Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [0]
Title Page
Dedication
Praise
Chapter 1 - 1916 GLASGOW
Chapter 2 - 1919 DUNCARRICK
Chapter 3 - 1919 LONDON
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
THE MURDER STONE
1
2
3
About the Author
Also by Charles Todd
Copyright Page
For L.
with love . . .
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF CHARLES TODD
LEGACY OF THE DEAD
“SUPERB . . . CLAIM[S] OUR INTEREST AND HOLD[S] US FAST UNTIL THE LAST CHILLING PAGE.”
—Romantic Times
“READERS WILL CONTINUE TO BE CAPTIVATED BY TODD’S PORTRAIT OF THE DANGEROUSLY UNRAVELING DETECTIVE, AND HIS EQUALLY INCISIVE EVOCATION OF THE GRIEVING POST-WAR WORLD.”
—Publishers Weekly
“MUCH MORE THAN YOUR AVERAGE ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE MYSTERY.”
—Mystery Lovers Bookshop News
A TEST OF WILLS
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
“TODD GIVES US A SUPERB CHARACTERIZATION OF A MAN WHOSE WOUNDS HAVE MADE HIM INTO A STRANGER IN HIS OWN LAND, AND A DISTURBING PORTRAIT OF A COUNTRY INTOLERANT OF ALL STRANGERS.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“TODD DEPICTS THE OUTER AND INNER WORLDS OF HIS CHARACTERS WITH AUTHORITY AND SYMPATHY AS HE CLOSES IN ON HIS SURPRISING—AND CONVINCING—CONCLUSION.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“THE EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL CARNAGE IN WORLD WAR I IS USED TO REMARKABLE EFFECT.”
—Chicago Tribune
1
1916 GLASGOW
THE TWO WOMEN SAT HUDDLED TOGETHER IN THE small carriage, looking around them in dismay, staring at the filthy, closed-in street, the drunken old man sprawled in one of the doorways, the tall tenements ugly and bleak and perilously ill-kept. There was no grace here, only an air of despondency and gloom and poverty.
“It’s a horrible place!” one said at last. She was the elder, but not by much. They were both young and very frightened.
“Are you quite sure this is the street we want? I can’t believe—” Her companion, the reins lying in her lap, let the words die.
In answer, the passenger dug in her purse for the tattered piece of paper, pulled it out, and read it again. Her lips were trembling, and she felt cold, sick. “Look for yourself. Oh—” The paper slipped from her fingers, and she caught it just before it tumbled into the fetid running gutter beneath the wheel.
It was the street and the house they had searched over an hour to find.
There was silence, only the rain and the whistle of a train somewhere in the distance making any sound at all. The horse waited patiently.
“You’ll remember, won’t you?” the older woman went on breathlessly. “I’m Mrs. Cook. And you’re Sarah. My mother had a housekeeper called Mrs. Cook. And a sewing woman called Sarah. That makes it easier for me—” She stared at the house. “It’s a cursed place, dreadful.”
“I only have to remember who you are. And I’ve called you that all day. Mrs. Cook. Don’t fret so—you’ll make yourself ill!”
“Yes.” She smoothed the rug across her knees, felt its dampness.
The horse blew, shifting uncomfortably in the rain.
Finally the older woman squeezed her companion’s hand and said, “We must go in, Sarah. We’re expected. It must be nearly time.”
They climbed stiffly out of the carriage, two respectable young women looking as out of place here as they felt. The stench of bad sewers and boiled cabbage, overlaid with coal smoke and dirty streets, heavy in the dampness, seemed to wrap itself around them. A miasma of the city.
They made their way up to the door, stepping over old newsprint and brown sacking that had been turned to the consistency of porridge by the downpour. Lifting the latch, they could just see down a dark, awful tunnel that was only a rubbish-littered hallway but seemed like the final path to hell.
The door they were after was the second on the left, a barely discernible Number Three on a grimy card marking it. Someone shouted “Come!” to their tentative knock, and they found