by Charles Todd
“Thanks. I’ll see what I can learn there.”
Fraser put down his fork and reached for his glass. “She must have cared for Robbie,” he said. “To come all this way. Sad that they had no future.” He quoted lines from one of O. A. Manning’s poems. “We walked away from all that was warm and dear and stood frightened in cold rain where the guns fired, and in the end, we died in pain, the black stinking mud our shroud, embraced at last not by living arms, but by the bones of those who before us died . . .”
Rutledge recognized the words. But he said only, “Manning understood better than most.”
“Yes.” Fraser sighed. “Well, when you catch up with Eleanor Gray, if she isn’t happily married to someone else by this time, tell her Robbie loved her too. I truly think he did.”
“Do you know if Captain Burns kept a dog? A cat?”
“He didn’t. He traveled more than most. But his fiancée was fond of King Charles spaniels.” He smiled. “Julia would bring them whenever she came, nasty little monsters, always wanting to climb into one’s lap. How Robbie put up with them, I don’t know! Love is blind, I suppose.”
“Did Captain Burns bury one of them in his garden?”
“Good God, how should I know?” Then he grinned. “Killed it, you mean? Robbie must have been sorely tempted a time or two.”
RUTLEDGE DROVE EAST out of the Trossachs, through some of the heart of Scottish history.
Many of the soldiers in France had seldom been farther from home than twenty miles in their short lives. Clan battles made for lively conversation among the Highlanders who had long memories for the feuds, ambushes, and massacres that had colored each family tree until the Battle of Culloden and the Highland Clearances had changed Scotland forever.
The Lowlanders had had a different perspective. Stirling, a great castle on a crag overlooking the Forth, had been a royal residence until James VI had taken himself off to London. Now it was a quiet county town lost in the backwaters of the past. Bannockburn, where the Scots had won their famous victory over the English, was a monument to Robert the Bruce’s determination to be free of the southern kingdom that had dominated his country for a lifetime. There were Scots who had only the vaguest notion now where the battle had been fought. Mary Stuart had been born at Linlithgow Palace, on its knoll above the loch. A queen from birth, she’d grown up to become a thorn in the flesh of Elizabeth of England. John Knox had thundered against Mary from the pulpit, and she had finally been forced to abdicate, a pensioner of the English crown. A rough and glorious past, now no more than a footnote in time.
The Highlands had been emptied and the Lowlands had become the poor cousin forgotten by an England with its eyes on Empire, and left to poverty and ignorance. As someone had said, Scotland’s greatest wealth, her sons, had bled away to the colonies. Half the Scots under Rutledge’s command had had distant cousins in Australia, New Zealand, or Canada.
At Edinburgh, Rutledge turned west. And decided, after some thought and a good deal of comment by Hamish, to go directly to Jedburgh rather than to Duncarrick. To report to the fiscal rather than to Oliver.
He stopped for a quarter of an hour at Melrose, whose ruined abbey held only a shadow of its former beauty. Stretching his legs as he walked through the broken elegance of nave and chancel, Rutledge tried to picture it as the Cistercians had built it. It was an important enough house that the heart of Robert the Bruce had been buried there, brought home from Palestine and lost for a time in Spain.
Melrose had fallen victim to the Border wars that had burned Duncarrick and Jedburgh and bled half the Marches.
But Hamish remembered only that Field Marshal Haig, commander-in-chief of the British forces during the war, had been born near here. He did not like Haig, and was restless until Rutledge drove on.
IN JEDBURGH, BURNS rose to meet Rutledge but did not offer his hand. “I understand from Oliver that we’re ready to go to trial. I could wish that you had been more successful in finding what has become of the Gray woman. This brooch most certainly puts the accused in the glen near the bones that were found, but it would have been helpful to go into court with proof of her identity clearly set out.”
“Perhaps before the trial begins that will also be answered to everyone’s satisfaction,” Rutledge answered pleasantly. “I came here to ask you about an officer who may have known your son. Let me describe him for you.” Without waiting for a response, he gave Burns what little information he had.
Burns listened patiently, then said, “That could fit half the British army.”
“Half the Army didn’t serve in Palestine.”
“Yes, yes, I take your point. And you’re trying to locate the man who might have driven Miss Gray to Scotland. I’m still not convinced that he knew my son. He might have been a friend of hers, have you considered that?”
Rutledge omitted any account of his visit to Craigness. He had a feeling it would not sit well with the fiscal. Instead he replied, “Yes. Either way, I must start with the assumption that both men visited Atwood House in Miss Gray’s company. Which makes it seem likely that your son did meet him. My hope now is that one of Captain Burns’s other friends might remember him also.”
“Most of my son’s friends were from his own unit, or men he met on leave.” Burns turned and looked out the window of his office. “A good many of them are dead.”
“This man was interested in the structure of the Atwood House stables. Medieval stonework.”
“In the building trade, then. But an officer, you said.”
“Or a student of medieval history.”
“A don.” He began to list his son’s friends, giving their names, their ranks, their pre-war occupations. Rutledge closed his notebook when Burns had finished.
Of the seventeen men Burns could name, nine were dead, three before 1916. Two others had died of wounds. None of them had served in Palestine, and none of them was a builder or a don. “Although as I think about it now, Tom Warren was interested in history. His father had been attached to the embassy in Turkey at one time, and the family had traveled widely in the Near East.”
A slim thread, Hamish pointed out as Rutledge took his leave.
It would have to do.
Rutledge drove on to Duncarrick to find a message waiting from Gibson. He had had no success in locating the engraver.
FINDING MAJOR THOMAS S. Warren proved to be easier than Rutledge had expected. A call to the Foreign Office had brought him the name of the father, who had in fact been a diplomat and had come out of retirement during the war to serve as an authority on the Turks.
Thomas Warren was a solicitor in Durham. Nearly in Lady Maude’s backyard, as Hamish put it.
Rutledge set out with a box of sandwiches and a flask of tea, courtesy of The Ballantyne, and arrived in Durham before the hotel clerk had come on duty at The Bishop’s Arms. A bath and a shave did much for his appearance, but not for the fatigue that was catching up with him.
Durham had been built by fighting bishops, both castle and cathedral sitting on a well-defended bluff above the winding River Wear. On the other hand, one of the earliest names in English literature was buried here: the Venerable Bede. Before the war, Rutledge had had several friends in the town, but they were gone now. It seemed odd to drive through the familiar streets and not call on one of them.
The law firm was in the center of town, second in a row of buildings that were Victorian Gothic, with even a gargoyle or two leering down at passersby. The street was busy, and Rutledge left his motorcar at The Bishop’s Arms, walking the few streets to his destination.
An elderly clerk admitted him and asked him to be seated until Mr. Warren was free. Rutledge took one of the high-backed chairs near the hearth and felt weariness wash over him. Hamish was much taken with the pair of grim-faced eighteenth-century portraits that flanked the clerk’s desk.
“Hanging judges,” he decided, “with no’ a verra high opinion of human nature. I canna’ see pity nor mercy in their eyes.�
�� When Rutledge looked up to study their faces, he was forced to agree.
Thomas Warren was a fair man with an ugly scar across his face, running from the crown of his head into the collar of his shirt. It had healed, but time had not yet smoothed it into a thin white line. It gave him a sinister appearance.
But he greeted Rutledge with courtesy, listened to what he had to say, and answered, “Yes, I knew Rob. He was a good man. But I’ve never been to Atwood House, I’m afraid. And I didn’t serve in Palestine, I was in France. Where else would the Army put a man with some knowledge of Turkish?”
Rutledge laughed. “It was common practice, I’m afraid.” Taking out his notebook, he read aloud the list of names that the fiscal had given him. Warren steepled his fingers in front of pursed lips, noting each.
When Rutledge had finished, Warren said, “That’s fairly thorough. Offhand I can’t think of anyone to add. The first five you named died in France and to my certain knowledge never set foot in the Near East. That puts them out of the running. Morgan has flame-red hair and wouldn’t know a barrel vault from a Roman arch, much less anything about medieval stabling. He spent most of the war at sea and the only wound he suffered was a fractured thumb.” He shook his head, still finding it hard to believe. “Talbot, Stanton, and Herbert are dark and aren’t likely to be in the running. I didn’t know Edwards well enough to tell you where he served. Baldridge and Fletcher were artillery, as I remember, and MacPhee was in naval intelligence. What’s this about? Why is it so urgent to find these men? I can’t see any of them running afoul of the Yard!”
“They haven’t. But they may have information we need. We’re searching for a woman who is missing and may be dead. Eleanor Gray—”
“Good God!” Warren said, thunderstruck. “I met her once or twice, you know. In London. She and Rob were on their way to some play or other, a benefit for war orphans. She was trying to persuade him to sit down and rest, when I walked up. We had a drink together at intermission. Lovely girl. I remember asking her if she was related to the Grays over by Menton, and she smiled and said she was but indirectly. The next time I saw her, she had lunch with me, and if I’ve ever met a girl in love, it was Eleanor. Rob deserved happiness. I was glad for them. And I’d not like to think anything has happened to her!”
“We don’t know that it has. We’ve traced her movements from London to a place called Craigness, a small town on the Teith in the Trossachs.”
“That’s where Rob lived—”
“Yes. She arrived in a rainstorm with a man. They spent two days at the house and then left.” Rutledge paused. “We know she was there because she wrote something in the margin of a book that belonged to Burns. It couldn’t have been done earlier, she’d just learned he was dead. That narrows the time, you see. And it’s possible that she herself was dead by the autumn of 1916. She hasn’t been seen since.”
Warren said, “Are you telling me you think she killed herself?” He shook his head. “Not Eleanor Gray!”
“She loved him. The last notation in the book was ‘I wish I could die too.’ ”
“Yes, yes, people say that,” Warren replied impatiently. “I’ve heard them say it. But that’s a source of comfort, not a decision taken. ‘I wish I could die and end this suffering—I wish I could die and not have to think about it any longer.’ Then they straighten their backbones and get on with living. And you didn’t know Eleanor Gray. She was incredibly vivid, the kind of woman other women never learn to understand. But men do—men always find that zest for life fascinating.”
AS HE ROSE to leave, Rutledge gave Tom Warren his card. “If you should think of anything else that might help, please get in touch. You can reach me in Duncarrick, at The Ballantyne.”
HE SLEPT FOR nearly ten hours, roused the hotel clerk at midnight in search of food, and then slept another six. The morning he woke up to was gray with clouds, but there was no rain in them.
Hamish, at his shoulder as Rutledge turned north, was arguing the question of Eleanor Gray’s feelings for Robert Burns.
“It could ha’ been infatuation.”
“A handsome man in uniform, the excitement of war. A romance that wouldn’t have lasted with the peace.” Rutledge was reminded of Jean, who had adored his uniform, then was terrified by the reality of war. He couldn’t imagine Eleanor Gray confusing war with romance and excitement. She had seen too many of the wounded—
“And infatuation is more likely to lead to suicide,” Hamish persisted.
“Fiona’s mother died of a broken heart.”
“That was no’ the same! She wasted.”
“It doesn’t matter. If Eleanor was carrying Robert Burns’s child, she wouldn’t have killed herself. If she wasn’t pregnant—then who’s to say?”
“It doesna’ explain how she came to be in the glen.”
“No. And that’s a question we still must answer.”
THINKING ABOUT ELEANOR Gray, Rutledge turned off the road north and made a detour to Menton.
He came up the sweep of the drive as the sun broke out of clouds and bathed the house in golden light, turning the windows to burnished copper, the stone to warm peach. It was remarkably beautiful. He pulled up to the steps and then walked a little way from them to look up at the house. This was what made David Trevor love the sticks and stones of building. The angles and shapes, the use of light and shadow, the grace and elegance of line.
We have come a long way from stone hovels and mud huts, he thought. In skill and in knowledge. But we still kill. . . .
He went up the steps and rang the bell.
The butler came to answer it and with perfect poise informed him that Lady Maude was not at home today.
Rutledge would have wagered a year’s pay that it was a lie.
But he accepted dismissal without demur.
Lady Maude did not wish to see him.
Was she afraid that he had brought her news she couldn’t accept? He had a feeling that the quarrel with Eleanor had wounded the mother as well as the daughter who walked away. Love could be terribly hurtful.
HE PULLED INTO Duncarrick in the early hours of evening and parked the motorcar in its usual place. After lifting his luggage out of the boot, Rutledge walked toward the front of the hotel, his mind still on Eleanor Gray.
He ran into Ann Tait as he turned the corner and begged her pardon.
Recognizing the Inspector, she said, “Where have you been, then?”
Setting down his cases, he answered, “I’ve been in Durham. Where are you going?”
She lifted the hatbox in her hand, its flamboyant ribbon catching the light from the windows. “A delivery. There’s to be a christening tomorrow.”
He said, “You weren’t here in Duncarrick, were you, when those women were murdered out on the western road? In 1912, I think it was?”
“Good heavens, Inspector! What women?” She looked alarmed.
“It doesn’t matter. I’d been thinking that Duncarrick was a quiet backwater, and someone corrected me, saying that there had been several murders here before the war.”
“That’s a fine thing to tell me, walking down these streets in the dark!” She was angry with him, her face flushed.
“It was an old crime, and you have nothing to fear. If you like, I’ll just set these in the hotel lobby and walk with you.”
She wasn’t mollified. “And ruin my reputation for good? They’ll be whispering behind their hands tomorrow. And I can’t afford it!”
He said contritely, “I’m sorry. I thought the murders were common knowledge. I’ll walk down the other side of the street and keep an eye on you.”
Ann Tait shook her head. “No. I can look after myself.” She turned to go and then swung around. “If you mention a word of this to Dorothea MacIntyre and frighten her to death, I’ll see that you pay dearly for it!”
“I spoke to you,” he said, “because I thought you might give me information. It appears that we’re both in the dark. But Dorothea MacIntyre won’
t hear such things from me, I promise you.”
She walked away. He watched her for a time, the swing of her shoulders and the straight back. She had confessed to envy of Eleanor Gray. But he thought that the two women were in many ways very much alike. Independent. Willing to make a life for themselves with their own two hands. Hiding behind a brusque shell because it saved them from pain.
White lace gowns with satin sashes and broad-brimmed hats had passed with 1914, along with lawn tennis and picnics on the Thames and a much simpler world. There were thousands of Ann Taits making a living for themselves now, and hundreds of Eleanor Grays looking for a different future. Five years, and a colder, bleaker world of war had reshaped a generation of women as well as men.
AS RUTLEDGE STOPPED at the desk to pick up his key, the clerk handed it to him and then reached into a drawer to find a folded sheet with his name on it.
In his room he unfolded it and read the brief lines written on it.
Sergeant Gibson requests that you call him at your earliest convenience.
Rutledge took out his watch and looked at the time. Far too late to find Gibson at the Yard.
He began to unpack, with Hamish rumbling at his back.
IT WAS NEARLY ten o’clock the next morning before Rutledge could reach Gibson.
The sergeant said, “It wasn’t a piece of cake. But I found the engraver.”
“That’s very good news,” Rutledge applauded. “I’m grateful.”
“You won’t be,” Gibson retorted, “when you hear what I have to say.”
The brooch had been engraved in a back street in Glasgow nearly three weeks before it had been “found” in Glencoe. It was a small shop that specialized in buying and selling jewelry. The owner was frequently asked to remove or change the engraving on items left for resale. But he seldom had the opportunity to use his skills on a piece that had no previous markings on it. He had objected when the man who brought in the cairngorm brooch insisted that the work appear older than it was. But the price agreed on helped overcome any qualms he might have had.