A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [127]
Hamish said, “Truth or only wishful thinking?”
It was something neither parent would discuss with a young girl, but a loss that would send the father to bury himself in his work and leave the mother to mourn for what might have been.
“Do you know if the doctor who cared for Mrs. Parkinson is still in practice?”
“My goodness, no, Dr. Butler died six years ago of a heart condition. His son was going to take over the practice, but then the war came along.”
So much for verifying her supposition.
He drank his tea as the housekeeper rattled on about her work and the family she had served, small anecdotes that she had taken pleasure in remembering through the years.
“I don’t expect you’ve ever seen a photograph of her. When they was first married, Mr. Parkinson said he’d like to have her painted. She was such a pretty thing, Mrs. Parkinson. Fair hair and blue eyes, a real English rose, you might say. It was a pleasure to look at her when she was all dressed up for a party or to travel up to London. Blue was her color, it brought out the softness of her skin, but she could wear most anything. They made a handsome pair, I can tell you. Him dark, her fair…”
When he’d finished his tea, he thanked her and rose to leave.
“I shall have to mention to Miss Rebecca and Miss Sarah that you were here,” she told him as she saw him to the door. “If they ask. And if you could see fit to forget anything I may’uv said out of turn, it would be a kindness. But you being a policeman and all, it’s not like gossiping with the greengrocer’s wife, is it?”
He promised to respect her confidences, and walked back to his motorcar, thinking about what she’d told him.
A miscarriage could change the relationship of husband and wife. Most certainly if the doctors had told her she mustn’t have another child. The emotional impact of loss and grief could have frightened children who didn’t understand what had happened. They would certainly have felt the great distress wrapping their parents in shared sorrow, and they might have felt left out of it. Something like that could shake the safe world a child was accustomed to living in.
It went a long way toward understanding the sisters’ anger and even explained to some extent why Mrs. Parkinson had finally killed herself, if she had never quite come to terms with her grief. But it didn’t explain patricide.
Hamish said, “She died many years later.”
“I don’t know that time has anything to do with grief, but yes, it must have added to her burden.”
He’d spoken aloud from habit, and caught himself up.
Hamish said, “Aye, ye can pretend I’m no’ here, but you canna’ turn around to see for yoursel’.”
It was true, the one thing Rutledge dreaded was seeing the face of a dead man. However real Hamish was, he was lying in his grave in France. And if he was not…it didn’t bear thinking of.
The housekeeper, Martha, might not have believed in ghosts, and for that matter, neither did Rutledge. The voice in his head had nothing to do with dead men walking. It was there because Hamish had died, and there was nothing he could do to change that. It was his punishment for killing so many of his own men, for leading them over the top and across No Man’s Land and coming back without a scratch