Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [24]
McKinstry sighed. “That would fit half the town. We’re a dour lot eager to spy sin around any corner. Aye, and find it as well.”
“You do realize,” Rutledge said, studying the young man, “that these letters may have had nothing to do with the crime she’s accused of. It may simply be that the letters drew attention to facts no one had considered until then. And once the police took notice, the truth came out.”
“No, sir,” McKinstry said, torn between defending his own beliefs and possibly alienating the man from London he’d pinned his hopes on.“I can’t accept that without better evidence. Sometimes”—he hesitated, glancing at Morag—“sometimes there’s such a fever pitch of belief in guilt that nobody looks for the fallacies in the evidence. I’m saying that because of the letters, Duncarrick was eager to see her blamed. That the letters set the stage for all that followed.”
It was easy to shape evidence to fit a theory. . . .
“Yes, I understand,” Rutledge answered patiently. “And that’s the purpose of a trial—to weigh the evidence openly and fairly.”
Hamish grunted, as if challenging Rutledge’s words.
“If the jury listens,” McKinstry argued. “Then it works. But what if the jury doesn’t want to hear anything to the contrary because they’ve made up their minds? That’s what I fear, sir, because I do know my people. And I’m ashamed to say I have no faith in a jury when the mind’s shut.” He took a deep breath. “And what’s to become of the child? There’s the other worry. As far as I know, it has no father.” He looked out the window, not at Rutledge. “She’s a good woman. She’s a good mother. If she says the babe is hers, I want to believe it. But the police have said the contrary, that she killed the mother and took it, then told her aunt and the rest of the world that it was hers.”
“The child isn’t the law’s responsibility,” Rutledge replied, thinking of Lady Maude Gray. Would she claim it if there was any possibility that the child was her daughter’s? Even though she refused to believe her daughter was dead? Stranger things had happened. He felt Morag’s eyes on him and turned. The old woman shook her head, as if denying that she hadn’t cared for his answer, but he knew she had been disappointed in it. So had Hamish.
His mind busy with Lady Maude, Rutledge said, “How did Oliver connect this young woman living in Duncarrick with a corpse found up in Glencoe? There’s the problem of distance, if nothing else!”
McKinstry, much more comfortable with a straightforward report than his own feelings, lost some of his intensity. “Once it was clear the boy couldn’t be hers, we went looking for the child’s mother. We sent queries as far as Glasgow and Edinburgh, and across the border into England. The lad’s going on three, we didn’t expect it to be easy. It was Inspector Oliver’s belief that we ought to search where the accused had come from, before coming to live in Duncarrick. That eventually led us to the glen. Human remains had been found there just last year, a woman’s bones. And they hadn’t been identified.” He stopped, looked at his teacup, then met Rutledge’s eyes. “The Glencoe police were nearly certain that she hadn’t been there in March of 1916, when they’d scoured the glen searching for an old shepherd who’d gone off his head and disappeared. And the locals claim it must have been late summer or early autumn, as anybody moving sheep in the spring would have noticed the corbies collecting there. We sent around a description, adding what we suspected in Duncarrick to what little the Glencoe police had in their files. The next thing we knew, an inspector in Menton contacted us for more information. Duncarrick has eaten up the news, taking it as fact. And Inspector Oliver was not disposed to question the connection—” He stopped, suddenly uncomfortable.
Rutledge didn’t press. After a moment, McKinstry went on.
“At any rate, the three jurisdictions accepted the possibility that the missing Eleanor Gray was the