Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

“Either I’m in my dotage, or you’ve answered a maiden’s prayers.”

He laughed and came to join her. “What brings you to Marling?”

“I could ask the same of you, but I’ve already guessed that in your case it’s murder. In mine it might well be. I’ve been left at the altar, in a manner of speaking.”

“By whom?” he asked, surprised.

“I was invited to dine with the Masterses, but Bella says that Raleigh is in the foulest of moods and the cook is threatening to give notice, and poor Bella’s at her wit’s end. So I left. Fortunately I remembered that the hotel here has quite good food, and I thought I might perhaps ask Elizabeth to join me.”

“And have you?” He couldn’t alter the wary note in his voice.

“She wasn’t at home, either.” Mrs. Crawford sighed. “The one thing I hate about getting old is one’s shrinking circle of friends. But here you are, quite a delightful surprise, and I’m going to enjoy my evening with a handsome young man rather than a crabby old one.”

“Has Masters taken a turn for the worse?”

“I doubt his body has, but his temper most certainly did. I could hear him roaring from the front hall. If the man hadn’t been such a brilliant barrister and the most charming of people, I’d say he was paying for past sins. Still, I have both my limbs, and I can’t imagine what it must be like not to.”

“No reason to take his temper out on his wife.”

“Bella’s not as cowardly as you might think. In fact, she may in the end prove to be stronger than Raleigh. If she doesn’t poison him first. I think tonight I’d have had a go at it.”

Rutledge felt his spirits rising. Melinda Crawford was a charming woman, possessed of wit and insight and a very clear view of human nature. At the moment, she was the perfect antidote to his depression.

The meal was excellent, and the conversation exhilarating, leaving Hamish out as if shutting the door. The Scot was still making up his mind about Mrs. Crawford.

“In another time,” Rutledge heard him muttering, “she’d ha’ been burned at the stake for witchcraft.”

Amused, Rutledge had silently answered, “Or been the mistress of Kings.”

They talked about the war, and about India, where she’d spent her childhood, and about Kent.

“Do you know what I remembered most about Kent, as a child in India?” she asked Rutledge at one point.

“That it was green?”

“No, I remembered the orchards, trees filled with white and pink blossoms, like butterflies, and I remembered the man on stilts with grape leaves on his head.”

“Good God!”

“When they do the twiddling-that is, when they’re tying the hop strings from the ground to the wires that run on the wooden framework built above the gardens-there’s a man on stilts who does the high knots. It’s quite a difficult task-the vines as they grow follow those strings, and mustn’t be led astray. And such a man will often wear a hat to keep the sun off his head. This one had found young grape leaves-they’re not unlike hop leaves, you know-and had twisted himself a Bacchus crown, to keep his head cool. We stopped at the hop farm to water the horses, and he came over to the carriage and bent down to peer in at me, making a face because I was tired and cross. I was instantly enchanted. And I wanted to see him again.” She smiled. “I was quite in love. With a man on stilts.”

“And what did Mr. Crawford, when he arrived on the scene, think of your infatuation?”

“He was a tall man. I’ve always fancied tall men. That’s your claim to my affection, by the way. And he went to the bazaar in Agra one day and found someone to fashion him a pair of stilts. I was grown up by that time, and knew better than to laugh when he went headfirst into the nasturtiums.”

Rutledge chuckled, and then sobered. “I think Elizabeth Mayhew has found someone to love.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Crawford said pensively as she poured milk into her tea. “I tried to warn you of that.”

“I wasn’t in danger of falling in love with her.”

“No, but you’d put her on a pedestal, you know. Richard’s widow. She’s quite human, like the rest of us.”

“Who is this man?” He heard the edge in his voice.

“I don’t know. I haven’t been invited to meet him. But I hear from my seamstress that he’s from Northumberland, and quite handsome.”

“I wasn’t aware that Elizabeth or Richard had friends in Northumberland.”

“My dear Ian! What does that have to say to anything?” Mrs. Crawford demanded, amused.

“I meant,” he replied testily, “that it’s likely to be someone she’s met since the war. Since Richard’s death.”

“Yes, I should expect it is. He was buying a trinket for a lady. A shawl, my seamstress told me. It was described to me in great detail, because it was so lovely. And quite a harmless gift. The very next week, I happened to see Elizabeth wearing that particular shawl. I didn’t ask how she came by it. Occasionally I do remember my manners.” Her lips curved in amusement, but her eyes were no longer smiling. “Nor did she tell me, when I admired it.”

Hamish spoke up for the first time in an hour. “She’s no’ happy with this match. But she willna’ tell you why…”

They spent the remainder of the meal talking about Mrs. Crawford’s years in India. In the span of her life, the subcontinent had changed enormously. The vast private holding in the hands of the East India Company had collapsed in the Great Indian Mutiny, which had seen such bloody horrors at Cawnpore. The British government had taken over the country after that, and in the course of time, Disraeli had made Queen Victoria Empress of India, equal in majesty to the German Kaiser Wilhelm. Britain had poured civilians and soldiers into the subcontinent since then, and now there were rumblings of a movement for independence.

“It will come,” Mrs. Crawford said. “In time. But what will happen then is not to be thought of. I’m glad I won’t be here to see it. Civil war is always the bloodiest. And this Mr. Wilson in America has pushed through the self-determination clause he was so bent on having. It will bear bitter fruit, mark me. Well-intentioned people are often blind to the results of their good deeds.”

Rutledge said, “Germany is broken. And under the heel of heavy war reparations. From what I hear, people are starving in the towns, and there’s no money to buy food or fuel.”

“Yes. If I were a German, I would get out. Try my luck in Argentina or Chile. Sell up, beg, borrow, or steal the money for my passage, and go.”

“If the best people leave, how will she rebuild? Or more to the point, how will she be rebuilt? In what form? I think I’d stay and fight.”

“Of course you would.” She nodded. “And in the end be shot for your pains. Germany isn’t ready for democracy. India is better suited for change than Germany because they’ve learned from us how a country is run. They’d inherit our infrastructure, the railroads and the communications systems, the trained bureaucracy and so on. It’s the religious issue that will tear India apart. In Germany it will be the vacuum of leadership.”

Hamish said, intrigued, “My ain granny never traveled more than thirty miles in any direction. The glen was her home. She never fancied telling her menfolk how to run the world.”

Rutledge answered, “Your grandmother never had the opportunities that came this woman’s way.”

As if she’d been a party to the exchange between Rutledge and Hamish, Mrs. Crawford smiled and added, “Politicians never heed old ladies. It’s more than time we women had the vote and showed them a thing or two.”

Rutledge laughed. “You’d make a superb prime minister.”