Legacy of the Dead ir-4

by Charles Todd

  She frowned, thinking. “I don’t recall Fiona wearing a brooch. She never even wore her wedding ring. It hung on a chain around her neck, where she couldn’t lose it. I saw it sometimes when she bent down to settle the pillows or bathe my face.”

  “But not the brooch.”

  Trying hard to please him, she said earnestly, “But Miss MacCallum had a lovely brooch! There was a pearl in the center. She let me wear it-for courage-when I came to the rectory to be interviewed by Mr. Elliot.”

  “Did it help?” he asked, unwilling to cut short her brief burst of enthusiasm. She was pretty when her face was lit from within. Fragile and pretty.

  But it was the wrong question. Her face fell. “Mr. Elliot recognized it and made me take it off. He said it was unbecoming to ape one’s betters.”

  Hamish swore. Rutledge felt a strong urge to throttle Elliot. It was, he thought, an intentional cruelty. “Did you tell Miss MacCallum what he’d said?”

  “Oh, no!” she said, horrified. “I couldn’t! I was too embarrassed. I said only that he was very kind.”

  As she had just told him that Constable McKinstry was very kind.

  Driving out of Duncarrick, Rutledge was trying to decide how much weight to give to what Dorothea MacIntyre had told him about the brooch. On the whole, he thought, she was honest and without guile. Confronted, as when he’d asked her about McKinstry and Ealasaid MacCallum had asked about her interview with Elliot, she told lies out of a deep-seated fear of provoking anger. The girl wanted so desperately to please. It was her first-and only-need.

  Hamish, taking up another matter, said, “I never gave Fiona a ring. I couldna’ tie her to me, going off to war. The bracelet was a gift to remember me by, but didna’ bind her.”

  Rutledge had not married Jean in 1914 for the same reason, using the war as an excuse to put off their October wedding. And in the end it had been the right decision. He felt cold now, thinking about living with a woman who hated him-or hated what he had in her eyes become: a broken stranger.

  He wondered if Eleanor Gray might have regretted not marrying Robbie Burns when he was home on leave…

  There was a woman sitting along the road just by the pele tower. Something about the droop of her shoulders told him she wasn’t well.

  He searched for a name and came up with it. Mrs. Holden. Her husband was the sheep farmer… Rutledge braked and came to a stop just beside her. “Are you in trouble?” he asked. “Can I take you somewhere?”

  She smiled ruefully.“The doctor tells me to walk if I intend to regain my strength. But I don’t have the strength to walk…”

  “Then let me take you home-or to the doctor, if you’d prefer that.”

  He got out of the car and helped her up from the low stone she’d found to sit on. Under his hands her shoulders felt frail.

  Lifting her into the car, he settled her in the passenger seat. She was white from even that simple exertion.

  “I’m so sorry to be such a nuisance!” she said breathlessly. “It’s silly of me to overdo my strength and put strangers to such trouble.”

  Shutting her door, he examined her face. And didn’t like what he saw there. “Let me take you into Duncarrick. I think you ought to see your doctor.”

  After a moment, her eyes closed, she nodded. “Yes. I need to lie down. He’ll be glad to let me lie down for a while.”

  Rutledge backed the car around and said, “Would you like me to find your husband and bring him to you?”

  “No, I thank you. He’s in Jedburgh today. Dr. Murchison or one of my friends will see that I get home. Talk to me if you will. And just let me listen. It takes my mind off the weakness.”

  How does a policeman make pleasant conversation with a near-fainting woman? He said, “I’ve admired the pele tower. The way it was constructed. I understand it’s on your property. I’d be interested in hearing its story. What role it played in the days of the Border raids.”

  She smiled a little. “My father is the person you should have spoken to.”

  “Did he write a history of Duncarrick?” It was often the retired gentleman or rector who collected the legends and tales passed down by word of mouth for generations and turned them into a chronicle of sorts.

  “He never got around to it, I’m afraid.”

  A few sentences more and he’d exhausted the subject of the tower. Rutledge cast about for a new topic. “The name of the inn we’re just passing. The Reivers. I wonder who chose that. Did the MacCallums have riders in their ancestry?” Riders-reivers-raiders, he thought. Euphemisms for the same bloody trade of Border warfare.

  Drummond was just coming out of the inn with Ian MacLeod, returning from feeding the cat. The child looked up, eyes shining, and pointed with excitement to the car. Rutledge waved but didn’t stop.

  Drummond was glaring after him with murder in his face.

  The woman, staring ahead with unseeing eyes, bit her lip. She was in no shape to answer his trivial questions.

  “Hold on,” Rutledge said gently, touching her hands where they lay trembling in her lap. “We’re nearly there.”

  But he had to carry her into Dr. Murchison’s office, her head against his shoulder and her body so light, it was like a feather in his arms.

  The nurse came to meet him, having seen them arrive. To Mrs. Holden, trying to smile as she apologized for all the trouble she’d caused, she was all warmth and sympathy.

  “My dear!” she said, half scolding, half crooning, as though to a child. “Have we overdone our strength again? Come lie down for a bit and then the doctor will take you home again.”

  She led Rutledge down a passage, not into the sitting room he could just glimpse through a door that stood slightly ajar. Opening another door, she gestured to an elderly sofa that stood under the back windows. While the nurse fetched a pillow, Rutledge settled Mrs. Holden gently among its cushions, then took the light blanket that had been folded across the high back and spread it over her feet and limbs. As the nurse lifted her head and slipped the pillow beneath it, Mrs. Holden smiled. A wavering smile, and rueful as well.

  “I’m so sorry-” she began again.

  Rutledge took one of her hands and held it in both of his. “Nonsense. Feel better.”

  He turned and walked out of the room. The nurse, after a word to Mrs. Holden, followed. She thanked the Inspector for being a Good Samaritan and opened the outer door for him.

  “Not at all,” Rutledge said. “She seems very weak. Is it serious?”

  “The doctor feels it isn’t. She caught a chill this spring when she undertook the charity bazaar and was left with a cough. She’d had influenza last year, a very serious case, and was slow recovering from that. Dr. Murchison is trying to rebuild her strength. And sometimes she feels well enough to come into town. The influenza took the heart right out of people. A shame, really.”

  “Yes. A shame.” He remembered Hugh Fraser’s words. It was like a medieval plague…

  Turning the motorcar around again, Rutledge drove away from the town once more and headed in the direction of Glencoe.

  He made another brief stop in Brae to speak to Mrs. Davison. She asked him for news of Fiona, but as he had nothing cheerful to tell her, he said only, “I assure you, we’re doing everything we can.”

  “Then if it isn’t good news, what does bring you back again?”

  They were in the parlor, and the boys, happy to see him, were clinging to the arms of his chair while the little girl climbed confidingly into his lap. Mrs. Davison reached out for her, but he said, “No, let her stay. I don’t mind.”

  The child curled herself against his chest and began to play with the fob on his watch chain.

  “I need to ask you about some jewelry that Fiona MacDonald owned. A brooch with a large cairngorm in the center-”

  She nodded before he could finish his description. “Yes, I remember it. A lovely piece. She said it was a wedding gift from her father to her mother. She didn’t wear it often. She was afraid, p
laying with the children, that it might be pulled off or lost. She also had a bracelet from her fiance, which she allowed my daughter to try on when she’d been especially good.” She smiled indulgently. “You can see that young as she is, she has a taste for gold.”

  He looked down at the fair curls catching on his vest buttons. “It’s natural,” he agreed. “Had her fiance also given Fiona a ring?”

  “She never said anything about it if he had.”

  Detaching curls from buttons and fingers from the fob, he set the child on her feet and rose. “You’ve been a great help,” he told Mrs. Davison. “Thank you once more.”

  She must have read something in his voice. She rose but didn’t cross the room to the door. Instead she asked, “Is it important, this brooch?”

  “It might be,” he confessed. “I’m on my way to find that out.”

  “Then I hope it will be good news!”

  On the step he paused and said, “Do you think that Maude Cook was expecting a child when she left Brae?”

  “Maude Cook?” Mrs. Davison shook her head. “No, I’m sure she wasn’t. There would have been signs.”

  “Not if she left in her fifth month.”

  “Well, that’s true, I suppose. But when she left Brae, it was to travel to London to be with her husband. He had been invalided home-what would he have said to find her pregnant by another man!”

  She stopped. “I had wondered if she had a lover… No, I can’t believe it of her. She wouldn’t have been able to conceal her condition from Mrs. Kerr. And Mrs. Kerr would have told half of Brae. No. Possible, but not likely,” she ended firmly. “Give Fiona my love, will you? And tell her we are praying for her.”

  “She will be grateful,” Rutledge said, and went down the walk to his car.

  Hamish scolded, “You’ve broken your promise again!”

  “No. I asked if Mrs. Cook could have had a child. I’ve put no one in danger!”

  “It isna’ right to gie a promise and take it back when it suits!”

  “It isn’t right for Fiona MacDonald to hang,” Rutledge retorted grimly.

  “Aye, but she doesna’ deserve to put her faith in lies.”

  Rutledge reached Glencoe before Inspector MacDougal got there, and spent the time climbing back to the rocks on the heights.

  How had a woman dragged the dead weight of a body up this slope?

  How would he have done it?

  People found extraordinary strength in times of grave danger. It would have taken enormous effort. And time. At night then, when darkness gave the killer a good nine hours in which to accomplish the task.

  And if he’d laid the body on a blanket and pulled What if the frayed edges of an old blanket had been cut off and hidden under the bench in the Craigness garden? To make a sturdier corner Overhead Rutledge heard an eagle scream and, shading his eyes, looked up. He could just see it, circling for altitude, riding the warming air. In the far distance a car was moving in his direction. Rutledge turned and began to walk back down the mountainside.

  The sound of pipes came from somewhere, a lonely shepherd passing the time. Too far for Rutledge to pick out the tune. A pibroch, he thought. Very fitting here, where the mountains gave it body and redoubled the drones. He paused to listen.

  Something cracked-a shot-echoing and re-echoing against the rock faces on either side of the road.

  Instinctively, Rutledge ducked, long years of war making it a swift reflex action. The stones just behind him spurted, then slid in a trickling spill toward his feet. He swore.

  There was no cover here-absolutely none-he was a clear target, easy to pick off Where was the man with the rifle!

  Crouching, he scanned the opposite slopes and saw no one.

  It hadn’t been his imagination! He knew the sound of a rifle; it was clear and definitive Then, at the top of the ridge across from him, he caught a slight shift of light and shadow and again threw himself to one side.

  But this time there was no shot. MacDougal’s car was just below, the motor’s noise rising to where Rutledge was crouching. Close enough now to hear a rifle Rutledge shaded his eyes, looking intently for movement.

  But the sniper had vanished, ducking over the opposite ridge, invisible now.

  It would be impossible to catch up with him- Furiously angry, Rutledge wheeled to look for the spent bullet. He combed the area where he was certain he had seen the small slide of rock chips. It must have struck a stone and ricocheted.

  He searched carefully-but he never found it.

  Inspector Macdougal, getting out of his car as Rutledge reached the road again, said, “You’re a great man for the climbing!”

  “Good exercise,” he answered, thinking of Mrs. Holden.

  “Better you than me! What is it you’re looking for up there, that you need me to act as guide?”

  “I’ve seen all I need to see on the mountain. Now I’d like to find that young girl, Betty Lawlor.”

  “The one who discovered the brooch. Any particular reason you’d like to speak to her?” MacDougal looked at him speculatively.

  Never infringe on another man’s turf. It was a cardinal rule Rutledge followed. “Yes. I’d like to hear how she came to have the price of a new pair of shoes.”

  “As I remember, she said she’d earned them.”

  “Yes, no doubt she had. I should have asked her how.”

  “What does that have to do with finding the brooch?”

  “It might have been the price of convincing her to turn it in. I find it hard to believe, thinking back on it, that a child as poor as that would come to you to ask if she could keep the brooch.”

  “I wondered about it, of course. But the family is honest enough. The father’s a drunken sod, but the mother is proud as peacocks. And she’s taught her children to be honest as far as I can tell. Besides, how in hell’s name would anyone know that Betty Lawlor had found a brooch out here in the middle of nowhere? It’s far-fetched, Rutledge!” But he shrugged and pointed down the road. “The croft is just before the end of the glen. Shall we take both cars or leave one here?”

  Rutledge had no wish to find water in his petrol again. Or a bullet through a tire. “We might as well take both.”

  “Safe enough here,” MacDougal said. “But it’s your choice.”

  He pulled out ahead of Rutledge to lead the way.

  Hamish warned, “Watch your back!”

  Rutledge said, “No. He won’t risk firing again. Not with MacDougal ahead of us. How did anyone know I was here? I told Oliver-”

  Anyone could have overheard Oliver’s call to MacDougal. Anyone could have asked Oliver, “I saw Rutledge leaving town, where has he gone?”

  “And who did Oliver tell?” Hamish said.

  “Or I could have been followed to Brae and then here.”

  “But if he knew and came ahead while you were in Brae, he would have the time to climb.”

  “I know.” Rutledge let it go. There was nothing he could do now.

  Sheep were being driven down the road, filling it with white, curly humps that bobbed ahead and then behind, crowding against the two motorcars. He could hear MacDougal shouting to the man to move them on, and the high whistles to the dogs. Moving to lower pastures before the autumn storms came.

  Pulling out of them, MacDougal drove on, then turned off the road where an ancient stone croft squatted in the shelter of the hill.

  It has only two rooms, Rutledge thought, and no water that I can see. Betty Lawlor was poor indeed.

  Hamish said, “There’ll be a rill close by. Enough for their needs.”

  A ragged child of about seven popped his head out the door and then went back inside, calling to someone, before coming to stand on the threshold. His eyes were wide as he took in the two motorcars parked in front of him.

  MacDougal had gotten out and was crossing the hard-packed dirt of the yard when a man came to meet him. He was of middle height but heavy across the shoulders, and the filthy undershirt he wore was t
orn across the back. His trousers were held up with string, not braces. The bleary eyes and fleshy nose told the rest of the story.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Lawlor. I’ve come to have a word with Betty, if you please.”

  “I thought you might be bringing her back.”

  “Where’s she got to, then? Out with the sheep?”

  “She’s gone.”

  “Gone?” MacDougal looked over his shoulder at Rutledge. “Gone where? Look, I want to talk to her. Tell me where she is, and I’ll be on my way.”

  The ravaged face turned puce with anger. “Gone, I telt ye, and gone she is! That’s plain as plain! No skin off my backside if she’s alive or dead.”

  A worn woman in a faded dress came to stand at the door behind him. MacDougal took his hat off to her, but she said nothing.

  Rutledge said, “What did you do to her, Mr. Lawlor? That made her run away?” He had a feeling that he already knew.

  He thought the man was on the verge of apoplexy, he was so angry.

  The woman said, “She wouldna’ tell him where she got the money for the shoes. He thought he had a right to know. He thought she might have more of it. So he beat her until she couldn’t cry. And that night she left.”

  “I’ve got every right to that money! I feed and clothe these brats. I keep a roof over their heads. What they have is mine.”

  “Beat your children again, Lawlor, and I’ll haul you in for drunk and disorderly, and keep you in prison until you rot, do you hear me!” MacDougal’s voice was cold. “Do you hear me, man!”

  “It willna’ do any good,” his wife said in a tired voice. “When he’s like this, he doesna’ remember a word.”

  Lawlor swung a fist in her direction, but she moved away with the ease of long practice.

  Rutledge thought of that same fist beating the thin child he’d seen on the mountainside. Whatever Betty had done, she was better off out of here.

  “I want her back!” Lawlor was saying now, his voice plaintive. “There’s nobody to tend the sheep.”