A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [24]
She pressed her hand to her cheek as if for comfort. “What a terrifying start to the morning—”
“Come eat your breakfast, and don’t dwell on it,” Rutledge responded quietly. “There’s nothing you can do. Nothing I can do, for that matter. I’d only be in the way.”
With a twist of her shoulders as if trying to shake off her unsettled mood, she said, “I’d never realized, quite, how unpleasant your work must be. Dealing with such things.”
“No different, in fact, from a doctor’s surgery, where one patient has hiccoughs and another has a gall bladder.” He lied with a lightness that he didn’t feel. But it earned him a smile from Elizabeth. He reached for the jam pot and said in a more cheerful voice, “What would you like to do this morning? I’m at your service.”
She bit her lip. “Would it be too much to ask—could you help me go through Richard’s things? I haven’t been able to face it alone. And that’s not why I asked you to come and stay—but this isn’t starting out as the morning I’d planned—and—” She broke off, distracted by what she was trying to say. But the words wouldn’t come, whatever they were.
“I’ll help you,” Rutledge told her. “On one condition. That we try not to make it morbid. For your sake, if not mine.”
She nodded. “I won’t cry on your shoulder. Nor you on mine. This is what one does after a death in the family, isn’t it? A practical matter. Before the moths get into the clothes.” It was her turn to try for lightness; she failed wretchedly. “Oh, hell!” she ended bitterly. “Why couldn’t he have come home!”
Hamish answered her, but of course she couldn’t hear the words. “Because the guid died, and left only the dregs to make the new world . . .”
AS IT TURNED out, the morning passed uneventfully. The clothes hanging in the wardrobes no longer carried the scent of the man who had worn them in 1914. A faint mustiness had crept in, despite applications of lavender, and they had lost the personality that had given them vitality. Elizabeth folded and packed them as Rutledge took them out and handed them to her. The drawers of the chest were easier, their contents already folded, already in neat piles. In the top drawer, Elizabeth came upon a pair of cuff links engraved with initials. She held them for a moment in her hand, then passed them to Rutledge. “You gave him these—a wedding gift. Would you like them back to remember him by?”
He thanked her and took them. He’d liked Richard immensely, and had found in him a good friend. It was kind of his widow to remember that.
As the tall case clock in the hall struck the eleventh hour with its deep tolling chimes, they both paused in silence. Standing where they were, in the midst of their work, as a natural thing.
Rutledge thought he could hear the distant sound of the bagpipes that had buried Hamish MacLeod, but it was only a trick of the mind.
9
TEA WITH MELINDA CRAWFORD WAS TYPICAL.
She was in great spirits and refused to allow her guests to enjoy anything less. She chided Elizabeth for bringing a pot of honey, saying, “You know I’m not allowed to indulge in such things.” But the expression of delight in her eyes told them that she would enjoy it hugely.
Turning to Rutledge, she said, “Growing old is not for most people. It’s too trying. One daren’t eat this or do that, or even bend over to smell the garden flowers, for fear one’s back won’t straighten up again.”
“You seem to thrive on it, all the same,” he told her.
“Well, it’s most certainly better than the alternative.”
He looked around the room, found it unchanged from his last visit before going off to war. There were the personal possessions she’d brought home from India with her, beautiful carvings and silks, sandalwood fans that scented the warm air, and a small teak curio cabinet with ivory inlays, where she always kept smaller treasures. They were as fascinating as the stories she told about them.
It was, in a way, like stepping back into his own past, and he found it unexpectedly soothing.
She rang a little bell at her elbow, and tea appeared like magic, a wheeled cart with a silver service,