by Charles Todd
“Not if they don’t bear on a pregnancy or other reproductive problem.” He was impatient now.
“Can you give me the names of women who came here in 1916? I can’t tell you with any certainty what the date was. But the woman I’m seeking was delivered of a healthy son.”
“No, I can’t.” It was short and curt.
“Then can you tell me if a Mrs. Cook was your patient in that time period? Mrs. Maude Cook. We are investigating a murder that might have a connection with her.”
“My patients don’t commit murder!” the doctor said indignantly.
Rutledge had heard many people express the same certainty. It was a common reaction, a natural one. No one I know could do such a thing! But murderers came in all shapes and sizes, all denominations and races, all social strata. And more often than not, they had friends who were appalled. . . .
“I’m sure they don’t, Doctor. In this case, we’re speaking of a victim. And of a three-year-old child who may have been orphaned. We need to contact the parents of the woman, or her husband.”
“A victim.” Wilson regarded him differently. “I don’t recall anyone by the name of Maude Cook. But let me check my files.”
He went to an oak cabinet against the side wall and pulled out a drawer. It was stuffed with folders and papers. He thumbed through some dozen of them, and did it again, then finally shook his head.
“I don’t find a Maude Cook at all. Are you quite sure you have the right name? There’s a Mary Cook here. And she gave birth to a male child.”
“In 1916? What was the date?”
Wilson gave it to him. It was a month too early. Still—
“Can you tell me where she lives? Or give me the direction of any family?”
Wilson turned back to the files. “She gave London as her home. There’s no other information. The father was dead. In the war. She cried when I told her she had a son. She said he would have been proud. A good many women tell me that. I have tried to grow accustomed to it, and failed. Children need fathers. Too damned many of them in these last years had none to go home to.” He rubbed his eyes. “Is that all you want of me?”
“Did Mrs. Cook have lung disease of any kind?”
“No. She was young and healthy. There was a complication, however. It was a difficult birth. Long and tiring, and there was a good deal of trouble. Breech birth, you see. Touch and go, but I saved her and the baby. Infection set in. She was quite lucky she was here—she’d have died otherwise. The fact remains, she’ll not be able to conceive again. Well, she has her child and I doubt she’ll marry again. So many men died. . . .”
It was cold comfort, but all the doctor had.
“Why did she come to Scotland to have this child if she lived in London?”
“She was traveling. Foolishness on her part at that late stage, but she was on her way to London when the bag of waters broke.”
But Wilson had no idea what had brought Mary Cook north from London or how long she might have lived in Lanark before consulting him. “I don’t have time to question my patients about their private lives. Still, there’re any number of Cooks in the neighborhood of Loch Lomond. She might well have been visiting one of them.”
IF MAUDE COOK was the mother of Fiona’s child, she had had the boy in a clinic, not on some windswept mountainside. And left there well enough to travel.
Was she in fact Eleanor Gray? And had she given Fiona a child she did not want to keep? In exchange for a sworn promise never to reveal the boy’s parentage?
It was possible—but not very likely. As for Mary—
Where had they met? Why had the mother so readily given up her son to a comparative stranger?
There was absolutely no certainty that Maude Cook and Mary Cook were the same person—Cook was a common name, as the doctor had pointed out.
Rutledge drove back to Duncarrick feeling the long hours at the wheel of the motorcar and in no mood to confess he’d found only the most tenuous threads to account for the number of miles covered. Or endure the constant hammering of Hamish’s questions.
The woman at the desk of The Ballantyne smiled at him as he came into the lobby and then turned to a drawer, where apparently she kept messages for hotel guests.
There was one for him, but not from Old Bowels, as he’d expected.
It was a politely couched request for him to telephone Lady Maude.
She wanted a report of his progress.
And so far he had nothing to tell her.
HER VOICE CAME clearly down the line—imperious and cold. “I expected you to keep me apprised of your investigation,” Lady Maude said accusingly. “You have disappointed me.”
“I had only mundane details to report until today. Tell me, do you know a Mrs. Cook, Maude Cook?”
“And who is she?” Lady Maude parried.
“I can’t be sure,” he admitted. “I’m exploring every possibility, and her name has come up in the course of inquiries.”
“I have no interest in a Maude Cook!”
“Did your daughter have friends in Glasgow whom she might have visited for a period of time? People who would let her stay for several months?”
“Certainly not. I can’t think of any reason why my daughter might wish to go to Scotland at all. It’s very unlike her. But I’ve told you that before.”
He said, “Did your daughter know a Fiona MacDonald?”
“I think not. It isn’t a name I’m familiar with.” She paused, then made—for her—a difficult concession. “The war unsettled accepted social behavior. In London Eleanor must have met any number of people outside our own circle of friends. I can’t be expected to know all of them.” It was the closest she had come to admitting that for three years she had no knowledge at all of the people who might have been important in her daughter’s life. And then, behind the coldness, there appeared a brief glimmer of warmth. “Inspector. I am waiting for news of my daughter. Something that will prove that it’s impossible for her to be connected in any way with this sordid business of murder!”
“The police here are still convinced that the—er—remains that have been found must be your daughter’s. I’m not as sure, for a number of reasons. But it isn’t something I can prove in a matter of days. The woman accused of the murder has been less than helpful. We are having to trace her movements over a period of three years. Until that’s completed, I can’t promise you any news.”
She considered that in silence.
Then she said, “I shall expect regular reports.” It was as far as she could go, admitting that she was worried.
“I understand.”
He put down the phone and considered going into the saloon bar for a drink. But he thought better of it and climbed the stairs wearily to his room.
Hamish was a dull murmur in his ear as he fell deeply and dreamlessly asleep.
OLIVER’S FIRST QUESTION was “Did you learn anything?”
Rutledge hesitated and then decided on discretion. Oliver was protective of his own investigation, and any evidence that might conflict with his carefully constructed case would immediately be suspect. “Enough to convince me that if the accused met Eleanor Gray in Brae, there is no evidence to prove it.”
It was a cool morning, the kind of day that reminded people in the north that winter would be long and dark and dreary. Rutledge hadn’t finished his breakfast when Oliver strode in and joined him, going directly to the point.
He said now, “Well, I did tell you that we’d been thorough.” He studied Rutledge for a moment, rubbing the menu he’d been given against his freshly shaven chin. “If the movements of the accused are accounted for, then we’re left with the time it took her to travel from Brae to Duncarrick. And the road she took. It must have been there that the two women met. A matter of days, surely!’’
Rutledge weighed the fact that Fiona had not worked out her time in Brae, though she’d told her aunt she must do so.
Where had she gone for those few weeks? Back to the gl
en where she’d been born? Or down to Lanark to meet someone?
No, it couldn’t have been planned ahead. She hadn’t known she would be summoned to Duncarrick by her aunt.
But what if—what if she’d been aware for some time that she was to meet someone on or about a certain date— and the summons from her aunt had given her the perfect opportunity to leave Brae at the right moment, without excuses or explanations? She had loved the Davison children, she had cried when she left them—but leave them she did.
No lies told to Mrs. Davison. No lies told to her aunt. Just the simple fact that suddenly Fiona MacDonald had been given a gift of time.
And therein lay the mystery of Eleanor Gray and the child.
If she wouldn’t tell him what she knew, there might be another way of examining her past. . . .
Rutledge said to Oliver, “I’d like to search the inn if I may. Can you arrange it?”
“What on earth for?” Oliver demanded.
“I don’t know. Yet. But it’s worth looking to see whether—for the boy’s protection if not her own—she left something there that might help us. A connection to the child’s background that might have been overlooked because at the time no one understood what it represented.”
Oliver shook his head. “I’ve been through the inn. Upstairs and down, the public and the family quarters. There’s nothing.”
But Rutledge knew more about Fiona MacDonald than Oliver did—and what he wanted to find, if they still existed, were any letters that Fiona had written to her aunt before she came to Duncarrick.
HE WAS GIVEN the key and Constable McKinstry as an observer, and allowed to inspect the inn.
McKinstry moved with nervous apprehension, a man torn between two duties. He showed Rutledge the way the inn was laid out, and then hovered at his shoulder like a second Hamish, both of them carrying on a desultory conversation with him as he moved from room to room of the private wing. By the time they’d finished with the small parlor, then walked into the dining room behind it, and the kitchen beyond that, Rutledge said, “The boy’s room. Have you searched it thoroughly? If I were hiding anything, I’d put it in among his toys, or perhaps at the bottom of a drawer filled with outgrown clothes—”
“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 hi
m, 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.