Charles Todd - Legacy of the Dead

“Would it be possible to see a photograph of your daughter, Lady Maude?”

“She’ll no’ allow it,” Hamish told him. “But yon solicitor might have one.”

She glared at Rutledge. “To what end?”

“Merely to give me some feeling for the person you’ve described. I have found that faces tell me more than facts sometimes.”

She hesitated. Rutledge was certain he’d given her the wrong answer, and had lost. Then she opened a drawer in the desk. From it she drew a silver filigree frame and passed it across to him without looking at it. He rose to take it from her hand, and sat down again before turning it over.

The face staring back at him was smiling, one hand on the horse at her side, the other holding a trophy. Beneath the riding hat it was difficult to see her features clearly, but she was an attractive young woman with her mother’s bearing. There was something familiar about the face all the same, and he frowned as he studied it. All at once he made the connection.

She reminded him quite strongly of one of the royal princesses As if his thought reached her at the same time, Lady Maude extended her hand imperiously, and he had no choice but to return the photograph to her.

Hamish, following his thought, was scandalized.

His sister Frances would know, if anybody did. But looking at the woman in front of him, and remembering the photograph she’d taken from him, Rutledge found himself wondering if Eleanor Victoria Maude Gray was- possibly-the child of a liaison between Lady Maude and the late King Edward VII. The king had had an eye for beautiful women. It wouldn’t have been surprising if she’d come to his notice.

Small wonder, with that heritage, that Lady Maude refused to believe that her daughter had come to die on a desolate Scottish mountainside, or that she had borne a child out of wedlock.

Eleanor was destined for greater things than a career in medicine-if she was the daughter of a King, and heir to this house and the fortune that apparently maintained it, she could take her pick of wealthy and titled men.

But if she was as contrary as her mother wanted him to believe, might she not have rebelled against this golden future and found instead some perverse pleasure in making her mother’s nightmares rather than her dreams come true…?

Lady Maude sat at the broad desk long after the man from London had gone, staring blindly at the closed door.

How had he tricked her into speaking of Eleanor? She had told a policeman what she hadn’t revealed to anyone else-that Eleanor was headstrong, contrary, that her daughter’s heritage had meant so little to her that she had walked away from it and never looked back. She had chosen a common profession instead, one that dealt with poverty and squalor and hideous diseases. It was unspeakably cruel and headstrong.

She would call London straightaway and have that man broken in rank -

Instead Lady Maude went on sitting where she was, reviling him, refusing to acknowledge pain or guilt. Eleanor was not dead. The police were incompetent and stupid. She would not allow them to trouble her again.

Something the Inspector had said came back to her. “Another mother will have to bear that grief…”

Then find her and be satisfied. And let there be an end to this!

Sunlight cast long, narrow shadows across the carpet, and still she sat there. She did not need the photograph in the closed drawer to see her daughter’s face, feel the strong presence of her spirit. A mother would know -if anything untoward had happened They were trying to frighten her into helping them, these policemen, rather than doing their duty as it should be done!

Finally she stood up, took a deep breath, and walked firmly to the door. By the time she had reached the small room where the telephone had been put in, she had made her decision.

Rutledge turned out of the drive back onto the main road.

Hamish, reacting to the lessening of tension, spoke after a long silence. “It wasna’ a verra useful interview. But sufficient. A formidable woman, that. I wouldna’ care to grow up in her shadow.”

Was that how Eleanor Gray had felt about her mother?

“My own grandfather was her match,” Hamish was saying, “he could have led the clan into battle, anither time and place. But he had anither side as well, he could recite in a voice that kept the room silent. Verse, and the Old Testament. When it came to the Prophets or Robert Burns, there was none to hold a candle to him. I ken many a night when I lay awake in the loft, listening. Does this one have anither face?”

Thinking it over, Rutledge came to the conclusion that Lady Maude did. If she had been mistress to Queen Victoria’s son, her husband had been willingly, knowingly, cuckolded. Unlike Henry VIII, Edward had chosen his married lovers with great care, to prevent gossip or scandal. And his friends had known which woman to invite to which social engagement. Or had been quietly informed of royal wishes. Still, it must not have been easy for Edward’s wife, Alexandra, or the current favorite herself to live with such an open secret. Or for the favorite to return to her marriage when the Prince’s fancy moved elsewhere.

The problem was, a child seldom recognized a parent’s strength; it saw only stern discipline that couldn’t be easily manipulated by childish whims or caprice. Rebellion was natural-and sometimes dangerous.

Wherever Eleanor Gray might have gone, if she was determined to punish her mother for whatever it was she felt she’d lost or lacked in that grand and cold house, it became a police matter only if she died.

Rutledge found himself hoping that she had not, though Hamish was of two minds about it.

Retracing his route to the town where he had spent the previous night and left his luggage, Rutledge considered his choices. If he made the journey directly back to London today, it would be late when he arrived, far too late to report to Bowles. And this was a Friday. It might be best to find a telephone and make his report orally so that it could be passed along. Inspector Oliver would also be waiting to learn what had transpired.

There was a telephone in the hotel and Rutledge put in his call to London.

Bowles was not in his office, and the sergeant answering the line said, “Rutledge, is it? A moment, sir, I think there’s a message that I’m to give you. Ah! Here it is. You’re not to return to London, sir.”

“Not to return?” Rutledge asked blankly. Hadn’t he finished his business here?

“No, sir. The message reads ‘Tell Rutledge to stay where he is. He’s to call me at nine o’clock on Monday morning.’ That’s all, sir. The Chief Superintendent didn’t explain.”

Even for Bowles it was an odd message. But Hamish was quick to remind Rutledge that the man was vindictive and often intentionally bloody-minded. Rutledge asked the sergeant to repeat the message to be sure he’d been given the whole of it, and then said, “Meanwhile, will you put some men to finding out if an Eleanor Gray is enrolled in any of the teaching hospitals? It’s likely she’s chosen one in London, but be as thorough as possible, will you? I’m told she had a strong interest in becoming a doctor, but if she’s studying anywhere, it’s important that we find her.”

The sergeant laboriously wrote down the particulars and promised to get someone on it right away. Rutledge had a feeling he’d just spoiled the weekend for several unfortunate constables who were on the sergeant’s blacklist for some minor infraction or another. But they’d be more likely to pursue their inquiries with diligence, if only to see their names removed from it.

Rutledge thanked him and hung up the receiver.

He sat there in the tiny, smotheringly stuffy room that had been turned into a telephone closet.