Starting with the Army and the Saxwold medical records. And in the meantime, I need a very good excuse to call on the fiscal again!”
Rutledge put in his call to London, setting in motion the search for the past movements of one Alexander Holden since the end of 1915. “I particularly need to know when and for what periods of time he was in England. And see if you can find any trace of a Major Alexander, also at Saxwold at the right time. But odds are they’re one and the same.”
Old Bowels, delighted to hear that Rutledge had found a possible solution to the mystery of Eleanor Gray, said expansively, “Well done!”
“We aren’t ready to say that Holden’s guilty of anything. We can’t find any trace of Miss Gray after the spring of 1916. He may have driven her to Scotland and left her anywhere from Berwick to John o’Groats. Alive. And if she’s the mother of the child, she didn’t die in the spring!”
“Well, bring him in and ask him what he knows. There’s enough evidence for that, at least?”
Rutledge thought: If this is a man who survived capture by the Turks, he’ll tell us what he wants to tell and nothing else.
The Fiscal was just leaving his office when Rutledge reached Jedburgh. They almost collided in the doorway, the fiscal surprised to see him and stepping back with courtesy. “Inspector. What brings you here?”
“Have you a moment, sir? It’s rather important.”
“Have you made progress with the list of names I gave you?” Burns reluctantly turned and led Rutledge back to his office. Passing through the reception room, he asked his clerk to bring them tea. “For I shall be missing my own, no doubt!”
Taking the chair behind his desk, he motioned Rutledge to the one across from it. Rutledge sat down. “Now, then. What’s this about?” the fiscal demanded.
“I’ve been trying to find the man who drove Eleanor Gray to Scotland. Connecting her to Fiona MacDonald has not been as successful.”
“There’s the brooch, man. I should have thought that was sufficient!”
“The brooch connects the accused to the bones found in Glencoe. I’m afraid it has done little to shed further light on whose bones these are.”
“We already have a match of height and age, we have the proper timing of the death. We have the fact that Eleanor Gray went missing in the spring of 1916. And you tell me there’s the strong possibility that in that spring of 1916 she came to Scotland. To wait out the birth of her child, I should think, where her circumstances did not embarrass her friends and her family.”
“Yes. At present I’m hoping to carry matters a step further by tracing Eleanor Gray’s movements closer to the time she was delivered.” He paused. “If this child is Lady Maude Gray’s grandson, it will have repercussions. For her. And for the solicitors who represent her daughter’s sizable estate. Lady Maude-” He hesitated. “Lady Maude is a woman of considerable influence and distinguished connections.”
“Indeed.” The fiscal’s clerk brought in the tea with a plate of sandwiches and a packet of biscuits. Rutledge accepted the cup and the sandwich offered him. Burns went on. “I’ve actually given some thought to the fact that a guilty verdict at the trial will most certainly establish the boy’s heritage. It is one of the reasons I’ve chosen to let him remain where he is for the time being.”
“I’ve been making my way through the list. Did your son have friends here in Jedburgh? I might add one or two names through them.”
“The first two names I gave you were local men. As I told you at the time, they’re dead and not likely to be involved.”
“Did your son have friends in Duncarrick?”
“Robbie went to Harrow, and until the war the majority of his friends were either from there or in the law. He visited Duncarrick a time or two, but I don’t recall anyone in particular he might have known there. Better to describe them as my friends. Certainly I’d have told you if I’d known of any connection!”
Hamish agreed with Rutledge: Unless the fiscal was lying, that meant Holden had never mentioned any meeting with Rob Burns in London.
He finished his sandwich and accepted the offer of another. They were small but very good. The fiscal had already eaten both of his and began to open the packet of biscuits. His appetite was about to be spoiled In his mind, Rutledge could hear Fiona’s voice saying, “ The father is an ordinary man. Just-an ordinary man…”
Hamish tried to stop him, but he said aloud, “I must tell you, I think that if Eleanor Gray bore a child, there is a very slim chance that the father of her son might be your own. It strikes me that for some leniency shown by the court at her trial, Fiona MacDonald might be persuaded to name the man. I have a strong feeling that she knows who he is. That Eleanor confided in her before she died.”
The fiscal frowned ferociously at him. “If my son had been seriously attached to a woman of Eleanor Gray’s background, there would not have been a clandestine affair. Robbie would have come directly to me and to Lady Maude and made his intentions clear! He would have done the honorable thing!”
“Forgive me, sir, for being direct. You weren’t fighting in the trenches. These were young men who did things out of need and fear that they would never have thought to do in 1914. They loved where they could and when they could, knowing they were going to die. If your son could have settled his affairs before returning to France, I’ve no doubt he would have. Eleanor wanted very much to study medicine. She may have asked him to wait-”
“Preposterous nonsense!” the fiscal said, glaring at him. “I will hear no more about it! My son was still in mourning for his dead fiancee-”
“You’ve made an enemy!” Hamish was saying. “It’s no’ wise-”
“Another excellent reason to wait, I should think,” Rutledge said, ignoring Hamish, and then he backed off. “I can’t tell you that any of this is true. I do know that friends of your son believed he loved Eleanor Gray as much as she loved him. Young men who served with him, to whom he would never have lied about his feelings. Eleanor and her mother quarreled shortly before her disappearance. The timing indicates it was after your son had returned to the Front but before his death. Perhaps Eleanor told Lady Maude that she wanted to marry a country lawyer, not a title. Lady Maude, however, refuses to discuss the quarrel.”
“I will not hear another word! I will not believe that that child in Duncarrick is my son’s bastard! I don’t care who the mother was!”
Like so many bereaved fathers, Fiscal Burns had kept a holy image of his dead son in his heart-the dutiful, honorable young man who had died bravely for King and Country. Reared in another age, believing in other ideals, he could not contemplate the possibility that love had clouded duty in his son’s last days. It would be a betrayal of that pure image, born of the child the fiscal had watched grow up to manhood and march off to war. A Tennyson knight in khaki.
“There’s no dishonor here. He’d have married Eleanor Gray. But he died before she could tell him she was carrying their child. I cannot, in good conscience, believe otherwise.”
Rutledge stood as he finished saying it, then thanked the fiscal for tea before adding almost as an afterthought, “I don’t know what will become of that child in Duncarrick. But if he is abandoned by everyone, it will be sad. His bloodlines appear to be impeccable.”
As he walked out of Burns’s office, disregarding Hamish and the heavy silence he’d left behind him, Rutledge was well pleased with the seeds he’d sown. Turning his car around, he headed back to Duncarrick.
He told himself he’d spiked the guns of Alex Holden. If Lady Maude did come to accept her grandson at the end of Fiona’s trial, she’d find herself with two contenders for the boy’s father. And there was some safety in numbers.
In Duncarrick, Rutledge considered his next move.
If Alex Holden was as clever as it appeared he was, it would require more than an inspector of police arriving at his door to shake his nerve.
On the other hand… single-minded people often were victims of their own intense preoccupations. It was where they were most vulnerable.
It was late the next afternoon before his opportunity came.
Rutledge had lain in wait in the filthy, half-decayed stone pele tower, where he could watch the drive that led to the Holden farm.
When a motorcar came barreling down the drive and turned toward the town, Rutledge could see quite clearly that Holden was alone behind the wheel.
