by Charles Todd
“Could the shopkeeper give you a description of the man who brought in the brooch?”
“Better than that. It had to be left and picked up in three days’ time. A name had to be put down on the card.”
Rutledge felt his spirits soar.
“Tell me. What was it?”
“Alistair McKinstry.”
24
STUNNED, RUTLEDGE ASKED GIBSON TO REPEAT THE name. He did.
“I asked for a physical description as well.” But the engraver had relied on the name. “He finally told me that the man was Scots—medium height, medium coloring, medium build. He might remember more if you confronted him with McKinstry. Then again, he might not. He wasn’t interested in the man, only the work that he was being paid to do.”
Rutledge thanked him and slowly put down the telephone receiver.
He refused to believe it. In the first place, it made no sense. McKinstry had been Fiona MacDonald’s champion from the very beginning—
Hamish said, “He had access to a key to The Reivers.”
Fiona MacDonald had said that McKinstry had probably seen her wearing her mother’s brooch. He must have known that it existed. And it would take him only a short time to search Fiona’s room for her jewelry.
The brooch had become the final brick in a wall of evidence against her.
But why—?
It made no sense. Rutledge, a seasoned investigator, found it hard to accept. Hard to believe that he had misjudged a man so completely.
He took out his watch. And made a swift decision. His first stop was the police station. But McKinstry wasn’t there. Oliver was.
“Where have you been?” he asked jovially. “Still hunting for straws to make bricks?”
“In a way. Look, I’m going back to Glencoe. I want to see the place where the bones were found.” It was not something he wanted to do.
“You climbed up there with MacDougal. There couldn’t have been much to see. The bones are gone. The place has already been minutely examined by MacDougal’s men. A wasted trip, if you ask me.”
“I know. Put it down to stubbornness. At any rate, will you give Inspector MacDougal a call and ask him to meet me there? I’d be grateful if he can spare the time.”
“All right. If that’s what you want.” Oliver added, “I’m surprised to see you in Duncarrick again. Any news to give me on Eleanor Gray?”
“Not so far. I’ve got a list of names to sift through. That can wait until I see the glen again. I’d like to save myself all that trouble.”
Intrigued, Oliver said, “You’re saying we overlooked something.”
“No. I’m saying I might see things differently.” He took out his watch, trying to cut the conversation short. “I’ve got another stop to make before I leave.”
Oliver let him go. Rutledge walked back toward the hotel and then went on to the rectory. Mr. Elliot, Dorothea MacIntyre informed him, was out, visiting a parishioner who was ill.
“It’s just as well. Do you mind if I step in and leave a message?”
She moved back from the door, blushing, as if she had failed in her duty because she hadn’t thought to ask him for a message. He smiled at her. “It won’t take long.”
He walked past her, and she turned to a small table under the window, producing a sheaf of paper from the single drawer. It was church stationery. Rummaging, she came up with a pen as well, smiling in triumph as she handed it to him. She was almost childlike in her pleasure.
Rutledge scribbled on a sheet, I came to call this morning but must leave town for a day. If you have time when I return, I’d like to ask you a few questions. He signed his last name.
Folding the sheet, he handed it to her. Then he said, “Do you know Alistair McKinstry very well?”
“Know him?” She looked frightened.
“Does he attend services at the kirk? Is he a kind man?”
Relieved that Rutledge wanted only general information and had in no way suggested that she might be a particular friend of the constable’s, she answered shyly, “Yes, indeed, he attends regularly. And I think he’s kind. He’s always kind to me.”
“Yes, I’m sure he is.” He walked to the door. It was time for the question that had really brought him to the rectory. “When you were cared for in your illness by Miss MacCallum and her niece, do you remember a rather pretty cairngorm brooch that Fiona was fond of wearing?”
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 s
ee 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, playing with the children, that it might be pulled off or lost. She also had a bracelet from her fiancé, 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 fiancé 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 s
pill 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.”