by Charles Todd
The Scots under his command had taught him how to use them—a London policeman who could wield them now with the best of Mrs. Holden’s ancestors. It was, he thought, a commentary on war, that from farmers and sheepmen and workers in the whiskey distilleries a man dedicated to preserving law and order had learned how to kill silently. Not a skill to be proud of . . .
He was studying a collection of flintlocks when the maid returned and led him to a back sitting room, where Mrs. Holden was lying in a chair with her feet on a low stool. She smiled at him and offered her hand as the maid closed the door behind him. “I have to thank you again for rescuing me. Have you come to see how I’m faring?”
“Yes. You look much better.”
“I endured a very firm lecture from the doctor. I’m trying to mind his instructions. May I offer you something? Tea? A sherry?”
“Thank you, no. I’ve come to talk to you about your husband.”
Her face flushed with surprise and wariness. “I’m afraid I can’t speak for him. Would you care to come another day?”
He smiled reassuringly. “I shan’t ask anything he wouldn’t feel comfortable telling me himself. He was in the war, I think?”
“Yes. Nearly the entire four years. It was a very long war for him.” Something in her face told him it was very long for her as well.
“I’m trying to find anyone who might have served in France with Captain Burns. The fiscal’s son. Can you tell me if your husband knew him?”
She seemed relieved. It was a very simple question. “I’ve met the fiscal myself once or twice at the home of the Chief Constable. But I don’t believe I’ve ever met his son, nor have I ever heard my husband speak of the Captain as a friend. I believe, in fact, that he was killed in France.”
“Yes, that’s true. I expect my informant was wrong. I was told by a man in Durham that Captain Burns had been acquainted in London with someone from Duncarrick. Both men were recovering from their wounds and they had been out to dine on at least one occasion with friends of Eleanor Gray.”
This was a name she knew. “I’ve been told that she’s the woman Miss MacDonald is accused of killing. How sad!” But the words didn’t have the right ring to them, as if they were spoken because it was expected of her. Not because of any deep-rooted sympathy.
“How well do you know Miss MacDonald?” he asked.
“Not—I told you before, I hardly knew her. To nod to on the street. To speak to in a shop. That was all.” She gestured with her hand, as if inviting him to look at the difference between her home and The Reivers. “We moved in different circles.”
“A pity. I’ve interviewed her often, but I can’t seem to break through the wall of silence she’s erected around herself. Nor will anyone help me. She will likely hang.”
Mrs. Holden smothered a cry.
Hamish called him callous and cruel, but Rutledge had a message he wanted conveyed to Holden. And this was the only way to do it. If Fiona meant nothing to Mrs. Holden, it would not be a lasting hurt.
“Surely—” she began, then stopped.
“I wish I could tell you differently. I wish I could prevent it. There’s no hope now. She’ll go to trial before the year is out.”
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 de
ep 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 me— the 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!”
“Mrs. Holden. How did your husband come to know Eleanor Gray?”
“I’m not sure that he ever did. I’ve never heard him speak of her at all.”
“There’s some evidence that he could well be the man who drove her north, just after Captain Burns died. If he did, he may have been the last person to see her alive. I’d come to believe that he was after the boy because young Ian might inherit Eleanor’s fortune once it was established that he was her child.”
“He knows Ian is mine—it’s revenge that drives him, not money!” she cried. And then pressed her fingers against her eyes as if they ached. “I haven’t the strength to worry about this Gray woman too. I have enough sorrows already.” She looked out the window. “I should never have given my child life. I went to Glasgow once, did you know? Fiona took me. To a place where abortions were done. Never mind how I found out about it, another poor, desperate woman had gone there and later confided in me. But I couldn’t go through with it. I loved Ian’s father, you see. In spite of my fear of being found out, I loved his father. . . .” She lay back, her eyes shut. “I love him still. . . .”
Hamish said somberly, “Holden is driving her into her grave—she’s likely to die before Fiona’s trial! Does he no’ ken the risk he’s taking?”
I don’t think he does, Rutledge answered silently. It would spoil his game if his wife died prematurely. He wants the name of her lover, and he wants his wife to see that she’s caused an innocent woman to die a fearful death. Damn the man!
But contrary to what Mrs. Holden had said, Rutledge believed Holden had known that Eleanor Gray’s body lay in Glencoe. He might even have been clever enough to see how useful it could be. A remarkably tidy way of punishing Fiona and ridding himself of the past. The problem was, this was going to be bloody difficult to prove!
He stood up. “What do you want me to do, Mrs. Holden? I can’t bring your husband in and charge him—there’s only your word against his that he’s responsible for what happened to Fiona MacDonald. People would believe him if he told them your health is frail and that your mind has been affected by it.”
“There must be a way to stop him! You—I can’t go on like this! I can’t live with Fiona’s life on my conscience, and I can’t buy it back without destroying my child! I have come to hate Alex—but he’s the albatross around my neck, and I cannot be freed from it.”
“Will you kill someone for me?”
He heard Fiona’s voice quite clearly in his head.
“Tell me—did you live in Brae before your son was born?”
She nodded. “I was desperately in love. He—Ian’s father—was in Glasgow for some time and we met when we could. I was happy. I had closed the house here—with the horses gone and the servants leaving, it was an excuse.”
“And the initials on the christening gown?”
“My maiden name. I was born Madelyn Elizabeth Marjorie Coulton. But I was afraid to use it in Brae or the clinic. Because, you see, he’d gone back to sea and not long afterward was killed.” She stopped, let her voice steady once more. “He died and I had a baby on the way. I stayed in Brae as long as I dared, hiding the pregnancy as best I could. Then I took a hotel room in Glasgow for a time before going to the clinic. There was nowhere else that I dared to have the child. If Alex had died, of course, I’d have claimed that Ian was his. But Alex was alive and I couldn’t risk brazening it out. If I hadn’t met Fiona—if she hadn’t been willing to take the child as her own—I would have killed us both. The boy and myself.”
28
RUTLEDGE LEFT MRS. HOLDEN WITH SOME APPREHENSION—concerned for her—afraid that when Alexander Holden walked back into his house, his suspicions would be aroused by something in her face. It wouldn’t take him long to discover that Rutledge had been there. He was too intelligent not to know why. Mrs. Holden was very fragile. What would he do? Bully her—or find a new, unexpected strength in her?
“Whatever he does,” Hamish said, “it’s no’ possible to stop him. You canna’ go to Oliver until you hear what London’s learned about Holden! You canna’ go to the fiscal without proof. This is Holden’s ground, he’ll ken what to do—”
“There may be a way to distract him.” Rutledge had nearly reached his motorcar, concealed well out of sight of the Holden property. He pulled it to the head of the drive, where Holden couldn’t pass him.
Then he waited. With infinite patience. Even Hamish stood the long watch in silence. They had shared such watches many times in the trenches—there was almost that same comfortable sense of companionship. Almost—but not quite.
It was nearly dusk when Holden came. The long shadows of the autumn day had given way to clouds, and the first sprinkles of rain.
The lights
of Holden’s car picked out the dark shape of his own, and slowed.
Holden called sharply, “What’s happened?”
Rutledge replied, “I’ve come to speak to you. Your maid told me you were out, and I waited.”
“For God’s sake, why didn’t you wait at the house?”
“Because I didn’t want your wife or your servants to hear what I’ve got to say.” He gestured around them at the dark road and the dark drive. “We have a little privacy here.” The sprinkles turned to the first heavy drops.
Holden looked for hidden ears before turning back. “Then say what you have to, and let us both get in out of this rain!”
“I traced you to Craigness, Holden. To Rob Burns’s house. I found written proof there that Eleanor Gray had come north with you that night in 1916 when it rained so hard. She waited in the car until the worst had passed before coming in. And Mrs. Raeburn didn’t see her. You left with her—and Eleanor Gray disappeared. Did you kill her? Did you drag her body on a blanket up the slopes of the mountainside in Glencoe and leave her for the jackals and the ravens?”
Holden said, “Don’t be an idiot! I never knew Captain Burns. His father will tell you that. And my wife!”
“It won’t matter what they say. You’ve left a trail behind you. And I’ve uncovered it. You thought, trained as you were, that you were skilled at deception. But I can bring witnesses who remember your face and who can place you in Saxwold, in London, in Craigness, and even in Glencoe. Unimportant people you thought we’d never be clever enough to find. There’s other proof. I’ll have it soon. It’s a loosely woven net at present—but it will tighten.”
The car’s lamps were fully on Rutledge’s face, but they cast macabre black shadows on Holden’s. There was no way to read his eyes. His hands, on the wheel, were white-knuckled. Rutledge watched them. If they moved—
