A cold treachery - Charles Todd [18]
“Not all that well.” She smiled, her face lighting with it. “Up here, there isn't what you'd describe in London as an active social calendar. We see each other at market or at baptisms and weddings, often enough at funerals. But I've met them. A very nice family. Gerald has”—she stopped and bit her lip—“had a sizeable sheep farm he'd inherited from his father.”
She set the pot of tea beside Rutledge and then brought him a fresh cup. He had noticed that everything was to hand, rather than on high shelves. It appeared the kitchen had been designed for her. “Go on,” he urged.
“Gerald ran the sheep himself—except during the war years, when his brother, Paul, managed the farm for him. Then Gerald received a medical discharge and came home to take it up again. But while he was in hospital near London, he met Grace Robinson, a widow with two small children—the missing boy and a little girl. They fell in love and were married. Only, as it turned out, she wasn't a widow. Her husband had survived in a German camp, and came home to find his family gone.”
“And no way to trace them,” Rutledge observed, “since she had remarried.”
“Exactly so. It was the Army's fault, not his or Grace's. His name had been confused with another man's. Robinson is common enough. I expect it wasn't really easy, at the Front, to keep up with who was captured or wounded, and who had died.”
Rutledge remembered the thousands of dead, Hamish among them. Stacked like logs, rank with the stench of blood and rotting flesh. And others blown to bits, listed simply as “missing.” “I expect it wasn't,” he answered simply.
She sighed. “At any rate, they were married, Gerald and Grace, with twins on the way by the war's end. And then Robinson reappeared out of the blue. It was a shock for Grace. She hadn't seen her husband since Christmas of 1914, and even the boy, Josh, hardly remembered him. And yet—there he was.”
“A dilemma of major proportions,” Rutledge agreed. “How was it resolved?” He took one of the cakes and bit into it. Rich with egg and sugar and butter, it reminded him of boyhood treats, not the austere cooking of wartime and postwar, when many commodities were hard to come by.
“Amicably, surprisingly enough. I expect a divorce was quietly arranged, because Gerald and Grace were as quietly remarried before the birth of the twins. Robinson gave his blessing, or so I was told. The war had changed him, he said, and he didn't know how to begin again. It was rather sad.”
This wasn't the first marriage that had come apart with the long separation of the war. Some couples made do with what they had, especially when there were children, and others lived in silent wretchedness, enduring what they couldn't afford to change, socially or financially.
Hamish said, “It's as well ye didna' marry your Jean. But I'd ha' given much to ha' wed Fiona.”
It was a frequent source of contention between the two men—how shallow Jean's love had been, while Fiona had remained faithful to Hamish, even after his death. Rutledge still envied Hamish that depth of love.
Hurrying past that hurdle, too tired to argue with the voice in his head, Rutledge said, “Where does this Robinson live now?”
“Near London. Poor man, someone will have to break the news to him. I'm glad it isn't my lot.”
“And Urskdale? Did the village take these events in stride?”
Miss Fraser replied thoughtfully. “It was a nine days' wonder, of course. The whole affair. Gossip flew like smoke. And afterward everyone settled down again into the old way of thinking. Grace is—was—a lovely person, and we liked her well enough as herself.”
Her words ran together and then faded. Rutledge set his cup down with great care, aware that he was losing his battle with sleep.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that if I don't see my bed very soon, you'll have to step over me to prepare breakfast.”
He had meant it lightly, but was all at once reminded that Miss Fraser sat in a wheeled chair and was not likely to step over anyone.
Silently swearing at himself, he said abruptly,