A cold treachery - Charles Todd [97]
“I can't tell you—this is a personal secret. It has nothing to do with murder!”
“Then I'll go directly to Cummins.”
“No—you mustn't! He isn't aware that I know. And he mustn't learn how I discovered the truth. It will hurt him.” She made a deprecating gesture. “It was in a bout of drunken self-pity that Vera told me. She asked me afterward if she'd said anything out of line. ‘Betrayed any family secrets,' was the way she put it. And of course I had to tell her she hadn't. It would have sent her directly to the bottle again if she'd realized—” She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. “I respect Harry. I respect how much he's suffered. Don't ask him!”
“Then you must tell me and let me decide for myself whether it's important information or not.”
Her face judged him, and he could feel himself flush under her scrutiny. “I understand that we have five unsolved murders,” she said quietly. “Six, for all we know! But it doesn't give you the right to hurt people. That makes you no better than the killer.”
He found himself wanting to plead with her for understanding, as if her good opinion mattered to him. What was it about this woman, bound to a wheeled chair, that made a man feel the need to stand tall in her eyes?
Before he could say anything, she went on in the same quiet voice. “It wasn't what he'd done. It's what he was. They were furious with her for marrying a Jew. Even though he'd changed his name and didn't practice. No one else knows—except me.”
“Edward the Eighth had a number of Jewish friends.” But even as he said it, Rutledge knew that that had done little to change the stigma for ordinary people.
“They were rich. It—made a difference.”
“And so the Cumminses moved here, where he could pass as a Gentile, and build a respectable life.”
“Until the war, when no one had the money for holidays. Nor the spirit. The hotel—like Urskdale as a whole—counted on walkers. When they didn't come, life was hard for everyone here.”
“What brought you north?” he asked again. “If it wasn't Harry Cummins?”
“A broken heart,” she answered. “But that's none of your business, Inspector.”
Mrs. Cummins was sitting in the small parlor, forlornly leafing through an album of photographs. A fire was blazing on the hearth, and the room for once felt reasonably warm. She looked up as Rutledge came in. “I'm so sorry, I shouldn't be in here—this room is always reserved for our guests. But it's so much easier to heat than anywhere else.”
“Why not enjoy it?” Rutledge asked. He sat down in the chair on the far side of the hearth from her. “You're our hostess.” He paused and then said, “Have you always lived in Urskdale?”
Hamish broke in repressively, “It's no' right to take advantage of her!” But there were things Rutledge needed to know. And he could see that Vera Cummins was especially vulnerable just now. As if sitting in her own parlor had reminded her of what had been—or ought to be.
“Oh, no, I came from London. Kensington,” she told him. “Do you know it?”
“Yes, indeed. Does your family still live there?”
A frown shadowed her face. “I don't know. They haven't told me. We aren't—close.”
“Did Miss Fraser know them?”
“No, I asked her that when she first came here. But she didn't. Elizabeth's family lived in Chelsea. Near the hospital, in one of those lovely old houses. I should have liked to live there after we were married. But of course Harry wasn't—happy in London.”
“And so you came here.”
“Actually we went to Warwick first. But it didn't work out. We had no friends to speak of. It was very lonely.” She smiled wryly. “I didn't know the meaning of that word lonely until we came here.”
“Why?”
“We weren't born here. My grandfather was from Buttermere, but he's been dead for years. Oh, people were nice enough, but they kept us at arm's length. Harry needs people more than I do, and I could feel that weighing on him.”
But he thought she, too, had missed being a part of what social life there was here. “Is any of his family still living?”
“Oh, no. That's why he—could do what he did. Walk away,