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.”
“Yet you say she rather liked him and was upset when he went back to France.”
She bit her lip. Caught in her own tangle of truth. She turned and walked to one of the windows, looking out with her back to him. After a silence, she said, “I think the dark one, the one she liked, was named for a poet. How odd-I had forgotten that! Yes, I’m sure he was the one. There was some joke about it the first time he came. We asked if he’d read from his works-teasing, of course! And he said he might, after a good dinner. But he never did. A charming man with a charming accent. I hope he survived the war.”
So Mrs. Atwood had seen him more than once…“There are a number of Scottish poets,” Rutledge said gently.
“Yes, I know. How absolutely maddening! I remember the teasing-I remember his smile as he answered. I remember that his father was in finance-”
It was Hamish who made the leap, quite unexpectedly. “Robert Burns.”
Startled, Rutledge repeated the name aloud.
“Yes! They called him Robbie!” she responded, turning back to him, her face brightening with a becoming flush. He couldn’t be sure whether it was relief at having the answer handed to her or chagrin that he had caught her out. “He had a small house in the Trossachs. That’s in Scotland, I’m told. Though heaven knows where it is. I remember he said he ought to have been named Walter Scott, because he lived in the wrong place for a Burns. How odd that I should recall that so clearly now!”
Rutledge felt a surge of hope. The Trossachs lay in central Scotland, almost halfway between Glasgow to the south and Glencoe to the north. There must be, Rutledge thought, a thousand men in Scotland called Robert Burns. Of every age and station and background. But a young officer with a house in the Trossachs-that could narrow the search enormously. Yes, and with a father in finance.
Finance-banking or- He tried to keep his voice level, his words without emphasis. Hamish was hammering at the back of his mind, almost drowning what he was saying. “Was his father by chance a procurator-fiscal?”
But her face was blank, as if she had never heard the title before. Shaking her head, she gestured to the chairs neither of them had taken. “Please, do sit down! May I offer you tea or a glass of something?”
Buying time, Rutledge said, “Yes, I’d like a cup of tea.”
She rang for the butler, who must have been hovering nearby, expecting shortly to show Rutledge out, and gave her instructions.
As Rutledge sat in the nearer chair, he said, “Tell me about Eleanor Gray. As you remember her.”
“She knew her worth. But she was never condescending. A dependable friend. Good company as a house guest. Independent. She told me once that she had no real hope of becoming a doctor-her mother would see to it that no one took her seriously. I think that’s why she was a suffragette. It seemed frightfully vulgar to me, but Eleanor laughed and called it an adventure. I think it made her mother furious, and that pleased Eleanor. They never saw eye to eye.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She adored her father and would have done anything he asked. But he never told her what to do or not do. He said she should please herself. It was odd how much she loved him. I thought he cared for her, but I could never quite see it as love. Some fathers dote on their only daughters, you know. Spoil them, that sort of thing. But Evelyn Gray was- fond of her. Merely-fond. Perhaps they had little in common…”
She let the thought trail away as the butler arrived with tea. Hamish warned, “It’s no’ like her to talk so much.” Rutledge agreed.
Mrs. Atwood thanked the butler and dismissed him, settling herself to pour. As she handed Rutledge his cup, he said, “Why did Eleanor Gray want to be a doctor? It’s an odd choice, given her wealth and social position.”
“Ah, that was something I never fully understood. Humphrey-my husband-rather thought it was a passing fancy, with the war and all. But I don’t see it that way. At a dinner party once, Eleanor said that doctors were woefully ignorant and uninterested in what caused diseases. She argued with the Army doctors, too, when she felt it was warranted. She cared intensely about the patients, but it wasn’t sentimental in any way. It was practical and realistic. She would have made a good doctor, in my view.”
Rutledge said, “And when she didn’t contact you for three years, you accepted the fact that she must be in America? If not Boston, then somewhere else there.”
She was silent so long, he thought she didn’t want to answer the question. Hamish, responding to the odd tension in the air, said, “You made the right decision, coming yoursel’. ”
Then Mrs. Atwood replied, “You’ve made me afraid. The police. You and Sergeant Gibson. The last time I spoke to Eleanor she was in London-it was a strange conversation. She said something-I thought she must be a little drunk that night, and I was worried that she was contemplating driving to Scotland in that condition. And she said, ‘I could die.’ And I took it to mean she was so happy, she could die. But what if that wasn’t what she meant- what if she truly wanted to die.. ..” Mrs. Atwood looked at him, pain in her eyes. “Was there some terrible accident? Is that what happened?”
“No,” Rutledge told her. “It wasn’t an accident. It’s more likely that someone murdered her.”
She turned so white, he thought she was going to faint, and was halfway out of his chair.
“No!” she said in a strangled voice. “No-I’m all right. It’s just-” She tried to breathe deeply and instead her breath caught on a sob. “I’ve never known anyone who was murdered-that’s horriblehorrible -”
“If she was driving north with a soldier to spend his leave in Scotland, she must have known him well enough to go with him.”
“Of course she must! Eleanor wasn’t the sort who-who used the war as an excuse to behave as she pleased. She wouldn’t have gone with a stranger, or a man she didn’t trust.” There was conviction in the low voice.
“Was it Burns that she went to Scotland with, Mrs. Atwood?”
“I tell you, I can’t remember! You can ask the servants- they might-”
“Would you have tried to stop her if she was about to do something-silly?”
“I-” She broke off, caught between her own emotional dilemma and his dark eyes watching her face. They seemed to see into her soul.
“You must tell me the truth, Mrs. Atwood. A lie won’t serve you or me.”
When she spoke, her voice was husky with shame. “I-I was hurt that she wasn’t coming for the weekend, I told myself she was happy, while I was wretched. There had been no letters from Humphrey for weeks, and I’d just received word that he was being listed as missing. I knew what that meant-he was dead but they hadn’t found his body yet. I hadn’t even told my mother-I could hardly bear to believe it myself! And to have Eleanor let me down when I’d been counting so on her company-to go larking off with someone, half drunk with champagne, most likely, sounding quite unlike herself-it was-I couldn’t tell her about Humphrey then, could I? I was angry-angry and upset. I didn’t care to know, I didn’t want to know what she was doing! I hoped she’d end her week just as wretched as I was-” She stopped and then went on almost against her will. “That’s why I refused to be worried when she didn’t come back or call me. I was still angry-I told myself she wasn’t a friend at all, it was better if she went her own way. She’d gone to Scotland and could stay there forever, as far as I cared. Then I got word that Humphrey was alive and safe, and I didn’t want to think about anything else-I didn’t want to remember how badly I’d behaved.”
She regarded him with hurt, frightened eyes. “If she died that night-it was my fault, in a way. For letting her down. For not worrying when she didn’t call at the end of the week, or come down, or write. I punished her for being happy when I wasn’t, and then I put it all out of my mind, deliberately.”
As he drove toward London, Rutledge tried to set out in logical detail what he had learned from Mrs. Atwood and her servants.
Hamish said, “There’s still no name to put with the Gray woman’s companion.”
“No. But there’s a connection now between Eleanor Gray and Scotland. The wrong side of Scotland, but it’s a start.”
“Aye, but it would ha’ been better if there was no connection at all. If she’d gone to America.”
“We have to find this man Burns if we can.”
