Legacy of the Dead (15 page)

“But what would she have been hiding?” McKinstry asked wretchedly. “If she’s not guilty, what
is
there to hide?”

Rutledge turned and started toward the stairs. “This way? Right! The boy’s proper heritage is what we’re after. If anything had happened to Miss MacDonald—illness—accident—she had no family of her own to come for him and take him in. Surely she’d have thought to leave some instructions for the child’s protection? A name, or how to go about reaching a solicitor, perhaps. Eleanor Gray had a solicitor who conducted her affairs for her.” But was Mr. Leeds courageous enough to take on Lady Maude’s displeasure a second time?

McKinstry said, “We’ve looked—”

“—but haven’t found anything. Yes, I know. Look again for that reason!”

McKinstry led the way up the stairs, where several doorways opened onto a central passage. Rutledge followed him. The private wing, as he had noted, was small and old but well-kept and comfortable. It spoke well for Fiona’s sense of duty to the inn and the child in her care.

Hardly, he thought, a den of iniquity, as some had imagined it!

A white cat came out of the room at the head of the stairs, friendly and curious. She was well-fed, Rutledge saw, and not frightened. Someone was looking after her—

He went into the room and saw that it must be Fiona’s. There was a round depression on the pillow at the head of the bed and a thin carpeting of white hairs. This was where the cat slept.

Besides the bed, which boasted a coverlet trimmed in eyelet, there was a chest, a dressing table, and a desk. Two chairs stood beneath the windows, both cushioned in a rose print. He went to the desk first, but left it after a cursory examination. It would be the first place anyone looked. Oliver, for instance, would have gone through it with great care. All that appeared to be left were bills, unused stationery, a penknife, ink, pencils, envelopes, a large book of accounts for the household, and other ordinary items.

Hamish was no happier about his task than McKinstry had been, and reminded Rutledge that he had no right to pry here, police business or not.

Ignoring Hamish’s irritation, he went through the drawers of the chest, found them neat and orderly, then looked at the back of each. Nothing.

Behind a curtain, clothes had been hung on a wire, and there was a pair of shelves for hats and shoes, but nothing of interest. A sweet perfume followed him as he let the curtain drop. Then he lifted it again, remembering another time and another place. He examined the shelves closely and found nothing. But a floorboard had moved as he stepped deeper into the small space, which was no larger than a cupboard.

Squatting on his heels, he examined the board and found that it was not loose. But the baseboard behind it, he thought, might be. He took out his pocketknife and, finding a seam, tried to pry out the board.

It didn’t come. It was firmly nailed in place, and it had been imagination that had made it appear loose. Wishful thinking.

He moved through the room, searching the dressing table next, then pulled out the bed, which stood against the wall that formed part of the stairs on its other side.

The baseboard here was indeed loose. Eight inches or more yielded to his questing fingers as he worked his knife into the seam.

He stood up quickly as he heard McKinstry come down the passage from the boy’s room beyond.

“Nothing, sir. I’ve looked at every possible place she might have hidden something. Where else should I try?”

“Where did she do the inn’s accounts? Is there an office in the inn proper?”

“Yes, sir, behind the bar. It isn’t an office in the true sense—more a small cubby that has a curtain across it. She kept her account books there.”

“Then you begin with that area. I’ll just finish here and join you when I’ve satisfied myself I’ve looked everywhere.”

McKinstry nodded, and there was a glint in his eye, as if he was glad that nothing had turned up.

But it should have—Fiona had had warning enough to hide private papers from the police, but would she have risked the child’s safety by destroying them?

When the constable’s footsteps had reached the bottom of the stairs, Rutledge waited for them to fade along the lower passage, then turned back to his own find.

Squatting on his heels again to reach into the dark and dusty hole, he nearly leapt out of his skin when the cat brushed against his leg. She started away in alarm, then came again for petting. He rubbed her ears and soft throat, then gently pushed her aside.

From the hole he brought a box, tin, he thought, and no more than ten by eight by six inches in size.

There were letters in it, the deed to the inn, several old envelopes of papers that seemed to go back in time to Miss MacCallum’s father, and a collection of odds and ends that must have been considered family treasures—a man’s pocketknife made of stag’s horn, a pocket watch that had an elegantly engraved case bearing the name MacCallum, a pair of ivory crocheting hooks with a matching ivory thimble, and a little medicine flask made of silver with a fine engraving of the Tollbooth in Edinburgh. And a letter bearing Rutledge’s own handwriting. The letter he had sent from France to a grieving young woman who had just learned that the man she loved was dead.

He could hear Hamish lamenting in his ear, anguish clear in the soft Highland voice.

“It had to be written,” Rutledge told him. “It was kinder than hearing from the Army what had become of you.”

“And none of it would ha’ happened if we’d no’ been so tired and afraid. . . .”

“No. It had to be done. It was done. I had no choice.”

“Aye, it must seem that way now. In the safety of a house that was never bombarded for days at a time!”

“You chose to die,” Rutledge reminded him, but knew even as he said the words that they were a lie. None of them had chosen to die—though he had tried in the months afterward to put himself in the way of a German shell or machine gunner’s sights. They had all wanted to live and come home. . . .

He took each of the other letters out of their envelopes and scanned them quickly. The first came from Fiona, carrying the news that her grandfather had died. The next was also to Ealasaid MacCallum with word of the death of Fiona’s brothers. After that, Fiona had written to tell her aunt about her position in Brae, describing the Davison family and how different the countryside around Glasgow was from the beauties of the mountains to the north.

I will be happier here,
she wrote.
It is not as lonely, and
these people are wonderfully kind to me. The children are a delight. . . .

But the following letter was very different. It read:

I have sad news to tell you, dear aunt. I’ve lost Hamish. He
died in the Somme offensive, like so many others. I have just had
word. I still don’t believe it. It seems that if I wait long enough, he
will come through the door and take me in his arms again. I lay
awake last night, praying that it was no more than a dream, but
this morning the letter was still beside my bed. I can’t cry, I can’t
feel, I don’t know what to do. The minister here has come to offer
comfort and Mrs. Davison has been kindness itself. I ache so, I
want to die, but I have every reason to live. When Hamish was
home last, we were wed in secret. And I am now carrying his
child. It will be born in the autumn, and it will never know its father. But I will have a part of him to hold and love—a living
memory of the man I married. I hope you will rejoice for me—
and not feel that it is sad to be alone. I am not alone now, and I
never will be again.
. . .

Rutledge folded the page gently and put it back in its envelope without finishing it. He had seen all that he needed to see.

She had told her aunt that she was carrying a child—but he knew for a certainty that Hamish MacLeod had never been home that terrible year to father it. And it was not until Hamish was dead that she had admitted to it.

In ordinary circumstances, this could have meant that Hamish was not the father. That she was trying to pass off another man’s child as his. But these were not ordinary circumstances. The night Fiona had lain awake praying the news was a dream, she had also made some very important decisions.

One of them was to tell her aunt that a child was to be born in the autumn.

A CURSORY READING
of the remaining letters satisfied him that they held no secrets. Only the words of a young woman describing her pregnancy as it progressed. How had Fiona MacDonald known the feelings and the emotions and the sickness that a woman in her condition should have experienced?

Because the real mother had told her—and Fiona had carefully written it all down.

Was it from Maude Cook that Fiona had learned such things? Or—had she cleverly asked Mrs. Davison about her own confinements and what it was like to bear a child? Mrs. Davison, mother of three, would have talked to Fiona as one woman to another, prodded by questions, by interest, by the fact that she loved her own offspring and enjoyed sharing the giving of life.

But the letters offered no answers to that. Or to the question of why Fiona had carefully told her aunt lies, and led her to believe that she was with child.

And she hadn’t been.

She had been very forward-thinking. She had woven the tissue of lies well before her aunt had sent for her. In the last letter, there were the words,
I must work out my time here, as
I promised Mrs. Davison. And Ian shouldn’t travel just now, it
will be difficult for both of us. But by the end of the month, we
shall arrive in Duncarrick and I look forward to seeing you
more than you know.

Fiona MacDonald hadn’t come upon a woman lying by the roadside in the throes of childbirth, taken advantage of an opportunity to kill her and steal her baby. She had known for some time that a child would be born—she had made sure that her aunt had known too. And it meant, clearly, that the infant had been promised to her.

But by whom?

And if there had been no need to kill the mother in order to take the child, who was the woman whose bones had been found on a mountainside?

More important from the point of view of Lady Maude, what role—if any—had Eleanor Gray played? And where was Eleanor Gray now?

No one could say.

Hamish spoke the thought that Rutledge had already considered—and did not want to address now: that the child might have been a temporary gift to Fiona, to keep until the mother was ready or able to reclaim him. Until she had done what she had intended from the start to do, study to become a doctor?

And Fiona, already planning for the child, wanting the child, coveting the child forever, might have decided that she couldn’t bear to give him up.

Hamish added, pain in his voice, “It’s what they’ll say. It’s what they’ll want to believe. Unless the mother is found alive, to bear witness for her!”

15

RUTLEDGE PUT THE TIN BOX BACK WHERE HE’D FOUND
it for the time being, and was already on his way to the stairs, when a thought struck him.

His sister Frances had found in a small cedar chest belonging to their mother the carefully preserved christening robes that the two of them had worn. Wrapped in tissue, these were still white and soft, with lacy bodices and a wide band of matching lace at the hem, small caps frilled with lace and the tiniest of tucks, long ribbons for bows under the chin. Little knitted boots with blue or pink ribbons to tie them. Frances, who seldom cried, had said in a husky voice, “She never held grandchildren—mine or yours. It must have grieved her.”

As if that was the ultimate wrong to the dead . . .

And in the center of each long skirt, hanging down almost to a grown man’s knees, let alone an infant’s, had been a large embroidered oval with entwined initials in white satin thread.

His had been his great-grandfather’s christening robe, carefully handed down from generation to generation. Frances had worn their grandmother’s. A family tradition that had meant much to people proud of their heritage—

And surely, even if she had abandoned her baby at birth, Eleanor Gray would have seen to it that he was christened properly, and in a long white gown. Not, perhaps, the one that had been passed down through the Gray generations, but most certainly one that was suitable to the occasion. Unless it had been borrowed—

Rutledge turned around at the head of the stairs and walked swiftly back down the passage. While Fiona had had the front room, there were two more at the back, one empty with a neatly made bed covered with clean sheets to keep off the dust, and the other a small boy’s realm, with a toy chest, a clothes chest, a dresser, and a crib.

Rutledge went first to the clothes chest. It was nearly empty. Here were only the outgrown dresses and stockings and tiny shoes kept for memory’s sake. A small, pretty blanket for a baby that had seen much service. A blue velveteen coat with a matching cap, and a threadbare stuffed horse, one ear chewed off and one leg missing. At the bottom, carefully preserved in tissue and lavender, was a christening gown. He took it out and unfolded it with gentle hands.

Hamish saw it before he did. An embroidered half-circle of entwined letters, this time in the bodice.

Rutledge carried it to the window and examined it closely. Beautifully shaped initials with tiny forget-me-nots in the spaces. MEMC.

But did it stand for Maude Cook—or Mary Cook? Or someone else?

By the time McKinstry had come back to report to Rutledge, he had already put the gown back in the bottom of the clothes chest and dropped the lid.

THE MAN THAT
Rutledge had encountered in the barn was standing outside the door as the constable and Inspector stepped out on the pavement. McKinstry, key in hand, turned to greet him. At the man’s side stood a small, untidy boy of three or four. He was tall for his age and sturdy, with dark hair nearly the color of Rutledge’s, and gray-blue eyes that were darker in the sunlight than they might have been by candlelight.

“I’ve come to feed yon cat,” the man announced abruptly, his eyes on Rutledge in condemnation.

So you know who I am now,
Rutledge thought,
and don’t
like it. I wonder why . . .

“I didn’t know you had a key,” McKinstry was answering, surprise showing in his face.

“Aye, you don’t leave a house to mind itself. I’ve had a key since Ealasaid MacCallum took her father’s place.”

“I don’t know—” McKinstry said again, but the man cut him short.

“The cat’s to be fed. Are you taking her, then? The lad will grieve for her. And he’s lost his ma already.”

McKinstry said, “Very well, then, as long as you don’t touch anything!”

The man glared at him. “I’ve no’ touched anything of anybody else’s since I was
his
age and didn’t know better!” He inclined his head toward the child.

Hamish had been saying something, but Rutledge had found it hard to make sense of it—he himself was silenced by the doleful stare of the child.

This, then, was Ian Hamish MacLeod.

Rutledge felt his heart turn over. A handsome child, this was. A small, lost child.

Rutledge dropped to one knee, and the man holding the boy’s hand stepped forward, tense and prepared to intervene. But something in Rutledge’s face stopped him; he stepped back again.

“Hello, Ian,” Rutledge said, trying to speak through a constricted throat. This might have been Hamish’s child if he’d lived. This might have been Jean’s if she and Rutledge had married in 1914— “Going to see your cat, are you?”

Ian nodded. His eyes solemnly moved across Rutledge’s face and then to McKinstry’s. McKinstry must have smiled as he said “Hallo, Ian,” because the child smiled and it was as if the sun had come out. The eyes filled with light and with warmth, and the sadness vanished.

“Is Mama here? Has she come back?” he asked breathlessly.

“No, but I have seen her,” Rutledge said. “She’s well, and she misses you.” He looked at the man’s face and dared him to contradict him. But the man didn’t, and although McKinstry stirred at Rutledge’s back, he, too, said nothing.

“When will she come back?” Ian insisted, anxious now.

“Soon, I hope,” Rutledge answered. “I’ll do my best to bring her home.”

The boy’s eyes swept his face again, as if to judge how truthful he was. Then he nodded, turned to the man holding his hand, and said, “Clarence?”

“Aye, we’ll be feeding her. As soon as these gentlemen have gone away.”

“Good-bye,” the child told them, his voice firm. “Clarence is hungry.”

“Clarence?” Rutledge questioned as they walked away and left the odd pair to do their duty by the cat.

McKinstry’s eyes crinkled. “Well, there was a litter of kittens, you see, and Peter, the old man who worked in the stables, brought the boy one of them. Peter had named her Thomasina, after another cat he’d once had in the stables. But Ian has called her Clarence instead. I wondered why at the time, but haven’t thought about it since.”

Hamish, finding his voice, provided the answer. The Davison children had had a fog-gray cat by that name. And Fiona must have told Ian about the litter that Maude Cook had never seen. . . .

AS THEY WALKED
back toward the hotel, Rutledge asked McKinstry who the man was.

“His name’s Drummond. He and his spinster sister live next to the inn, and Fiona chose to leave the boy with them. She said he’d be less frightened with people he knew.”

And people she trusted? It was worth bearing in mind. . . .

WHEN MCKINSTRY HAD
gone on his way back to the station, Rutledge retraced his steps and came to a halt outside the house where the Drummonds lived.

It was the house he had noted before, the one with the extension in the rear and the windows with unexpected symmetry.

His instincts told him that Drummond and the child had not come back from feeding the cat. He wondered if Drummond allowed the boy to play with the toys in the chest, or sit on his mother’s bed and hold Clarence.

When Rutledge knocked at the door, a woman of middle age answered, her fair hair drawn back and tight curls adding a softness around her face. She brushed these back, as if afraid the caller on her front step might take them for a softness in her as well, and said, “If you’ve come to see Drummond, he’s not in.”

“Miss Drummond? My name is Rutledge, I’ve been sent by Scotland Yard to look into the matter of the parentage of the boy you have in your keeping.”

“Young Ian? And what interest has London got in a lad of three?” Her voice was sharp, indignant. But her pale eyes were wary, almost frightened. As if he’d come to carry the boy away.

“If his mother—the woman he calls his mother—is hanged for murder, it would be best if the child went to his own kin. I think you’d agree with me there.”

“I agree with nothing.” Her fear made her garrulous. “Ian wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t been given to us by his mother. And if Drummond hadn’t fought against that fool Elliot to keep the lad with us until—until it was all decided.
He
was all for sending him to the Forsters.”

“Did you know Miss MacDonald well?”

Hamish said, “She must have done, else the lad would never have been entrusted to her. Fiona would never set a child at risk!”

Miss Drummond had not invited Rutledge in, but kept him on the doorstep like a tradesman. “As to that, knowing her well, I’m thinking now that none of us did. But Ealasaid MacCallum I knew. For her sake I agreed to do what I could. Drummond’s reasons are his own. Ian’s a likely lad, and has been no trouble. And I expect we can feed and clothe him better than most, if it comes to that,” she added with some pride. “Before the war, Drummond made a fair living, working at Mr. Holden’s. A good man with horses,” she added grudgingly, as if she disliked admitting to better qualities in her brother. “They’re great beasts, the shire horses, but when
he
handled them, they were meek as lambs. The Army took the lot of them and brought not one of them back. There’s only sheep to be run at Holden’s now. And my brother’s not a man who cares for sheep. But Drummond can turn his hand to anything asked of him, and Mrs. Holden keeps him busy enough working about the house. He ought to be busy about the needs of his own! I can’t do it all alone.”

Hamish said, “She doesna’ approve of her brother. But they live together like two peas.”

“That’s most likely the root of it,” Rutledge replied silently. He thought the pair must have inherited this barn of a house together, and neither had wanted to move out. Or sell up. It could make for bad feelings over the years.

“Can you tell me anything about Miss MacDonald’s family?”

“Everyone knew her grandfather. He was respected. He’d played the pipes for the old Queen in his day, when first she came up to Balmoral. And the MacCallums have owned The Reivers for four—five—generations. We’ve been neighbors for nearly three, the Drummonds and the MacCallums. Always honest, God-fearing. Minded their own business. Kept the inn in good order, never any rowdiness or drunkenness allowed. Still, all I knew about Fiona was what her aunt told me—that she was a hard worker and tidy and had no eye for the men. Not thinking to find another father for Ian, you understand.”

“Then, why,” Rutledge asked quietly, “did the town of Duncarrick turn their backs on her?”

“Ah!” Miss Drummond said it as an exclamation and a sigh. “If we knew what was at the bottom of that, we’d be wise, wouldn’t we? Is that all you’ve come to ask?”

Rutledge said, “Tell me about the boy. Is he bright? Does he mind?”

“He does. I will say this for her, Fiona raised him proper. I’ve told that fool Elliot as much, but he sees only what he wants to see. I’m thinking it’s no surprise he’s a widower— drove his wife to an early grave, if you want my opinion! Ealasaid gave him the benefit of the doubt, but I had no patience with him! The old minister who was before him,
he
was a man of God, and he preached a mighty sermon of a Sunday. Mr. Hall, his name was, come from Dunfermline and married a Croser from over to Hawick. We went to kirk every Sunday, and were proud of it. But this fool Elliot, now, he’s besotted with sin. He doesn’t care a whit about redemption, only in setting blame. And what good’s that, I ask you!”

“I’ve been led to believe that Fiona never confided in her aunt—never told her, for instance, that she wasn’t the boy’s mother. Surely she must have told someone? A woman she trusted—a friend or neighbor—your brother—”

Miss Drummond stared at him consideringly. “Any secret’s best kept if it’s kept. You should know that as a policeman! Fiona was friendly in a quiet fashion, respectful to her elders. Nice ways about her, as if she’d gone to school to learn them. But all I’ve ever heard was that she’d loved her grandfather and he was a bonny piper. Oh, and that she’d been happy with her soldier before he died. More than that I never asked and she never spoke of. Now, it’s time you went, or Drummond will be home and shout at both of us. He doesn’t like anyone prating about Fiona or the lad. ‘Least said, soonest mended.’ That’s his view!”

“There’s only one other question before I leave,” Rutledge said, holding his ground. “I’ve been told that men were attracted to Fiona MacDonald. Was that true?”

He was met with stony silence. Miss Drummond’s face had changed, the color shifting to a mottled red, as if some emotion had risen swiftly and as swiftly been stamped down. Anger? Or jealousy? After a few seconds, the woman before him, her voice very different, said tightly, as if the truth had been forced out of her, “They say still waters run deepest. I don’t know. Fiona’s not by nature a talkative woman, the kind you’d sit and gossip comfortably with. I never could tell what to make of her. I never got close to her. Men, on the other hand, they saw something else. I can’t put a name to what it was. They’d watch her, and wait for her to smile, and then their faces would light up. I’ve seen my own brother staring at her, mesmerized by something I couldn’t feel or understand. As if he thinks he’s found the core of her and wants it. If you ask me, Drummond’s besotted with her. And if you want the whole truth of it, Elliot is as well. He raves on about sin like a man who knows what it means to burn with desire at night!”