child might have been a temporary gift to Fiona, to keep until the mother was ready or able to reclaim him. Until she had done what she had intended from the start to do, study to become a doctor?
And Fiona, already planning for the child, wanting the child, coveting the child forever, might have decided that she couldn’t bear to give him up.
Hamish added, pain in his voice, “It’s what they’ll say. It’s what they’ll want to believe. Unless the mother is found alive, to bear witness for her!”
15
Rutledge put the tin box back where he’d found it for the time being, and was already on his way to the stairs, when a thought struck him.
His sister Frances had found in a small cedar chest belonging to their mother the carefully preserved christening robes that the two of them had worn. Wrapped in tissue, these were still white and soft, with lacy bodices and a wide band of matching lace at the hem, small caps frilled with lace and the tiniest of tucks, long ribbons for bows under the chin. Little knitted boots with blue or pink ribbons to tie them. Frances, who seldom cried, had said in a husky voice, “She never held grandchildren-mine or yours. It must have grieved her.”
As if that was the ultimate wrong to the dead…
And in the center of each long skirt, hanging down almost to a grown man’s knees, let alone an infant’s, had been a large embroidered oval with entwined initials in white satin thread.
His had been his great-grandfather’s christening robe, carefully handed down from generation to generation. Frances had worn their grandmother’s. A family tradition that had meant much to people proud of their heritage And surely, even if she had abandoned her baby at birth, Eleanor Gray would have seen to it that he was christened properly, and in a long white gown. Not, perhaps, the one that had been passed down through the Gray generations, but most certainly one that was suitable to the occasion. Unless it had been borrowed Rutledge turned around at the head of the stairs and walked swiftly back down the passage. While Fiona had had the front room, there were two more at the back, one empty with a neatly made bed covered with clean sheets to keep off the dust, and the other a small boy’s realm, with a toy chest, a clothes chest, a dresser, and a crib.
Rutledge went first to the clothes chest. It was nearly empty. Here were only the outgrown dresses and stockings and tiny shoes kept for memory’s sake. A small, pretty blanket for a baby that had seen much service. A blue velveteen coat with a matching cap, and a threadbare stuffed horse, one ear chewed off and one leg missing. At the bottom, carefully preserved in tissue and lavender, was a christening gown. He took it out and unfolded it with gentle hands.
Hamish saw it before he did. An embroidered half-circle of entwined letters, this time in the bodice.
Rutledge carried it to the window and examined it closely. Beautifully shaped initials with tiny forget-me-nots in the spaces.
MEMC.
But did it stand for Maude Cook-or Mary Cook? Or someone else?
By the time McKinstry had come back to report to Rutledge, he had already put the gown back in the bottom of the clothes chest and dropped the lid.
The man that Rutledge had encountered in the barn was standing outside the door as the constable and Inspector stepped out on the pavement. McKinstry, key in hand, turned to greet him. At the man’s side stood a small, untidy boy of three or four. He was tall for his age and sturdy, with dark hair nearly the color of Rutledge’s, and gray-blue eyes that were darker in the sunlight than they might have been by candlelight.
“I’ve come to feed yon cat,” the man announced abruptly, his eyes on Rutledge in condemnation.
So you know who I am now, Rutledge thought, and don’t like it. I wonder why…
“I didn’t know you had a key,” McKinstry was answering, surprise showing in his face.
“Aye, you don’t leave a house to mind itself. I’ve had a key since Ealasaid MacCallum took her father’s place.”
“I don’t know-” McKinstry said again, but the man cut him short.
“The cat’s to be fed. Are you taking her, then? The lad will grieve for her. And he’s lost his ma already.”
McKinstry said, “Very well, then, as long as you don’t touch anything!”
The man glared at him. “I’ve no’ touched anything of anybody else’s since I was his age and didn’t know better!” He inclined his head toward the child.
Hamish had been saying something, but Rutledge had found it hard to make sense of it-he himself was silenced by the doleful stare of the child.
This, then, was Ian Hamish MacLeod.
Rutledge felt his heart turn over. A handsome child, this was. A small, lost child.
Rutledge dropped to one knee, and the man holding the boy’s hand stepped forward, tense and prepared to intervene. But something in Rutledge’s face stopped him; he stepped back again.
“Hello, Ian,” Rutledge said, trying to speak through a constricted throat. This might have been Hamish’s child if he’d lived. This might have been Jean’s if she and Rutledge had married in 1914- “Going to see your cat, are you?”
Ian nodded. His eyes solemnly moved across Rutledge’s face and then to McKinstry’s. McKinstry must have smiled as he said “Hallo, Ian,” because the child smiled and it was as if the sun had come out. The eyes filled with light and with warmth, and the sadness vanished.
“Is Mama here? Has she come back?” he asked breathlessly.
“No, but I have seen her,” Rutledge said. “She’s well, and she misses you.” He looked at the man’s face and dared him to contradict him. But the man didn’t, and although McKinstry stirred at Rutledge’s back, he, too, said nothing.
“When will she come back?” Ian insisted, anxious now.
“Soon, I hope,” Rutledge answered. “I’ll do my best to bring her home.”
The boy’s eyes swept his face again, as if to judge how truthful he was. Then he nodded, turned to the man holding his hand, and said, “Clarence?”
“Aye, we’ll be feeding her. As soon as these gentlemen have gone away.”
“Good-bye,” the child told them, his voice firm. “Clarence is hungry.”
“Clarence?” Rutledge questioned as they walked away and left the odd pair to do their duty by the cat.
McKinstry’s eyes crinkled. “Well, there was a litter of kittens, you see, and Peter, the old man who worked in the stables, brought the boy one of them. Peter had named her Thomasina, after another cat he’d once had in the stables. But Ian has called her Clarence instead. I wondered why at the time, but haven’t thought about it since.”
Hamish, finding his voice, provided the answer. The Davison children had had a fog-gray cat by that name. And Fiona must have told Ian about the litter that Maude Cook had never seen…
As they walked back toward the hotel, Rutledge asked McKinstry who the man was.
“His name’s Drummond. He and his spinster sister live next to the inn, and Fiona chose to leave the boy with them. She said he’d be less frightened with people he knew.”
And people she trusted? It was worth bearing in mind…
When McKinstry had gone on his way back to the station, Rutledge retraced his steps and came to a halt outside the house where the Drummonds lived.
It was the house he had noted before, the one with the extension in the rear and the windows with unexpected symmetry.
His instincts told him that Drummond and the child had not come back from feeding the cat. He wondered if Drummond allowed the boy to play with the toys in the chest, or sit on his mother’s bed and hold Clarence.
When Rutledge knocked at the door, a woman of middle age answered, her fair hair drawn back and tight curls adding a softness around her face. She brushed these back, as if afraid the caller on her front step might take them for a softness in her as well, and said, “If you’ve come to see Drummond, he’s not in.”
“Miss Drummond? My name is Rutledge, I’ve been sent by Scotland Yard to look into the matter of the parentage of the boy you have in your keeping.”
