Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [102]
“I wondered about it, that’s all.”
“It wasn’t mischief that lay behind the notes written about Fiona. If that’s what you’re getting at!”
“Not at all.” Rutledge changed the subject.
It wasn’t until he’d dropped McKinstry at his door that Hamish said, “He didna’ speak of the brooch to you.”
“No,” Rutledge answered. “He doesn’t want to accept what it means. For that matter, neither do I. If no one took it from The Reivers—” He left the thought unfinished.
Hamish told him, “She didna’ kill!”
But the woman in the back room of the police station was not the same girl that Hamish remembered haying in the summer of 1914, the sun warm on her face and laughter in her eyes. The day war had begun in a small town in an obscure province of the Austrian empire. Hamish had carried that memory with him to the trenches. Time stood still for him. It had moved on for her. In five years, people can change. . . .
LEAVING HIS CAR at the hotel, this time in the open rather than in the shadows of the shed, Rutledge went to the shop owned by Ann Tait.
She was folding lingerie into pale lavender paper, and a box stood ready at her elbow. Lifting the paper, she laid it gently into the box and arranged it a little to make it fit snugly. Then she put the lid on the box and set it aside before turning to Rutledge.
“Have you found your Eleanor Gray?”
“Not yet. But I shall. No, I’ve come about another matter. I was speaking with a Mrs. Cook. I can’t recall her first name. She’d stopped me on the street. A few days ago now. I must try to find her again. Can you help me?”
Ann Tait looked at him consideringly. “As far as I know, there isn’t a Mrs. Cook in Duncarrick. At any rate, she isn’t among my customers. There was a woman by that name I met in London. She was elderly and impossible. I didn’t like her.”
“Well, then,” he said helplessly, “who was I speaking with?”
“Was this a large woman? Overbearing in her manner?” He smiled as if relieved. In fact, he was. “Yes. I’m afraid so.”
“That was Mrs. Coldthwaite.”
“Yes, that’s it. Coldthwaite. I’m grateful. Or—should I be?”
Ann Tait nodded sympathetically. “Wretched woman. She comes in and tries on corsets half her size, then complains to me that my stock is ill-made. You’ll find her in the gabled house next but one to the baker’s shop. And I wish you joy of her!”
Outside on the street again, Hamish was roundly telling him that he had already broken his promise.
“No, I haven’t.”
“It’s no’ a name you can use with impunity here!”
“I have a feeling Ann Tait won’t repeat it to anyone.”
All the same, he paid a call on Mrs. Coldthwaite.
And paid the price for it. Once she had him in her parlor, her sole intent was to pry out of him whatever tidbits of potential gossip she could pass on. It was done graciously, in the name of concern for “dear Fiona.” But her eyes were cold and her mouth small, tight.
A “wretched woman,” Ann Tait had called her. Hamish preferred “vicious.”
She did, unintentionally, give Rutledge one piece of information he had not heard. The question was, should he treat it as dependable?
“We—my husband and I—were at a lovely dinner party in Jedburgh a week ago. The Chief Constable, Mr. Robson, and the fiscal, Mr. Burns, were there too. And I distinctly heard Mr. Burns saying to Mr. Robson that many of Fiona MacDonald’s sins would never come to light. ‘We shall try her for murder, and leave the other unpleasant facets of her character for God to judge.’ And when someone—Mr. Holden, I believe it was—asked Mr. Robson what was to be done with the child once the trial was over, Mr. Robson answered, ‘Mr. Elliot has spoken with an orphanage in Glasgow that trains children in various trades. He will go there if the victim’s family doesn’t care to take responsibility for him.’ It’s my understanding that they’re quite well-to-do and might find the child an—um—embarrassment.”
Rutledge silently swore. Hamish called Mrs. Coldthwaite “a gossiping auld besom.”
She watched Rutledge’s face avidly, her smile inviting him to enlighten her further on the subject of Eleanor Gray