Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [107]
“How long did he stay at the Burns house?”
“He was to stay a week, and left after two days.”
“Did he tell you why he was leaving?”
“I didn’t ask. He brought back the key and thanked me. But it had rained every day. I suppose he found that depressing.”
“How was he wounded? Shoulder? Leg?”
“Sometimes it isn’t possible to tell, and I never care to ask. He was very brown. I did ask about that. He’d served in Palestine, he said.”
“Was he Scots?”
“Yes. He told me he was English, but he was Scots.”
“Would you recognize him if you were to see him again?”
She shook her head. “I expect I wouldn’t. He didn’t have a remarkable face.” She studied Rutledge, pushing her spectacles up on her nose. “You do. I’d remember meeting you.”
Rutledge said, “If you still have the key, would you allow me to go in and look through the house?”
She stared at him suspiciously. “Why should you wish to do that?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Oh, very well. Come along. But I warn you, I can’t stand on my feet while you take your time about it!”
She went off to fetch the key, and led him to a gate in the middle of the low hedge between the two properties. He looked at the house carefully as they made their way around back. If the bedrooms were on this side, Mrs. Raeburn might well know who had come to stay here. But if they were on the other side—
Mrs. Raeburn unlocked the garden door and bade him wipe his feet before he came into the house. He did as he was told, then followed her down a short passage to the kitchen.
As they walked in, Hamish objected, “There’s nithing to find here—”
He was right, the house would have been cleaned many times since Eleanor Gray had come here—if indeed she’d come at all. But Rutledge thought now he could guess the reason why she might have wished to. With news of Robbie Burns’s death, she had wanted to see the house where he lived. Where she might have lived as his wife. But where would she have gone from here?
Rutledge and Mrs. Raeburn walked from room to room. The dining room, the parlor, a small study. The furnishings were comfortable, with a number of lovely old pieces that Burns must have inherited, and a wonderful mantelpiece in the parlor. Upstairs there were two bedrooms, one on Mrs. Raeburn’s side of the house, and one on the other, with a sitting room in between. The far bedroom appeared to be the master bedroom, and Rutledge studied it with particular interest.
It held a large spindle bed, a wardrobe of carved mahogany, a maple desk under the window, several comfortable chairs, and a tall bureau that matched the wardrobe. He went to that and was about to open one of the drawers, but Mrs. Raeburn stopped him.
She didn’t hold with police prying into people’s lives, and told him so. “Not without a warrant!”
He turned to the bookcase. Law books for the most part. He touched the spines of several novels, a three-volume history of Scotland, and a collection of six works recounting travels to Europe. He pulled one out at random, expecting to hear Mrs. Raeburn scold him. But apparently books were not as intimate as the contents of a drawer.
It was the volume on traveling in Italy, many of the pages still uncut. He put that back and took out one of the law books. Robert Edward Burns was inscribed in handsome copperplate on the flyleaf. The novels held nothing of interest, and he moved on to the volume of travels in France. These pages had been cut, and from the way the spine fell open to “Paris,” the chapter had been read a number of times. He flicked through the pages, admiring the line drawings of cathedrals, châteaux, and statues, found nothing of interest, and was on the point of closing the book, when something in the margin of one page caught his attention. The chapter heading was for the north of France. What had become, in fact, the battlefields of the war.
There were brief notations here, in a woman’s handwriting. He took the book to the window, his back to Mrs. Raeburn,