Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [128]
All this bloody time, the man he’d been searching for had been under his nose.
The fiscal himself hadn’t seen fit to give Rutledge that name!
“There’s no proof Burns knew the two men had met,” Hamish pointed out.
“No. Probably not. But you’d think, wouldn’t you, that after he came back to Duncarrick, Holden would have spoken to the fiscal—a simple word of condolence—‘I met your son once, at a dinner in London. I was sorry to hear he didn’t make it home from France.’ ”
“Unless he had something to hide—”
“The fact that he’d spent two nights in Captain Burns’s house in Craigness? With Eleanor Gray? Who is now missing? Yes—if he had anything to do with her disappearance. Even if he’d simply provided her the money to sail to America.”
The airlessness was making his head ache. Rutledge opened the door and went up the stairs to his room, his mind still racing.
McKinstry had claimed that he couldn’t put a finger on the writer of the poisonous letters, even though he knew the townspeople like a book. As any constable would. But the local gentry would seldom cross McKinstry’s path. An inspector would deal with them. And Holden had come back from France only in the spring of 1919. McKinstry hadn’t had time or opportunity in five months to put him in the tidy mental boxes where the constable kept the pulse of Duncarrick.
“You’ve sent him on a wild-goose chase to Glasgow!” Hamish scolded Rutledge. “About the brooch. Still, it was foolish for Holden to use his name!”
“If Holden was in Palestine, the Army will have a record of it. If Holden was at Saxwold, Elizabeth Andrews will remember him. If Mrs. Raeburn can recognize him after three years, we have him in Craigness.”
“But there’s no proof Eleanor Gray died there!”
“I know,” Rutledge said. “But if Holden took Eleanor there, the chances are he also took her away. And he can tell us where she went after Craigness.”
“Mrs. Raeburn never saw her—”
“It was pouring rain that night. Eleanor could have waited in the car until the worst had passed. By that time, Mrs. Raeburn had gone back to her bed. And there are the notes in the book’s margin.”
“But no date!” Hamish reminded him.
“In a way, there is a date. It was written after Captain Burns died. She noted that he was dead.”
“Where was Holden when you drove to the glen?”
“According to Mrs. Holden, he was in Jedburgh that day.”
“Aye, but was he? She couldna’ know for certain if the man went where he claimed he was going.”
“True enough.” Rutledge ran his fingers through his hair. “All right.”
“McKinstry said that in this town he kens everyone’s business. It’s no’ impossible for Holden to do the same if he put his mind to it.”
“Yes, and I’ve seen him with Oliver. Any number of times—”
“And Oliver wouldna’ see anything wrong in answering questions Holden might ask. He’s an upstanding citizen, concerned for the truth.”
“All right, it’s possible,” Rutledge agreed. “But if the bones in the glen couldn’t be traced to him—if no one knew whose remains they were—I don’t understand why he’d stir up the past by going after Fiona. The timing is wrong too. Well before those bones were connected with either Eleanor Gray or Fiona, someone was persecuting her. Was it Holden? If so, to what end?”
Hamish didn’t see it that way. “If he left Eleanor Gray in the glen, dead, he’s been afraid for three years that someone might put a name to her. One day.”
“No. If he’s been this clever, then he wouldn’t risk it. . . .”
Rutledge stopped his pacing and swore. “Holden lost all his horses to the war. He’s having to start again. But if he could show that he was the father of the boy, and Eleanor Gray was the mother—true or not, it doesn’t matter!—Ian MacLeod would be the heir to the trust that should have come to Eleanor Gray. If Holden knew how that trust stood, if Eleanor had talked about it on their long drive north, through the boy he could find himself in possession of a bloody fortune—”
He began pacing again, the room seeming to shrink