Rutledge smiled. Interested, are you? “London. Carlisle. York. Your choice.”
Angry, Drummond said, “I won’t be taunted, policeman. Or made fun of. If you found the clinic, you found a name to put to that child. And to the child’s mother. Is that true?”
“Yes. I was given a name. It isn’t one I know.”
“And where might she be found now? On a hillside in the Highlands, bare bones with the corbies for company?” Something had changed in Drummond’s face. A tightness of the muscles under the eyes. A tension along the jaw.
“In her grave,” Rutledge answered, suddenly wary. He could feel the powerful emotion building in Drummond’s bulk. Why did Drummond care so much? Or if it wasn’t that-if he wanted the information for another reason- why the intensity? He added carefully, “If you know what’s best, you’ll leave her there. In her grave.”
“Why?” It was a growl.
“Because she’s safer there. And the child as well.”
“Which still leaves Fiona MacDonald in the hands of the hangman!”
“Not yet. Why should it matter to you?” Rutledge asked.
Drummond glared at him in hot, fierce silence.
“I’ve met no one else in Duncarrick save Constable McKinstry who gives a tinker’s curse for what becomes of her,” Rutledge repeated. “Why should you?”
Silence still.
Rutledge added, “Is it the tilt of her head when she listens to you? Or the smile in her eyes when she laughs-”
The fury erupted. “I’ll rip the tongue from your head!” He lunged, fast for such a big man, his fist grazing Rutledge’s cheek. But Rutledge had already stepped aside, catching Drummond’s wrist as he went off balance, turning to twist it high behind his back, forcing him hard into the edge of the bar as momentum carried him forward. Drummond was breathing heavily, well aware of the strength he possessed as he struggled against Rutledge’s weight-and nearly turning the tables. Rutledge’s fingers bit deeper into the man’s wrist, and he could feel the elbow strain.
“No, you listen to me, Drummond! If Fiona MacDonald is going to live, it will take more than you or I or anyone else can do to save her. Do you hear me? She’s doomed. And that child will grow up in an orphanage, believing what they tell him about her. If he remembers her at all, it will be with loathing.”
Drummond roared, swearing to kill Rutledge.
“Then help me, damn you!” Rutledge ended through clenched teeth.
He let the arm go and moved out of reach as Drummond swung around like an angry bear, his other fist just missing its mark. “I’ll help you to your grave -!”
“Touch me again and I’ll have you taken up for assault!” Rutledge warned him. “And if you’re in a cell, your sister will be the only one left to care for that child! Will she want that responsibility?”
He watched the battle behind the big man’s eyes, saw the furious desire to pound his fists into Rutledge’s face, saw the driving hunger to hurt. Dammed-up anger, too long restrained, long stored, needing release. And then saw, too, the swift victory of clear reason that overcame the wrath.
Rutledge tried another strategy. “Look, I’m sorry. But I can’t trust you if you won’t trust me. Do you see that? If I tell you whatever it is I believe I know, how can I be sure that it won’t reach the wrong ears?”
“What wrong ears?” Drummond was hardly coherent as he added thickly, “There’s a score to settle between us. The time will come when it will be settled.”
He brushed past Rutledge and went out the door, his breathing harsh and his anger still palpable. The clump of his hobnailed boots echoed through the bar.
Hamish, breathing nearly as hard, said, “It wasna’ clever to make him an enemy!”
“No, it wasn’t clever. But I think it was useful. He knows something, that man-or is afraid he knows something. And it must be damning, or he would have stepped forward in the beginning!”
“He lives next door-he might have seen what he shouldn’t.”
Rutledge shook his head. “Whatever it is, he won’t be made to talk.”
He found the cat, carried her to the bedroom where he had seen the indentation on the pillow, and set her there. She curled herself around, lay down, and began to spin, her purr a heavy sound in the silence.
“Fiona?”
Rutledge said the name aloud. The cat turned and looked toward the door of the bedchamber, ears pricking. But there was no one on the stairs. She went back to kneading the pillow, her eyes half closed.
Suddenly claustrophobic, even in the large, sunlit bedroom, Rutledge turned and left.
Rutledge returned the inn’s key to McKinstry and went back to The Ballantyne. There was still a quarter of an hour before luncheon was served, and he went up to his room. Opening the door, his mind on Drummond, he stepped inside and then stopped. The hackles on the back of his neck rising in warning, he closed the door quietly behind him and stood there, just inside the empty room.
Hamish said, “It’s no’ the same-”
Someone had been here.
Not the maid. She had come and gone while he ate his breakfast. Even if she’d returned with fresh towels or to close the windows, his mind would have recorded that without thinking about it.
This was different.
And instinct told him it was not a friendly intrusion. Something below the level of conscious thought had pricked down his nerves. The war had taught him to heed instinct…
He moved around the room, carefully searching with his eyes but touching nothing. Whoever it was had been very thorough, going through his belongings with painstaking attention to where each item had been before. But he-or she-had made certain that Rutledge would know his privacy had been invaded. His shirts in the drawer of the chest. His shoes on the rack in the wardrobe. The way his ties were folded… Each had been moved. Each had been put back very nearly where it had been. But with just enough change to catch the eye of a man looking for change Because the atmosphere had changed. It was alien. Hostile.
Drummond?
Rutledge hadn’t survived four years in the trenches without learning the skills of the hunter-and developing the sixth sense that kept the hunted alive.
Nothing had been taken. He was sure of that. The intent had been to show him his own vulnerability, not to steal.
It was, in a way, a gauntlet thrown down.
And not as a challenge.
More a very coldly calculated threat.
I can touch you-but you cannot touch me.
It was the first mistake that had been made in what had been-to this point-a very skillful game.
Rutledge was joined at lunch by Inspector Oliver.
He made a circuit of the dining room, greeting first this person and then another, once stopping to listen to a man by the window and then laughing quietly as if he appreciated the humor of what had been said.
Hamish said, “There’s a man wi’ something on his mind.”
Finally arriving at Rutledge’s table, Oliver pulled out the empty chair on the other side and signaled to the middle-aged woman who was serving this noon. She came over, smiling, and said, “Would you like the menu, then, Inspector?”
“Thanks, Mary.” He nodded as she handed it to him, then turned to Rutledge and said affably, “What’s that you’ve ordered? The roast ham?”
“Yes. It’s quite good. Who are the people over there-the table by the fireplace?” He had seen the man out by the pele tower. But his interest was in the woman-he had questioned her about Fiona.
Oliver peered in their direction. “That’s Sandy Holden. Landowner. Had a horse farm, now trying to get by with sheep. He’ll make it. A good man.”
“And the woman?”
“His wife, of course. Madelyn Holden.”
“She looks as if she might be ill. Lungs, at a guess.”
“Good God, no. She nearly died from the influenza last autumn. Hasn’t got her strength back yet. The doctor
