4
Lady Maude Gray lived in an imposing house that could be described as palatial. It sat in a vast acreage of park-land that gave it privacy and offered fine views from all its windows. The village of Menton, which lay on the main road a mile and a quarter beyond the massive stone pillars that flanked the long drive, had been moved to its present location in the eighteenth century. Not even its church steeple was visible from the attics of the house. Where the village had once stood, a very fine allee of trees and grassy lawns led to a reflecting pool that mirrored a cloudless sky.
It had once been, Rutledge thought, glimpsing the sun-washed house in the distance as he made his way up the drive, a fortified abbey in the Middle Ages, but later architects had created a country house in the ruins, with the choir and apse of the abbey church, presumably the family chapel now, comprising one wing. The arched buttresses flowed smoothly upward toward a pinnacled roof, and the gray stone of the house fabric matched them to perfection, giving a sense of great age to the entire dwelling. The west front, the main entrance, boasted a graceful spread of steps rising from the drive; a formal garden set with an ornate fountain gave human dimensions to the spectacular view across the countryside that spread out beyond it. Hamish, regarding the view, grumbled, “A lonely place, this. You can hear the wind and feel the emptiness.”
To his Calvinist soul, the house itself was ostentatious and unwelcoming. For a man used to the crofts of the Highlands, often a heap of stone in the lee of a hillside, there was no room for display in the struggle for survival.
As Rutledge climbed the steps, he found himself wondering what his godfather would think of the effect achieved here. David Trevor felt the power of stone and mortar in his blood, a man whose eye and taste were trained but whose natural response to building had made him one of the most successful architects of his day.
He felt a sudden surge of guilt that he hadn’t replied to the invitation from his godfather, but there was no way to explain why the prospect of leave was anathema. The press of work would have to be his excuse.
Hamish said, “It’s no’ a lie, is it? Though ye’ve chosen it yoursel’. And I’d no’ care to come home now…”
The knocker, shaped like a pineapple-the symbol of hospitality-fell back on its plate with a heavy throm that seemed to echo through the house.
Eventually, a majestic butler opened the door, staring at Rutledge with cold disdain. His white hair, brushed to silver, and his height would have done honor to the lord of the manor. Lord Evelyn Gray, however, had been a short, stocky man with dark, curling hair and an iron-gray beard. Rutledge had seen him in London on a number of occasions before the war.
“Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard,” he said briskly into the silence. Hamish bristled in the back of his mind, an angry counterpoint to the icy regard. “I wish to see Lady Maude Gray.”
“Her ladyship has no business to conduct with the police,” the man replied, preparing to close the door in Rutledge’s face.
“On the contrary. The police wish to express regret for past misunderstandings, and I have been sent from London to offer this apology in person. It would be rude of her not to hear it.”
The butler looked Rutledge up and down. Rutledge smiled inwardly. If the intent had been to intimidate, it was a signal failure. Haughty the butler might be, but it was a reflection of his mistress’s importance and not his own. Sergeant-Major MacLaren, on the other hand, had been a different matter. A glance could quell an entire battalion. No one dared question his authority; it came direct from God. It was said that even officers walked in fear of him, and most certainly Rutledge himself had deferred to the man’s wisdom and experience on a number of occasions.
What the butler saw was a tall man with a thin face who was clothed in a well-cut suit and a firmness that matched his voice. Something in the dark eyes moved the butler to change his mind and say at last, “Wait here, if you please.”
He returned after nearly ten minutes. “Lady Maude will receive you in the library,” he informed Rutledge, and stepped aside to allow him to enter.
Rutledge walked into a columned hall that reminded him of a Greek temple. The floor, paved in marble, was smooth as cold ice, and the staircases-a pair-flaunted their airy grace as they rose like swans’ necks on either side of a niche where an exquisite Roman copy of a Greek Apollo was subtly lit. The stone face, slightly turned and limned by the light, reminded him all at once of Cormac FitzHugh. He buried the memory as swiftly as it had risen.
Hamish said, “Pagan, this is. Like the mistress, no doubt!”
How had the missing Eleanor Gray seen it? Rutledge wondered. Had she played here as a child, sliding across the shining floor, peals of laughter echoing among the columns? Or had it seemed cold to her, forbidding?
A long gallery led off in either direction, with French carpeting, busts on pedestals, and dark paintings of ancestors in massive gold frames.
“There’s space enough here to hold half a regiment,” Hamish said, his voice disparaging. “Aye, and a military band to sit and play on yon stairs.”
The library was a vast room down a passage on the first floor and was undoubtedly chosen to overawe a mere policeman. Its windows rose floor to ceiling, and books filled glass-enclosed shelves. The cream-and-rose carpet on the floor was so old, it had the sheen of antique silk, and the woman waiting for him in the center of it knew that it set her off like a jewel.
Hamish fell silent, in its own way homage.
Lady Maude was a tall woman with silver-gray hair and the carriage of an empress. Her afternoon dress was dark blue, austere in contrast to the handsome double rope of pearls that fell nearly to her waist. In her day she must have been quite beautiful, for the vestiges of beauty were clear in the bones of her face, her violet eyes, and the long, slender hands lightly clasped in front of her. She barely acknowledged the butler’s quiet murmur. “Inspector Rutledge, my lady.” The door closed softly behind him.
“Inspector,” she said as he inclined his head. After a moment, regarding him coolly, she added, “At least this time they’ve had the sense to send me someone who is presentable.”
“I haven’t met Inspector Oliver, my lady. His sense of duty, however, is something I understand, as you must yourself, having been born to it.”
“I will not listen-” she began, but he cut lightly across her words.
“I am not defending him, I assure you. I am merely pointing out that for any policeman, one of the most painful duties is to inform someone of a loved one’s death. If it was not your daughter the Scottish police have found, the sooner they know it, the sooner they can find her true parents. Another mother will have to bear that grief. If you were fortunate and this is not your child, then spare a little pity for the woman who has lost hers.”
She stared at him in astonishment, something moving behind her remarkably expressive eyes. He thought, Her daughter is missing – Then she said, “You came, as I understood Kenton to say, to make an apology.”
“Yes. For the fact that Inspector Oliver did not handle this matter as well as he might have. That was unfortunate. I’ve come in his place to tell you that if you can give me assurances that this young woman discovered on a Scottish mountainside is not your affair, then we can move on to other names on our-”
“She is not my child. My daughter is alive and well.”
“And you have heard from her within the past-er-six months?”
“My relations with my daughter are not open to public scrutiny!” She scanned his face again, noting the tiredness, the thinness. Beneath them, she realized suddenly, was a will as strong as hers.
Rutledge listened to Hamish for a moment, heeding the warning that patience was not Lady Maude’s long suit. A change of tactics was in order.
“Very well. I accept that. Perhaps you can help us answer a puzzling question: Why has your daughter not contacted her solicitor to sign papers relating to her inheritance? I’ve read his statement. He expressed some concern that she failed to appear at the time set in 1918. In fact, his last correspondence with her was in 1916. He has made a concerted effort to locate her in the past year, and failed. It was his anxiety that was communicated to the local police, and this year, when a query about a missing person was circulated by the Scots, it seemed prudent for them to speak to Miss Gray. If only to reassure everyone that she could be safely struck off the list. If you could provide me with her direction, I have the authority to close this matter immediately.” His attitude was cool, as if Eleanor Gray was of concern to him only if she was dead.
