He gingerly climbed out of the tower, brushed himself off, and set out on the long walk in to the farmhouse.
Extensive and attractive gardens had been laid out around it, with trees forming a screen in front of the vast stables that ranged back to the pastures beyond. Jacobean in style, the house had a wide terrace leading to the door and handsome gables rising above the old glass in tall windows. The property had been made more fashionable a hundred years earlier, with lawns and beds and vistas, Rutledge thought, but the core was much older.
He crossed the terrace with long strides and rapped at the door. An elderly woman in a black dress came to answer his knock, and looked at him with a disparaging expression. He realized that there was still straw on his shoulders. Grinning, he said, “I’ve come to see Mr. Holden. Rutledge is the name.”
“Mr. Holden isn’t in, I’m afraid. We don’t expect him back for another two hours.”
“Ah. Then perhaps I might speak with Mrs. Holden.” The tone of his voice was pleasant but firm. This was not a request to be rejected.
“She isn’t feeling well today, sir.”
“Then I shan’t keep her long.”
The maid invited him into the cool, high-ceilinged hall, dim after the sunlight on the road. It was Scottish baronial, with banners hanging from the rafters and targes ringed with pistols and dirks and swords, like sunbursts on the stone between the high windows. The furnishings were more comfortable, a long table by the door and a grouping of chairs around the cold hearth that took up half the side wall. The maid asked him to wait there, and Rutledge walked around studying the array of weaponry. It was, he thought, real-not Victorian replicas of lost family heirlooms.
Many of the swords were claymores, the dreaded double-bladed weapon of the Highland Scots, capable of cleaving a fighting man in two. The blades were rough-edged in places, as if they’d met with bone. Battle swords, not dress swords. He moved on to look at the dirks. They were the famous skean dhu s, the black knife of the Highlander, worn in the cuff of the stocking.
He smiled, looking at them. Not the elegant ones with cairngorms in the hilt and stags carved in the sheath- these weapons were plain and deadly, with horn to fit a man’s hand in the handles and blades honed to razor sharpness.
The Scots under his command had taught him how to use them-a London policeman who could wield them now with the best of Mrs. Holden’s ancestors. It was, he thought, a commentary on war, that from farmers and sheepmen and workers in the whiskey distilleries a man dedicated to preserving law and order had learned how to kill silently. Not a skill to be proud of…
He was studying a collection of flintlocks when the maid returned and led him to a back sitting room, where Mrs. Holden was lying in a chair with her feet on a low stool. She smiled at him and offered her hand as the maid closed the door behind him. “I have to thank you again for rescuing me. Have you come to see how I’m faring?”
“Yes. You look much better.”
“I endured a very firm lecture from the doctor. I’m trying to mind his instructions. May I offer you something? Tea? A sherry?”
“Thank you, no. I’ve come to talk to you about your husband.”
Her face flushed with surprise and wariness. “I’m afraid I can’t speak for him. Would you care to come another day?”
He smiled reassuringly. “I shan’t ask anything he wouldn’t feel comfortable telling me himself. He was in the war, I think?”
“Yes. Nearly the entire four years. It was a very long war for him.” Something in her face told him it was very long for her as well.
“I’m trying to find anyone who might have served in France with Captain Burns. The fiscal’s son. Can you tell me if your husband knew him?”
She seemed relieved. It was a very simple question. “I’ve met the fiscal myself once or twice at the home of the Chief Constable. But I don’t believe I’ve ever met his son, nor have I ever heard my husband speak of the Captain as a friend. I believe, in fact, that he was killed in France.”
“Yes, that’s true. I expect my informant was wrong. I was told by a man in Durham that Captain Burns had been acquainted in London with someone from Duncarrick. Both men were recovering from their wounds and they had been out to dine on at least one occasion with friends of Eleanor Gray.”
This was a name she knew. “I’ve been told that she’s the woman Miss MacDonald is accused of killing. How sad!” But the words didn’t have the right ring to them, as if they were spoken because it was expected of her. Not because of any deep-rooted sympathy.
“How well do you know Miss MacDonald?” he asked.
“Not-I told you before, I hardly knew her. To nod to on the street. To speak to in a shop. That was all.” She gestured with her hand, as if inviting him to look at the difference between her home and The Reivers. “We moved in different circles.”
“A pity. I’ve interviewed her often, but I can’t seem to break through the wall of silence she’s erected around herself. Nor will anyone help me. She will likely hang.”
Mrs. Holden smothered a cry.
Hamish called him callous and cruel, but Rutledge had a message he wanted conveyed to Holden. And this was the only way to do it. If Fiona meant nothing to Mrs. Holden, it would not be a lasting hurt.
“Surely-” she began, then stopped.
“I wish I could tell you differently. I wish I could prevent it. There’s no hope now. She’ll go to trial before the year is out.”
She cleared her throat but her voice was still husky. “And the child? What’s to become of it?”
“We thought in the beginning that the boy belonged to Eleanor Gray. But new information has come to light. I’ve traced the mother now-”
She turned very white and he went swiftly to her side, kneeling to take her hand. “Let me call your maid-”
“No!” She raised herself a little in her chair, and stared at him. “What do you mean, you’ve traced the mother?” The urgency in her voice struck him like a blow.
He said slowly, “We have a name. We have located the doctor who delivered the child. We can prove beyond question that the mother survived the birth, and was released from the clinic, where she’d been treated for rather serious complications.”
“Gentle God-so much!”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Have you told the police? Have you told Miss MacDonald? ”
“I’ve told Miss MacDonald. She denies it. But I don’t need her confirmation. I have my own.” He was no longer interested in conveying messages to anyone. As Hamish rumbled in his head, he kept his eyes on Mrs. Holden. She had come to the end of her strength. But her spirit was undaunted.
Rutledge realized with sudden anger that this woman was not ill. She had been tortured as severely as any suffering her husband had endured at the hands of the Turks. It was there, in her voice, in her face, in the stiff, angular agony of her body. She had been made to choose Her hands were shaking, and she buried them in the folds of her sleeves, where he couldn’t reach them. “I don’t believe you!”
“It’s true,” he said softly. “Do you want to hear the name of the child’s mother? Shall I tell you the name of the clinic? Shall I give you the initials on his christening gown? MEMC. Are they yours?”
She began to cry and fished for a handkerchief in her pocket, then pressed it to her eyes. “I’m childless. I feel dreadfully for this dead mother. It’s nothing more than any woman would feel-”
He waited. She began, slowly, to find the steel she needed. “You’ve upset me, I’m afraid. I must apologize. It’s the weakness I’ve suffered since the spring. Perhaps you’d better leave after all. I hope you won’t speak of this to my husband. He will only be angry with me for letting you stay when I was feeling ill.”
He admired her courage. He admired her strength. But there were other lives hinging on the truth and what he had to do must be done now.
“You are Mrs. Cook, aren’t you? And the boy is yours. Are you Maude Cook-or Mary Cook-or both? Mrs. Kerr
