by Charles Todd
Scotland! “Did you ask the name of this officer?” Rutledge asked.
“That I did, sir!” Gibson’s voice came strongly down the line. “But they’ve forgotten it. Still, it was someone she’d met before. Not a stranger, or she wouldn’t have asked to bring him to Winchester with her. They tell me she was not one to impose on her hostess in that way.”
“Well done, Gibson!” Rutledge said. “Do you have a number where I can reach these people in Winchester?”
He could hear down the line the shuffling of papers. “Yes, sir, here it is! A Mrs. Humphrey Atwood. She was the Honorable Miss Talbot-Hemings. Went to school with Miss Gray for a time and stayed friends.” There was a pause. Rutledge could hear a door shut. And then with a note of triumph, Gibson added, “The Chief Superintendent told me I wasn’t to bother talking to the suffragette ladies. Addled, all of them, he said. A waste of time.” There was another pause. “Bit of luck, wasn’t it, sir!”
If he hadn’t known Gibson better, Rutledge would have imagined him grinning ear to ear. It was there in the voice. But Gibson seldom smiled. He was also seldom wrong in his findings or his conclusions. He was the kind of man who took pride in himself and in his work, and was bulldog tenacious when he wanted to be. Only his eyes warned that inside the beefy, middle-aged body was a brain sharp as a razor. Rutledge had always suspected that Old Bowels and Gibson were enemies from years back.
That didn’t put Gibson in Rutledge’s column at the Yard. But it meant that an opportunity to blacken Chief Superintendent Bowles’s eye was savored by the man, and often produced information that Rutledge found valuable.
As in this case.
Rutledge thanked him and put up the receiver, standing there for all of a minute, thinking.
Here was the first tie between Eleanor Gray and Scotland. Secondhand it might be, but it was better than none.
Why would a man bring a woman some months pregnant from London to Scotland—unless he was the father of her child?
Hamish said, “Unless there wasna’ anyone else she could turn to, and he felt sorry for her.”
There was also that possibility, Rutledge acknowledged, opening the door of the little room and taking a deep breath of fresher air. But he thought it was more likely that the officer must have known the father, if indeed he wasn’t the father himself. He himself would have done as much for a friend at the Front.
He closed the door again and was on the point of asking for the number Gibson had given him, when he realized that he ought to go to Winchester himself.
It would mean a long, fast drive there and back, but it had to be done. A telephone was a device that allowed people to hide behind distance. Nothing said into the telephone could match the nuances of expression and tone of voice that he used so often to judge information and people.
Hamish said, “It’s been close to three years. It’s likely true they canna’ remember the officer’s name now.”
On the way to his room to pack what he needed, Rutledge answered, “Very likely. But you never can tell what other information they still have.”
16
RUTLEDGE SPENT THE NIGHT IN THE MIDLANDS. HE had tried to persuade himself that he was good for another hour or more of driving. But heavy rain caught up with him, nearly blinding him. When he narrowly missed an unlit wagon going in the same direction, he pulled over, waiting for the worst of the downpour to pass. Only then did he recognize just how tired he was. There was an inn on the High Street of the next village, and rousing the owner from his bed, Rutledge asked for a room and was brought a tray of tea and dry sandwiches as well. He was on the road again as soon as it was light. By the time he arrived in Winchester, the stiffness in his back and legs was turning to cramp.
Hamish had spent most of Rutledge’s hours behind the wheel earnestly pulling apart the evidence against Fiona MacDonald and quarreling over the role Eleanor Gray might or might not have played.
It had been exceedingly difficult for Rutledge to explain Hamish’s existence, the reality of his voice, to the doctor at the clinic. He was not a ghost—ghosts could be exorcised. Nor was he a disembodied voice repeating Rutledge’s thoughts like a parrot. What was there was vivid—the nuances of thought and tone demanded answers. And Rutledge in 1916, broken in spirit and mind and nearly in body, had found it easier to answer the voice than to challenge it. He had known Hamish through two years of war— his memory was filled with conversations that had shaped new conversations—new thoughts—new fears.
In the five months since returning to the Yard, Rutledge had slowly found the courage to argue, to refute—to take on the voice in verbal battle. A painful step toward sanity, he told himself again and again—not away from it. But challenging it went beyond his courage still.
Hamish was saying, “It’s those bones in Glencoe that gave Oliver an excuse to bring a charge of murder against Fiona. He wouldna’ care about them, else. It’s no’ even his jurisdiction! It doesna’ matter to him whose they are.”
“True enough, but until we know how that woman died, we’re bound to take them into account,” Rutledge argued. “As long as her shadow—whoever she may be—falls over the evidence, it will obscure everything else.”
Hamish still disagreed. And said so. Rutledge shook his head.
“Eleanor Gray’s disappearance gave the police in Duncarrick a name to put to those bones. Identify the corpse— that’s the first rule of a murder inquiry. And Oliver is convinced that he has. Once that’s established, he has to find a clear connection between the two women. If Eleanor Gray was pregnant and came to Scotland to wait out her term, then the link begins to take shape. If that’s not true, then there has to be another explanation for her presence in Glencoe. And if it can be proved that the bones aren’t Eleanor Gray’s after all, Oliver is simply going to search for another identity to give them. Named or nameless, the woman is a stumbling block.”
“Aye, I grant you. But can you no’ see that named or nameless, it’s happenstance that connects these bones with Fiona in the first place. What if Oliver proves they belong to the Gray woman? What if he proves she was pregnant when she disappeared? It’s still a giant leap to prove Fiona killed her!”
“Or any other woman. I agree. But finding Eleanor Gray alive will eliminate her from the list. If she’s dead, and Oliver does have her body, then we’re back to the problem of how she died where she did. Murder—natural causes—even suicide. Whether the answer will clear Fiona or damn her isn’t the issue. We have to look for it. By the same token, if it turns out that Eleanor Gray was murdered, then we have to prove that Fiona was the only person who might have had a reason and opportunity to kill her. Oliver may be content to jump to conclusions, but the truth is, Lady Maude won’t be as easily satisfied.”
“Who’s to say that in the end those bones are no’ their own mystery—and no’ ours?” Hamish countered stubbornly.
“Then you’d better pray that Eleanor Gray left the child with Fiona while she secretly went off to finish her studies. It’s the only way to convince Inspector Oliver that he’s got no case. Which brings me back to what I’ve been saying all along. Right now Eleanor Gray is the key to the investigation.”
“I canna’ say I like it!”
It was odd, Rutledge found himself thinking at one point, how Hamish had coped with the unexpected and sudden confrontation with Fiona MacDonald. He was vigorous in her defense, and he had never questioned her innocence. But far deeper than that ran the knowledge that her life now was separating from his. Not as Jean had left him, wanting to be free of what she feared, but in the very fact that living had drawn Fiona into new directions and new feelings and new places that Hamish would never share. He had not known about Duncarrick; he had not known about the child. The silences that followed his meeting Fiona again had been a painful reminder that time did not wait, that there was no holding on to it. That there was an emptiness in death. And yet in some sense, it was as if she was the one who had died, for Hamish mourned her
loss with a heavy sorrow, with yearning and despair. And the burden Rutledge carried grew daily heavier with it.
It was Rutledge who struggled with the reality, the fact that Fiona could be found guilty of murder and hanged. He was the one who dealt with the tired face and dark-circled eyes of the woman in the cell. It was Rutledge who bore the brunt of fear and uncertainty about his own views of the evidence and the case building so tightly. Uncertainty, too, about his personal feelings.
He had seen Fiona through Hamish’s eyes for so long that until now she had seemed rather like the Dresden figurines on Frances’s bookshelf—gentle and uncomplicated, frozen in time and place, mourning her dead soldier. A woman wronged by what he, Rutledge, had been forced to do on the battlefield. The martyr, as it were, to his own guilt. Even in the dream in London she had been connected to the death of Hamish, with no existence all her own.
He had, he realized suddenly, seen her through Hamish’s memories. . . .
Now he had his own.
A flesh-and-blood woman, somehow attractive and, right or wrong, displaying remarkable strength in her lonely defiance of the law. Mourning Hamish still and giving that pent-up love to a child . . . The courage of innocence—or guilt? Rutledge found that she had brought out the protective streak in him, and he couldn’t be sure whether it was for her own sake or Hamish’s that he felt bound to do his best for her.
There was confusion and emotion in his mind fraught with his own bitterness, his own loneliness. It was, he thought, forcing him to think without the clarity and objectivity he tried to bring to every investigation assigned to him.
Hamish, God damn it, was right—
“And where was your objectivity in Cornwall—or Dorset?” Hamish demanded. “Where was your clarity then? Those women touched you too. How can you be sure it is Fiona and not you who’s on trial here!”
Rutledge had no answer.
RUTLEDGE STOPPED IN Winchester long enough to bathe and change his clothes and then found his way to Atwood House.
It was a small manor house built of mellow stone by a sure hand in the 1700s. The architect had set it on a knoll that offered splendid views to the south and an old grove of trees to the north, offering privacy and a barrier against cold winds. A stream meandering through the property was lined with wild roses, thick with hips now. Rutledge could see a pair of swans swimming regally on a pond created for the rowboat tied to a post. Someone had opened out the stream to fill the pond, and created a lovely effect at the bottom of the western gardens, a mirror of the sky that barely rippled as the swans floated above their own images.
The drive swept him up to the Georgian front with its dressed stone and pedimented windows. He got out of the car, nodding to the gardener trundling a handbarrow filled with spades and hoes and trimmers across the lawn toward the drive, and walked to the door. A brass knocker, which looked to be a more modern copy of an earlier iron one, clanged mightily as he let it fall.
After a proper passage of time, an elderly butler answered the door.
Rutledge identified himself and asked to speak to Mrs. Atwood.
The butler, noting his crisp collar and the set of his suit across his shoulders, said, “I’ll ask if Mrs. Atwood is at home this afternoon.”
He led Rutledge to a coldly formal room and left him there for nearly seven minutes. The walls, sheathed in blue silk, shimmered in the light from the long windows, and the French chairs that set off the white marble of the mantel were arranged for elegance, not comfortable conversation. There was no carpet on the floor, and on closer inspection, the walls as well as the fabric covering the chairs were worn. But over the mantel was a wonderful painting of the view he’d seen coming up the drive. It was a younger time, the trees were not yet mature, there were sheep grazing the smooth lawns, and the house did not have the patina of age, but the serenity was there, unchanged.
The butler returned and conducted him down the passage to a sitting room that also showed wear. Well-worn chintz, a faded carpet on which an elderly spaniel slept noisily, and an air of comfortable, genteel shabbiness told him that the house had suffered much use during the war and had not yet reclaimed its former elegance. But the windows faced the pond and the stream, framing the view and bringing in the soft light of afternoon. It was peaceful.
Mrs. Atwood was standing by the empty hearth as he came in. A pale woman in every sense, slim and willowy in pastel green, pale of hair and eyes and skin, as if all the color had been washed away in the long, careful years of family breeding.
He discovered very quickly that the character had not been washed away.
She said with graciousness that was backed by steel, “I have spoken to—um—a Sergeant Gibson. There is nothing more I wish to say to the police.”
“That’s quite possible,” he answered. “Sergeant Gibson was here as a duty. I have come as an emissary of Lady Maude Gray.”
Something unexpected stirred in the pale blue eyes. They were the color of faded lupines, hardly differentiated from the white surrounding them. “I have not heard from Lady Maude in some years.” Her voice was neutral, giving nothing away.
Hamish, silent until now in the shadows of Rutledge’s mind, said softly, “She doesna’ care for yon Lady Maude. . . . ”
Making a note of it, Rutledge answered, “It isn’t surprising. She quarreled with her daughter. I cannot say she regrets that quarrel, but she has come into information now that has disturbed her. It’s very possible that Eleanor Gray is dead. How and where she came to die we don’t know. I am doing what I can to find answers.”
Surprise flared in the long face. “Dead! But your sergeant—”
“—said nothing about that. Yes, I know. On my instructions.”
He let the silence fall and gave her time to digest his curt answer.
“I don’t see how I can help you. I haven’t seen Eleanor since the middle of the war. I thought—Humphrey and I were quite convinced she’d gone to America when she couldn’t take up medicine here. It would have been so like her!”
“Why should she choose to go there? Did she have friends—someone who might put in a word for her?”
“As a matter of fact, there was someone.” She hesitated and then added, “I called Alice Morton after Sergeant Gibson left. She was in school with Eleanor and me. But her husband is an American—he’s at the embassy here. His brother John is a professor at Harvard. He’d written to Eleanor once, in the spring of 1916, at Alice’s request, laying out opportunities she might wish to consider over there. Alice told me John had never had a reply. Eleanor hadn’t contacted him at all.” Mrs. Atwood shrugged lightly. “She was always strong-minded. She might not have wished to be beholden, even to a friend.”
“Why did you call and ask about Miss Gray? If you hadn’t tried to find her for three years?”
Mrs. Atwood was disconcerted by the direct question. “I—I don’t know why. Not really. It was just—I wanted to be reassured, I suppose. We don’t often have the police asking about an acquaintance. It was—only that.”
Hamish demanded, “Was it?”
After a moment, Rutledge asked pleasantly, “Tell me about the last time you saw or spoke with Eleanor Gray.”
He had made his hostess uneasy. From reticence she had moved to explanations and now apology. “I’m sorry, there isn’t much to tell. Not really. She was to come down for the weekend and bring a friend. But she telephoned to say she’d changed her mind. The young man had more leave than she’d thought, and she wanted to go to Scotland with him.”
“I wasn’t aware that her family had a house there.” He deliberately misunderstood her.
“No, of course they didn’t! It was the pipers, you see—” Breaking off, she started again. “Eleanor was eager to do what she could for the wounded. I found it rather—depressing—being around them. But she did her best to try to cheer them. Brought in singers, performers, that sort of thing. She became convinced that hearing the pipes might encourage the wounded and help the
m endure their pain better. Perhaps remind them of the courage they’d shown at the Front.”
“She went to Scotland to find them?” Again he subtly twisted her words.
“No, no, you don’t understand. She arranged for pipes and drums to visit the manor houses that had been turned into clinics or hospitals. We had about twenty officers ourselves, broken bones generally. She invited the pipers here first, to see what the response might be. And it brought the men to tears. They were so buoyed up! It was amazing. She had two young officers with her who had helped find the pipers. Both were Scottish, and both were quite taken with Eleanor. I thought she rather liked the dark one. She was upset when he went back to the Front.”
“Do you recall the names of these men?”
“Good gracious, no, not after all this time. I do remember that the fairer one spent a considerable part of his day in our stables. The horses were gone, of course, but it was the construction that interested him. The stonework was eighteenth century, and he admired it.”
“And the other officer? The one Eleanor Gray seemed to like?”
Mrs. Atwood frowned. “His father was something in finance. I can’t tell you what it was. We were so crowded, and there was so much happening. I tried to be polite, but the truth is, I barely listened.”
“Please try to remember.” It was a command sheathed as a polite request.
She shook her head. “It was so long ago. And you can’t imagine what it was like, the house at sixes and sevens, things packed away in the attics, no room to entertain. Though we did make an effort when we had fewer patients.”
“But she saw this man more than once? Perhaps having dinner with him in London as well as bringing him here for the pipers?”
“I can’t be sure. They’re all Mac-this and Mac-that, aren’t they, the Scots? And Eleanor was in London, I could hardly keep track of her friends.”