t any choice. He has held this thing over my head for months now. Since he came home in the spring. And I take the greatest pleasure in not breaking. But sometimes-sometimes the strain is so great, I can hardly breathe. My chest hurts with it.”

“How could he have found out? About the boy?”

“When I had the influenza, the doctor must have told him I’d borne a child. Or when I had the chill, I might have said something in my sleep. I was feverish, I sometimes woke crying out for-for someone. Alex is very clever; he began to see that I had-that there was something I hadn’t told him. How he connected all this with Fiona, I don’t know. We’d been so very careful! But once his suspicions were aroused, I wouldn’t put it past him to go to the inn of an evening and search the family quarters. Who was there to see when Fiona tended bar! There was a christening gown. It had been my grandmother’s. Or perhaps he saw my face when I looked at Ian. So I stopped making excuses to pass The Reivers.”

“That still isn’t strong enough-”

“Yes. You don’t know him. He’s very clever, I tell you! It started when he began asking me where I was in 1916 when he called from London to say he was sent home to recover from wounds. I wasn’t here, you see-and I wasn’t here when he called to tell me he was being sent on to France. Over and over he’d ask where I was, what I was doing, who I was with-until my very silence answered him! It was after that that he must have learned somehow that I’d borne a child. He would bring me small gifts-a blue baby’s shawl. A small rattle for a teething child. A rocking horse he said he’d found in Edinburgh and knew I’d like. The servants thought it was a loving promise of children, when I was better. But I can’t have any more children! The nurse who bathed methe doctor-someone must have told him there was a child!”

Rutledge shook his head. “He must have discovered something. Did you meet Fiona? Was there any communication between you?”

“We met at night sometimes, at the pele tower. But after Alex came home, we stopped. Drummond-I don’t know, he’s very loyal to me and my family. He wouldn’t have told anyone what he knew. Drummond brought me home, you see, from Lanark, when I was well enough to travel. But his sister was jealous of Fiona. Sometimes jealous people see more clearly. And Alex is a master at finding out secrets. He was trained to spy.”

“The persecution of Fiona was a test?”

“The anonymous letters? At first, yes. To make me tell him what he wanted to know. But I wouldn’t, and it escalated. He spread lies to Mr. Elliot and to Oliver-to the fiscal and other influential people, for all I know-until they came to believe that they’d thought of it themselves! When McKinstry didn’t search the stables, it was Alex who persuaded Inspector Oliver to go back. He reminded him of those old murders, before the war, that hadn’t been solved. That pricked Oliver’s pride. Alex knew the Jacobite bones must be hidden somewhere-he’d come across an old story about them in some of my father’s papers. That was to be the end of it, but by that time, Inspector Oliver was rabid to find a body. And throughout the whole ordeal, Alex would come home and tell me what he had been doing that day to make Fiona’s life unbearable. And watch me, until I could crawl off somewhere and hide my anguish!”