Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [40]
“I’ve never seen a man turn so white. I thought you’d seen a ghost.”
“No . . .” Fiona MacDonald was no ghost.
What am I going to do? he asked himself silently. I must call Bowles, tell him I want to be relieved—
But that was addressing his own needs. What of hers?
What, in God’s name, of hers?
What if he failed her and she hanged? He’d have no choice but to kill himself: he couldn’t add that burden to the other guilt he carried. It would be a bitter defeat, after all he’d striven to recover of his own past, to fall prey to Hamish’s . . .
It wouldn’t be a German pistol. It would be his own.
Oliver was asking him something. About going back to the hotel? A glass of water? He couldn’t remember.
“No, I’ll be fine—”
“Then come in out of this rain, man! I’m getting wet through, standing here!” The door slammed shut.
Rutledge turned, opened it again, and walked back into the front room of the police station. He said, “I’m all right.”
“You don’t look it. Here, sit down.”
Rutledge took the chair shoved his way and tried to sit, but his muscles seemed taut and stiff, and he had to force them to obey his command. Oliver thrust a glass of water into his hand. Rutledge made a pretense of swallowing it, afraid he’d choke, making a worse fool of himself, his throat too tight to get it down.
And slowly his wits seemed to come back to him. The room took shape, the four walls painted an ugly brown, the desks and chairs older than he was, the single lamp in the ceiling casting glaring shadows over everything. Oliver’s face, expectant and watchful, waited for him to make a decision.
Rutledge took a breath. “All right. Let’s return to the cell.” In the back of his head, Hamish was a thunderous roar, and the ache that was swelling in its wake was nearly blinding.
“You’re sure? Frankly, I’ve no wish to have you casting up accounts all over my floors!”
Rutledge came close to laughing, a wild reaction to his own tension. Nausea was the least of his troubles. “I won’t do that.”
He followed Oliver down the passage that led to what Rutledge saw now must have been a kitchen in its day: a large room with no furnishings except for a narrow cot, a chair, and four bare walls. The chimney that once stood against one of them was closed off, the iron plate that had lain on the floor before the hearth now turned up and bolted over the opening. Behind a screen were the chamber pot and a table for water and towels. The room was cold, and Fiona MacDonald had pulled a shawl around her shoulders.
Her own face was white as Oliver made some apology for their abrupt departure some ten minutes earlier. Rutledge realized that she must be expecting some news of her trial. Or—of her child. The tenseness in her shoulders betrayed her as she waited for Rutledge to speak.
“Inspector Rutledge has come from London to look into the identity of bones discovered up the mountainside in Glencoe. He has questions he wishes to put to you.”
“Yes, very well,” she said, her voice soft, hardly more than a whisper.
Rutledge had no idea what he had expected to learn. His mind was a blank wall of nothing. He found himself looking away from her, not wanting to meet her eyes. But he managed to speak to her, feeling his way. “You’ve been asked before, Miss MacDonald—but can you give us any information that might help us find the child’s real mother? Or failing that, if she’s dead, her family? Surely you must be concerned for his well-being, and he’d be far happier with a grandmother or an aunt than in a foster home.”
“Will he?” she asked. “I’ve killed no one. I expect to return to my home and to my child.” Her voice was resolute, but there was fear in her eyes.
“If he’s not your child,” Rutledge said gently, “I doubt you’ll be allowed to keep him, even if you’re found not guilty. A young woman having to make her own way, with no husband or family of her own,