vicious clutches!”
“In what sense, vicious?”
“Dorothea is a silly goose who never did any harm to anyone, and all he can think of is whether she has unconfessed sin on her soul. On the subject of sin, he’s worse than the Inquisition, that man! And she’s driven to despair thinking that nothing she does is worthy of him. That’s why I offered her a room here-I thought it would be the ultimate cruelty for her to live under Elliot’s roof. It has been an inconvenience and a hardship, but I take great satisfaction from the fact that when she’s here, she isn’t scrubbing and hauling coal and cooking and washing up and fetching the laundry back from Mrs. Turnbull’s, not to speak of the other heavy tasks he puts on her. All because he’s too miserly to hire another girl. He took her in, you see, when she had no work, and he never lets her forget the duty owed him for that kindness!” Her eyes blazed.
He was on the point of asking if Fiona MacDonald’s child could have been Dorothea MacIntyre’s, and then stopped himself. Mr. Elliot’s housekeeper was no guardian of secrets, her own or anyone else’s.
12
The Bedrock of police work was the statement, A record of every witness questioned, scrupulously preserved in evidence.
Rutledge walked back to the station and asked Constable Pringle if he might read statements taken down when Inspector Oliver interviewed everyone who had received one of the letters denouncing Fiona MacDonald.
Pringle handed him a thick file box and said tentatively, “They’re in proper form, sir.”
“I’m sure they are.” He smiled, took the box, and moved one of the chairs nearer the door, giving himself a semblance of private space. Sitting down, he untied the red string. Pringle went back to his own work, glancing up from time to time. As if, Hamish growled, Rutledge were not to be trusted.
Ignoring that, Rutledge lifted out the papers inside and began going through them.
Mrs. Turnbull, laundress. “I’m a respectable woman. I don’t have anything to do with the likes of her. ” Question: Have you ever done her washing? “No, I have not, and I thank God for it!” Question: Why, then, would someone send you such a letter? “Because they know I’m a good Christian, that’s why. And I’d lose custom if it got around that I was taking in washing from whores!”
Hamish, incensed, swore.
Mrs. Oliphant, neighbor. “It was a warning to mind where my husband was of an evening. But I didn’t need it, did I? Hadn’t I seen her slipping out of the inn late at night, while her aunt was still alive?” Question: Did you speak of this to Miss MacCallum? “I did not. She was ill, dependent on Fiona. It seemed a cruelty.” Question: Do you know where Miss MacDonald went when she left the inn so late? “I’m a decent woman, I don’t go prowling about in the dark.” Question: How often did she do this? “I saw her with my own eyes four, or maybe even five times.” Question: What direction did she take? “It was always the same, away from the town.” Question: How can you be so sure it was a lover Miss MacDonald went to meet? “Because I went out to that pele tower the very morning I found the letter on my doorstep. To see for myself if it was true. I found a bed of straw where a part of the roof had tumbled down and left a dry corner behind a heap of stone. And it smelled of lavender-that’s her scent!” Question: But you wouldn’t have thought to go to the tower if the letter hadn’t suggested it. “Oh, I’d wondered, right enough! Where else might a whore have some privacy?”
Hamish said bitterly, “Can ye no’ see that it’s what they want to believe?”
Or someone had been a step ahead of Mrs. Oliphant, and set the scene she was expecting to find…
Mrs. Braddock, neighbor. “I’ve seen how my husband looks at her! He’s often offering to do work at the inn. But he isn’t eager to keep up his own house, is he? I’ve been after him to paint the kitchen for six months.” Question: So you believed the letter you found? “When it said my daughter was playing with a bastard and learning nasty things at the inn? Yes, I did. I had sometimes watched Ian while Miss MacDonald was out, and she’d returned the favor. He’d been no trouble at my house, but how was I to know what went on in hers?”
The silence from Hamish was thundering.
Mr. Harris, shoemaker. “She’d come in for her shoes, and was polite as you please. I never guessed, until the letter came! I’d known Ealasaid MacCallum for fifty years-she was a good woman, a good Christian. She wouldn’t have allowed such things to go on. It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is!” Question: Had you visited the inn? Before the letter came? “Aye, that I had. It was a respectable place for a pint of an evening. There was always good company, and a man could sit and talk with his friends. The Ballantyne, now, it’s all well and good, but crowded. You can hardly hear a word said to you!” Question: And while you were sitting in The Reivers, there was no indication-as far as you knew-that Miss MacDonald might be using the upstairs rooms for indecent purposes? “I should have guessed when Fiona took over tending bar herself. None of the MacCallums ever had! I said to Mrs. Harris, it’s not right, mark my words, no good will come of it. Ealasaid would never have agreed to it. Fiona blamed it on the war, and necessity, help being so hard to find, but it still wasn’t proper.” Question: Did Miss MacDonald ever offer you an opportunity to visit upstairs? “I’m a married man!”
“Aye,” Hamish commented through clenched teeth, “and sorry for it!”
The writer of these letters, Rutledge thought, thumbing through a dozen more statements, had been very clever indeed. Possibly too clever? She-or he-had known Duncarrick well, to choose the letters’ recipients with such unerring accuracy. The seemingly untutored handwriting and the cheap stationery were no more than carefully thought-out trappings. This could not be, in his opinion, the work of a jealous wife or a jilted lover, driven to striking out.
The widow whose husband had died in the war: “I thought she might be more sympathetic to my suffering, having lost her own husband. But she wouldn’t talk about Corporal MacLeod. Now I doubt he ever existed!”
The elderly woman who cleaned the church: “I went to Mr. Elliot, I was that upset! That she should be sitting among us, a two-faced harlot. And Mr. Elliot said he’d prayed over her from the start-she hadn’t worshiped with what he believed to be sincerity-”
“Is it likely yon Mr. Elliot has written these abominations?” Hamish demanded. “He claims he sees the weaknesses of people-”
It was something Rutledge had been considering. To teach Fiona a lesson? If so, it had gotten out of hand…
Another woman with small children: “Young Ian had lovely manners. I never guessed that he was what he was- but blood tells, doesn’t it? In the end, blood tells! I’m so grateful that dear Ealasaid never lived to see this day. It would have been horrid. She was so happy when Fiona came-”
A woman who had been close to Ealasaid MacCallum: “I can’t sleep at night thinking how this would have hurt dear Ealasaid. I’ve known her since she was a girl, and it would have broken her heart to find out how she’d been-used- in this fashion. It won’t surprise me at all if Fiona is a murderess! Look how she treated her own flesh and blood-she knows no shame!-”
Hamish railed, “The shame’s hers -”
“It’s human nature we’re dealing with here,” Rutledge answered. “Don’t you see? The first stone has already been cast. When the police interview the next person, he or she wants to be counted among the righteous. It doesn’t prove anything except that people as a rule are easily led.”
Rutledge put the statements back in their original order and set them in the box. It had been unpleasant reading. Someone-Constable McKinstry, he thought-had likened Fiona MacDonald’s situation to the hysteria of witch hunts in the 1600s. And so it was. Fiona’s sin-if there was a sin- had been to keep to herself. Many people had held that against her and at the first test showed neither generosity nor trust.
In choosing so carefully, the writer of the letters had been successful in destroying Fiona MacDonald’s good name.
But were there other people, reluctant to step forward in the face of overwhelming public opinion, who privately might help?
Rutledge went back to the square and at random stopped several women doing their day’s marketing. The first one was red-faced, with graying hair straggling out of the tight bun at the nape of her neck.
Introducing himself, he explained that he was searching for anyone who could give him information about Fiona MacDonald’s history before coming to Duncarrick.
