says it will come with time, but Sandy frets about her. It’s been almost a year, and she’s no better. Shame, really. She was one of the finest horsewomen I’ve ever seen.” He turned to the menu. “It’s the ham, then. Or-there’s stew. They put turnips in the stew here. I’m fond of turnips.” He set the menu aside and added, “I hear you drove to Winchester. On this business or another?”
“On this business. We found someone who remembered Eleanor Gray from her schooldays and had kept in touch. Until, that is, the spring of 1916, when Eleanor was expected to spend a weekend at Atwood House. But she called Mrs. Atwood at the last minute and said that she and a friend were driving to Scotland instead.”
“Ah!” Oliver looked keenly at Rutledge. “Friend. Male or female?”
“An officer she’d met some time before. At least we think it’s the same man. He had enough leave left to make the journey. She came with him. No one has seen or heard from her since, as far as I can discover.”
“Are you certain about the timing? Eleanor Gray couldn’t have borne the child in the spring!” He shook his head. “This Mrs. Atwood has got it wrong, I think.”
“I could die- ” Rutledge could hear Mrs. Atwood’s light voice repeating the words. No, she hadn’t got it wrong. Eleanor’s mood had aroused her jealousy. And later her guilt.
But he said aloud, “She needed a place of refuge for the next four or five months. Someone may have let her have the use of a house or flat.”
“I see what you’re getting at. If she’d stayed on in London, her little secret wouldn’t have been a secret very long.” Oliver gave the matter some thought. The people by the window got up to leave, distracting him. He said, “I had wondered, you know. How a woman like that could spend dreary months in some out-of-the-way Scottish village. Made no sense. Well, I saw the house she grew up in, it was a bloody palace! A flat now, in Edinburgh or Inverness, that’s more likely! But surely it would have been easier to find someone in London to rid her of the child.”
“She was too well known in London. She was too well known in medical circles particularly.”
“There are back streets where such things can be done discreetly.”
“At a price. She might have feared blackmail.”
“Then why not in Glasgow-Edinburgh-Carlisle? She’d not have given her right name or her direction. Easy enough if she’d had a mind for it. Such things went on in the war. She wouldn’t be the first-or the last.”
Rutledge thought of the clinic and Dr. Wilson but said, “Perhaps she wanted the child. Or, at the very least, wanted it to live. And as soon as that was accomplished, she walked away from it.”
“Then you’re saying that the accused had no need to kill the mother-the child was hers for the asking!” Mary came to take Oliver’s order, and he settled for the stew.
“Yes. It fits the timing.”
“Then why hasn’t she turned up since? You’re off the mark! Eleanor Gray is dead, and we’ve found her bones.” Oliver leaned back in his chair and scanned the room. Without looking at Rutledge, he asked, “What’s this I hear from the fiscal, that you want to take the accused to Glencoe?”
He had finally got to the subject that had brought him here.
“She knows the terrain far better than any of us do. I’d like to confront her with her crime. And watch what happens.” There were other reasons. He had not let himself think of them.
“Her lawyer will tell you it’s not on.”
“Then let him come as well.”
“A bloody circus!” Hamish put in.
“Then I’m telling you it’s not on! I see no purpose to be served,” Oliver said angrily.
McKinstry came through the door to the dining room and stood scanning the tables until he saw Oliver.
He crossed quickly to Oliver’s side, bent over, and said quietly, “You’d better come, sir. There’s a message from the police in Glencoe.”
“I’ll be there in a quarter of an hour. Damn it, can’t you see I’m in the middle of my lunch!”
“Yes, sir.” McKinstry straightened and started for the door.
Oliver threw his serviette in his plate and got up, swearing under his breath.
Rutledge was finishing his flan. He started to follow, but Oliver motioned him back into his chair.
“No, this is my end of things.”
Rutledge acknowledged his barely veiled order and stayed where he was. It never paid to argue jurisdiction with the local man, even when you were in the right.
Hamish said, “He’s no’ finished what was on his chest.”
“Just as well,” Rutledge retorted. For an instant he thought he had spoken the words aloud.
Ten minutes later Oliver was back. His face was grim.
“They’ve found something up the glen. We’re on our way. Where’s your motorcar?”
Rutledge explained.
Oliver nodded. “Well, you’d better come along, then. You’ll want to hear what’s said.”
Torn between duty and dread, Rutledge slowly got to his feet.
Glencoe had a long and dark history. The bloody massacre there on 13 February 1692, had left its mark in the very ground. And the great bulge of mountains that overshadowed the valley below seemed to hold a long and bitter memory in their barren rock.
MacIan of Glencoe had failed to take his oath to the King, William of Orange, by 1 January of that year. It wasn’t his fault; he had reached Fort William in time, but there he had been sent on to Inveraray. Still, a punishment was held to be in order.
Campbell soldiers were quartered on the MacDonalds.
The Campbells had lived peacefully for twelve days in MacDonald homes and eaten their bread and salt. Then, without warning on that dark, cold February night, the soldiers had risen from their beds and slaughtered men, women, and children indiscriminately. Those who escaped died of cold and hunger and wounds in the bleak, unforgiving hills. And for the handful of survivors, the name of Campbell was ever after anathema.
As Oliver’s motorcar passed Loch Leven and took the road south of the river that led into the heart of the glen, Rutledge could feel the press of time and anguish, just as he felt Hamish’s unspoken grief. He wished fervently that he hadn’t come. He’d planned to drive here with Fiona; he’d seen her as his shield against the glen, but he knew now, beyond question, that it would have been wrong then just as it was wrong now.
Even Fiona couldn’t protect him from the images in his own mind.
Not far from here, Hamish had been born, grew to manhood, and went off to war. This was land he knew so well, he had described nearly every inch of it to Rutledge the night before he died. It wasn’t imagination that peopled the great empty glen with memories, it was the stored knowledge of a lifetime. And the lasting voice of a soldier who had spoken softly in the candlelight but tellingly, the noisy darkness around the small makeshift hut they sat in notwithstanding, until Rutledge could have recited each and every word in his dreams.
As the miles rolled behind them, Rutledge relived that night with such ferocity that he was back again in 1916, even as he saw every turn of the road.
After a fashion, Hamish had come home.
19
It was a long drive. By the time they had reached the rendezvous point where an Inspector MacDougal was waiting for them, Oliver and McKinstry had fallen into weary silence, and Rutledge, sharing the rear seat with Hamish, was racked by the tension. It was not, by any token, an easy homecoming for either man. Rutledge had never expected to see and recognize landmarks that stood out now with such clarity. Nor had he expected to find here such a barrenness that in itself was beauty to someone who had seen it every day until the death of an obscure Austrian archduke had tumbled the world into war.
Glencoe was haunting-and haunted.
Ahead, where the unpaved road entered a narrow neck of the glen, they could see a motorcar pulled off to one side, under the frowning slopes. A man climbed down from the driver’s seat as they approached.
He was square, with flame-red hair and freckles so thick he seemed to be deeply tanned. Grinning at them, he raised a hand and called as Oliver slowed down, “Have ye brought the entire force from Duncarrick, then?”
