by Charles Todd
Even Fiona couldn’t protect him from the images in his own mind.
Not far from here, Hamish had been born, grew to manhood, and went off to war. This was land he knew so well, he had described nearly every inch of it to Rutledge the night before he died. It wasn’t imagination that peopled the great empty glen with memories, it was the stored knowledge of a lifetime. And the lasting voice of a soldier who had spoken softly in the candlelight but tellingly, the noisy darkness around the small makeshift hut they sat in notwithstanding, until Rutledge could have recited each and every word in his dreams.
As the miles rolled behind them, Rutledge relived that night with such ferocity that he was back again in 1916, even as he saw every turn of the road.
After a fashion, Hamish had come home.
19
IT WAS A LONG DRIVE. BY THE TIME THEY HAD REACHED the rendezvous point where an Inspector MacDougal was waiting for them, Oliver and McKinstry had fallen into weary silence, and Rutledge, sharing the rear seat with Hamish, was racked by the tension. It was not, by any token, an easy homecoming for either man. Rutledge had never expected to see and recognize landmarks that stood out now with such clarity. Nor had he expected to find here such a barrenness that in itself was beauty to someone who had seen it every day until the death of an obscure Austrian archduke had tumbled the world into war.
Glencoe was haunting—and haunted.
Ahead, where the unpaved road entered a narrow neck of the glen, they could see a motorcar pulled off to one side, under the frowning slopes. A man climbed down from the driver’s seat as they approached.
He was square, with flame-red hair and freckles so thick he seemed to be deeply tanned. Grinning at them, he raised a hand and called as Oliver slowed down, “Have ye brought the entire force from Duncarrick, then?”
Oliver pulled his vehicle off the road behind the other motorcar, raising a thick cloud of dust. The only traffic they had seen for miles was a flock of sheep and several carts piled with cabbages and sacks of potatoes. The road in either direction snaked yellow in the sun, like a dry river.
Solitary. But not empty. This place was never empty if you knew its history. Hamish, who did, was silent in the face of it. Rutledge thought, if ever there was a place for the pipes, it was here. Keening a lament on the wind and filling the valley with human sounds to shut out those no one could quite hear.
He forced himself to concentrate. Introductions out of the way, MacDougal went back to his own vehicle to open the door for the passenger he had brought with him.
She was no more than fourteen or fifteen, wrapped against the chilly wind that was blowing down from the heights in a faded plaid shawl that reached her hips. Her skirts whipped and snapped about her ankles. Her hair, in a bun, was a mousy brown, and youth was all that made her pretty.
But she faced the strangers as they were introduced in their turn and seemed to be collected for someone her age.
“And this is Betty Lawlor,” the Inspector ended. “Right, shall I begin, or will you, Inspector Oliver?”
Rutledge said before Oliver could speak, “Do you know the MacDonalds up the glen—” He dredged his memory for a name, and Hamish supplied it.
“—kin of Duncan MacDonald, who died in 1915?”
Betty gave him a sour look. “Aye. I ken who they are.”
“Are you friends, then?”
“Not friends, no.”
“Did you know Duncan’s granddaughter, Fiona?”
“I did. Not well. She was older. My sister’s age.”
Rutledge looked around him at the great expanse of emptiness. “I should think that neighbors here might look out for one another.”
Betty stared at him. “My ain grandfather was transported to Australia for sheep stealing. I havena’ any dealings with the MacDonalds. It was their sheep.”
Rutledge nodded. Oliver, impatient, said abruptly, “What did you find up there, Miss Lawlor?” He pointed to the mountainside above them, a great bulge of rock that seemed top-heavy.
“I was walking up there one day and saw something shining in the sunlight. I picked it up. It was this.”
She extended a work-worn hand and in the palm lay a small brooch. Rutledge and Oliver stepped forward to look at it more closely.
It was oval, with a single stone in the center and around it a circlet of smaller stones, set like the petals of a flower. On the back was a simple pin to hold it closed.
The color of the stones was a smoky brown. Smoky quartz.
“A cairngorm.” Hamish said it before Oliver did.
A stone found in Scotland and popular for jewelry. In the hilt of a skean dhu, in the froth of lace at the throat in eighteenth-century portraits, adorning the necks and fingers of ladies, it was a symbol in its way of the Highlands.
The setting was gold, a dainty filigree.
A pretty thing, and had probably been treasured once.
Rutledge said, “May I?” and took the brooch to examine it more closely.
The stones, well polished, flashed in his hand. The color was striking. He turned the brooch this way and that, to catch the light. Under the pin he noted that something had been engraved. Time had worn whatever it was to a blur.
“See just there. Initials, I think.” He pointed these out to Oliver. “Or a name. I can’t quite make them out—” Working with the light and shadow, he finally said, “There’s an M— possibly an A—a D—surely that’s an A—L.”
Oliver took the brooch and turned it back and forth himself, then shook his head. “Is that an M? Are you certain? Or an N?”
He passed the brooch on to MacDougal. “I looked at it earlier,” he confessed. “With a glass, before I telephoned you. It’s an M right enough.” He paused, and then said, “With a glass you can read the whole of it. ‘MacDonald.’ ”
McKinstry moved, denial in the abrupt shift from one foot to the other. In the ensuing silence, MacDougal handed the brooch back to Betty Lawlor. Her fingers closed over it until the knuckles were white.
“How far from where the body was found would you say this came to light?” Rutledge asked MacDougal.
“Possibly a hundred feet downhill. But it could have washed that far. In the rains and melting snow. After all, if you take into account the fact that it was here for several years, it’s not surprising at all.” He pointed above their heads again, where scree had been brought down the rough face of the peak. “I’d say the brooch must have come from above. There’s no other explanation. People don’t walk just here. It’s too uncertain. Most climbers follow that line over there.” He shifted to show them the preferred path. “And there.” He pointed across the road to the opposite slope. “It’s not impossible someone would be walking in our direction, but I’d say the odds were strongly against it.”
Hamish said, “The cairngorm wasna’ scratched enough to ha’ washed that far!”
Rutledge turned to Betty Lawlor, standing silently as they talked, her eyes moving from face to face. A self-contained child . . . “How did it happen that you were up there?”
She shrugged. “I walk all over this land. Always have. Helping with the sheep. I doubt there’s a foot of it I havena’ covered at some time or another.”
“But you never came upon the body that was found higher up?”
“I might’ve if the sheep had gone that far up. But generally they don’t just there. Stupid beasts, they are, but not foolish.”
He looked down at her shoes as she spoke, thinking of her walking day after day over such rough terrain—a hard life for a child.
Her shoes were new. Sturdy. He could see the leather toes just peeking out at the hem of her gown. The gown was a hand-me-down, the shawl the same. But her shoes were new. Even the edges of the soles hadn’t been worn yet.
Oliver said, “Tell me what you told Inspector MacDougal when you brought in the brooch.”
She looked at him directly, shading her eyes with her hand. “It was nearly a year ago that I found it. Summer anyway.
I saw it in the sun. It was the first day it hadna’ stormed in a week or more. I didna’ like to think it might belong to— to whoever it was they found. Up there. It was pretty, and I wanted to keep it. But I’m afraid my father will find it and beat me for stealing. So I went to Inspector MacDougal to ask him to set it right!” She broke off, then asked anxiously, “You aren’t going to take it away, are you? You can’t be sure it’s hers!”
Oliver said magnanimously, “I’m afraid it must be taken in evidence. But when we’ve finished with it, I’ll see that you have it back again.” His eyes switched to Rutledge’s face. He didn’t have to put into words what was in both their minds. This was the first direct link between Fiona and the mountain. Between Fiona and the bones that might be Eleanor Gray’s.
Rutledge said nothing.
MacDougal asked Betty to take them to the place where she found the brooch, and she turned to spring up the hillside like one of the sheep she watched out for. Strong for all her thinness, and agile, she seemed to fly. Oliver, puffing in her wake, swore under his breath, but didn’t ask her to slow down. McKinstry turned back to stay with the vehicles.
Rutledge was just behind her, watching the new shoes, watching her almost intuitive knowledge of where there was enough stability to place a foot. She had learned from the sheep—
MacDougal, keeping pace but red-faced, said, “Fra’ the top are fine views. I used to climb here as a lad, with my brothers.”
“Did you know the MacDonalds?” Rutledge asked him.
“I knew one of them—brother of the accused, I’d guess. A good man. He lost his legs and bled to death before they could get him back over the wire. My brother died the same day. Machine-gun fire. I was lucky—shot three times but nothing that kept me from going back.” There was a quiet irony in his voice.
They had come some distance, cutting diagonally across the mountain’s face, slipping and sliding here or there, and Betty had begun to look around, as if trying to find landmarks.
Finally she paused and pointed to an area that was perhaps ten feet square. “About here, I’d guess,” she told them.
It was a rocky slope that seemed to be no different from any of its neighbors for a hundred yards in any direction.
“Why are you so sure?” Oliver demanded, mopping his face with a large handkerchief. “I can’t see any difference between this patch and that one—or that one over there.”
“See for yoursel’. I can match that spot just above us with that one across the way—” She pointed to the great bare face opposite, and following her finger, they identified a small outcropping of rock.
If you looked, Rutledge thought, you could find your way easily. But it was always a matter of seeing. To the uninitiated, this was barren ground. Above their heads, another tumbled mass of rock stood out against the sky.
Following his gaze, MacDougal said, “It was there we found the remains. In a slight crevice where water has brought down the supporting scree and left a hollow.” He paused, then said, “You’d have to know it was there. The hollow. It isn’t visible from the road.”
In short, no one would think to leave a body there who didn’t have some familiarity with these mountains.
“Want to climb up?” MacDougal asked.
Rutledge nodded and they walked on, picking their way carefully. It was hot here in the sun, and feet unused to this terrain found it difficult to know where to step with any certainty.
Carrying a body, Hamish pointed out, would not be easy. And for a woman, very nearly impossible. “Unless the corpse was dragged on a rope.”
And there was no one to see such a long, laborious effort. From where he stood, Rutledge could look down at the two motorcars, Oliver standing talking to Betty Lawlor, and a ruined croft some distance away. In the far distance, he saw sheep, but no one with them.
“Hard place for a woman to carry a dead weight,” MacDougal said as if reading his thoughts. “But if that brooch belongs to the deceased, it means she’s not your missing woman. Eleanor Gray.”
“And if it belonged to the murderer, then we have her in custody,” Rutledge finished for him.
They had reached the outcropping where three heavy rocks were lying in a heap. Not so large by the standards of these mountains, but beyond a man’s strength to tumble together so tidily. And where the smaller fragments had washed out from under, there was indeed a crevice. Put a body here in April, and it might be found. But put it here before the weather turns and the autumn storms begin, and it would still be here in the spring. What was left.
Rutledge squatted on his heels. MacDougal said, “You won’t find anything. We were verra’ thorough.”
“I expect you were,” Rutledge said evenly. “I was just thinking that this was a perfect place for bones. What makes you so certain that the body was not here before 1916?”
“Condition, for one thing. And I talked to all the families who run sheep. They were certain it wasna’ here in the summer. A fox or dog had chewed the shoes, and what bits of clothing we found weren’t of any use. First thought was that we’d found a climber. People climb here who havena’ the sense of a beetle! They canna’ believe on a fine day like this one that the mists can come in sae fast, you’re lost before you take ten steps. And she was doubled up, as if trying to keep warm. Loose stones had washed around and over her.”
“Doubled? How?”
“Head on knees, arms around them. Made the body smaller, kept heat in the middle. The bones were still in a huddle, like. The doctor found no injuries, but that’s no’ to say she hadna’ turned her ankle or twisted her knee.”
Hamish said, “Doubled o’er, she’d fit behind the seat of a car, out of sight.”
Rutledge said, “If she was already dead, rigor had passed.”
“Aye, that’s right. Or hadna’ set in. The birds and foxes must have stripped the body in a matter of days. We couldn’t find one hand or the best part of a foot. Other bones had been pulled apart to get at the meat. The skull had rolled into her lap.” MacDougal sighed. “We’ve had a walker or two lost in these parts. But we always ken how they got into the glen. They’d be seen and reported. One left a bicycle. Another begged a lift on a crofter’s wagon. With this one, there’s no way of establishing when—or how—she came to be here. We don’t know the question to ask, do we? And it’s possible she came over the top, from the other side.”
“What’s your opinion of the engraving on the brooch?”
“I have none. It spells out ‘MacDonald,’ and that’s your patch, is it no’?” MacDougal grinned, then shrugged. “It could hae come from the dead woman’s clothing, if she was murdered and dragged up here. Climbers don’t wear much jewelry as a rule. Or it came from the murderer’s, trying to drag up that corpse. We do na’ have well-dressed middle-class women promenading up this mountainside, losing the odd brooch or two.”
“The center stone of the brooch isn’t scratched enough to have been washing down a mountainside since 1916.”
“Yes, I ken what you’re suggesting. Still, if it lodged somewhere for a time, then came down in the rains Betty spoke of, it might not have tumbled about all that much.”
If—if—if— Investigations were made and lost on “ifs.”
“We’ll have to take the brooch back with us. Oliver will give a receipt to Betty.”
“It’s a valuable piece to her,” MacDougal agreed. “I’m surprised she brought it to me in the first place. But her father’s a devil when he’s drunk. If he found she had such a thing, he’d beat her for stealing it and use that as an excuse to take it from her. She was probably counting on me to speak up for her if that happened. Betty spends the summer wi’ the sheep, as far away from him as she can get. I’ve seen her out here in all weathers, a small figure with naething but a dog for companionship.”
Rutledge got to his feet and looked around. This was a very beautiful valley—and very bleak. “Wild” was the word most often used to describe it. He thought about the February night wh
en the massacre had begun, and how the soldiers had run through the darkness with torches, searching for those who had fled. Driven by blood lust. A nightmarish way to die . . .
“Is there any other?” Hamish asked quietly.
Rutledge shivered in the warm sun.
“Did you come here?” he asked Hamish silently. “You and Fiona? When there was no work to be done on the farm?”
“Aye, we came. With horses. Sometimes we climbed. Or we’d find a place out of the wind and eat the bannocks we’d brought wi’ us. She liked the glen. The silence, but for the wind. And the closeness to her kin . . .”
MacDougal was asking if Rutledge had seen enough. He nodded and they started back down, slipping once or twice.
“The Lawlor girl. What sort of family does she come from? Aside from the drunken father?”
“Poor enough. She’s the middle girl. They work hard and go hungry sometimes, I’ve no doubt.”
“Why didn’t she bide her time and quietly sell the brooch for whatever it might bring? Even a little money would allow her to escape from the glen and her father and her poverty.”
“She’s too young,” MacDougal said simply. “In another year or two she might have. That’s why she wants it back. If you take it, she’s locked into this life. There won’t be other brooches waiting for sharp eyes to pick them out!”
Joining Oliver and Betty Lawlor, they descended to the road. Oliver bent to brush off his trousers where the cuffs had collected a fine pattern of dust.
Rutledge said to the girl, “I’ve been admiring your shoes.”
There was a flare of fear in Betty Lawlor’s eyes, then she said defiantly, “I earned the money for them!”
IT WAS A silent journey back to Duncarrick. McKinstry was wretchedly weighing the damage the brooch would do to Fiona MacDonald’s case. Rutledge, in the rear seat, could see the fine lines around his eyes, as if his head ached. But he drove with skill and attention to the road, wherever his mind was.
