will recognize you, and so will Dr. Wilson.”
“No! No. No.”
“The child is yours,” he repeated. “But your husband believes it’s Eleanor Gray’s.”
She lifted her eyes to stare at him, startled eyes that were wide with shock. As he watched, she bit her lip, a thin line of blood marking the place.
Rutledge said, “And you’ve allowed him to think that’s true.”
Her hands reached for him, taking his arms just below his shoulders, holding him with a fierce grip that was a measure of her need. “No- you don’t understand. He knows it’s mine. Dear God, he knows. But he can’t-he hasn’t found out these things you’ve discovered. He isn’t the father, you see! He will never have children by me, I’m ruined, I can’t have more. And he hates me for that. He hates Fiona. And most of all, he hates my child. If I ever tell him the truth, even to save Fiona, he will see that the boy is given to us to raise, and then he will take the greatest pleasure in destroying him! My husband has powerful friends-the fiscal, the Chief Constable-Inspector Oliver- barristers in Jedburgh and Edinburgh. He can arrange it. He will even claim that he was Eleanor Gray’s lover if he has to! Alex will stand there in public and lie to them all, and in the end, they’ll let him have his way. The only way that Fiona and I can truly protect Ian is for her to die and the child to be left to the mercy of strangers.”
It took him a quarter of an hour to calm her down again. She was shaking so badly, Rutledge feared for her, but when he offered to summon Dr. Murchison, she refused to let him. Instead she asked for a sherry, and he found the decanter by the window, poured her a glass, and held it while she sipped it.
A little color came back into her face. The shaking stopped. But she was beginning to think clearly again too. Rutledge asked once more about the doctor.
“No, I mustn’t call him just now. He’ll see I’ve been crying and demand to know why I was so upset. He’ll tell Alex. And Alex will question Margaret-our maid. You must leave here and I shall say to my husband that you came to ask after my health because you’d found me ill by the pele tower and were concerned.”
“Will he believe you?”
“I don’t know.” She took a deep breath. “Yes. I’ll make him believe me. I haven’t any choice. He has held this thing over my head for months now. Since he came home in the spring. And I take the greatest pleasure in not breaking. But sometimes-sometimes the strain is so great, I can hardly breathe. My chest hurts with it.”
“How could he have found out? About the boy?”
“When I had the influenza, the doctor must have told him I’d borne a child. Or when I had the chill, I might have said something in my sleep. I was feverish, I sometimes woke crying out for-for someone. Alex is very clever; he began to see that I had-that there was something I hadn’t told him. How he connected all this with Fiona, I don’t know. We’d been so very careful! But once his suspicions were aroused, I wouldn’t put it past him to go to the inn of an evening and search the family quarters. Who was there to see when Fiona tended bar! There was a christening gown. It had been my grandmother’s. Or perhaps he saw my face when I looked at Ian. So I stopped making excuses to pass The Reivers.”
“That still isn’t strong enough-”
“Yes. You don’t know him. He’s very clever, I tell you! It started when he began asking me where I was in 1916 when he called from London to say he was sent home to recover from wounds. I wasn’t here, you see-and I wasn’t here when he called to tell me he was being sent on to France. Over and over he’d ask where I was, what I was doing, who I was with-until my very silence answered him! It was after that that he must have learned somehow that I’d borne a child. He would bring me small gifts-a blue baby’s shawl. A small rattle for a teething child. A rocking horse he said he’d found in Edinburgh and knew I’d like. The servants thought it was a loving promise of children, when I was better. But I can’t have any more children! The nurse who bathed methe doctor- someone must have told him there was a child!”
Rutledge shook his head. “He must have discovered something. Did you meet Fiona? Was there any communication between you?”
“We met at night sometimes, at the pele tower. But after Alex came home, we stopped. Drummond-I don’t know, he’s very loyal to me and my family. He wouldn’t have told anyone what he knew. Drummond brought me home, you see, from Lanark, when I was well enough to travel. But his sister was jealous of Fiona. Sometimes jealous people see more clearly. And Alex is a master at finding out secrets. He was trained to spy.”
“The persecution of Fiona was a test?”
“The anonymous letters? At first, yes. To make me tell him what he wanted to know. But I wouldn’t, and it escalated. He spread lies to Mr. Elliot and to Oliver-to the fiscal and other influential people, for all I know-until they came to believe that they’d thought of it themselves! When McKinstry didn’t search the stables, it was Alex who persuaded Inspector Oliver to go back. He reminded him of those old murders, before the war, that hadn’t been solved. That pricked Oliver’s pride. Alex knew the Jacobite bones must be hidden somewhere-he’d come across an old story about them in some of my father’s papers. That was to be the end of it, but by that time, Inspector Oliver was rabid to find a body. And throughout the whole ordeal, Alex would come home and tell me what he had been doing that day to make Fiona’s life unbearable. And watch me, until I could crawl off somewhere and hide my anguish!”
“Mrs. Holden. How did your husband come to know Eleanor Gray?”
“I’m not sure that he ever did. I’ve never heard him speak of her at all.”
“There’s some evidence that he could well be the man who drove her north, just after Captain Burns died. If he did, he may have been the last person to see her alive. I’d come to believe that he was after the boy because young Ian might inherit Eleanor’s fortune once it was established that he was her child.”
“He knows Ian is mine-it’s revenge that drives him, not money!” she cried. And then pressed her fingers against her eyes as if they ached. “I haven’t the strength to worry about this Gray woman too. I have enough sorrows already.” She looked out the window. “I should never have given my child life. I went to Glasgow once, did you know? Fiona took me. To a place where abortions were done. Never mind how I found out about it, another poor, desperate woman had gone there and later confided in me. But I couldn’t go through with it. I loved Ian’s father, you see. In spite of my fear of being found out, I loved his father…” She lay back, her eyes shut. “I love him still…”
Hamish said somberly, “Holden is driving her into her grave-she’s likely to die before Fiona’s trial! Does he no’ ken the risk he’s taking?”
I don’t think he does, Rutledge answered silently. It would spoil his game if his wife died prematurely. He wants the name of her lover, and he wants his wife to see that she’s caused an innocent woman to die a fearful death. Damn the man!
But contrary to what Mrs. Holden had said, Rutledge believed Holden had known that Eleanor Gray’s body lay in Glencoe. He might even have been clever enough to see how useful it could be. A remarkably tidy way of punishing Fiona and ridding himself of the past. The problem was, this was going to be bloody difficult to prove!
He stood up. “What do you want me to do, Mrs. Holden? I can’t bring your husband in and charge him-there’s only your word against his that he’s responsible for what happened to Fiona MacDonald. People would believe him if he told them your health is frail and that your mind has been affected by it.”
“There must be a way to stop him! You-I can’t go on like this! I can’t live with Fiona’s life on my conscience, and I can’t buy it back without destroying my child! I have come to hate Alex-but he’s the albatross around my neck, and I cannot be freed from it.”
“Will you kill someone for me?”
He heard Fiona’s voice quite clearly in his head.
“Tell me-did you live in Brae before your son was born?”
She nodded. “I was desperately in love. He-Ian’s father-was in Glasgow for some time and we met when we could. I was happy. I had closed the house here-with the horses gone and the servants leaving, it was an excuse.”
“And the initials on the christening gown?”
“My maiden name. I was born Madelyn Elizabeth Marjorie Coulton. But I was afraid to use it in Brae or the clinic. Because, you see, he’d gone back to sea and not long afterward was killed.” She stopped, let her voice steady once more. “He died and I had a baby on the way. I stayed in Brae as long as I dared, hiding the pregnancy as best I could. Then I took a hotel room in Glasgow for a time before going to the clinic. There was nowhere else that I dared to have the child. If Alex had died, of course, I’d have claimed that Ian was his. But Alex was alive and
