Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [44]
It seemed to be an admission that the woman was dead. But as he looked into the dark eyes and saw the anguish there, he read something else too—fear. Not for herself, he was sure it wasn’t that. Nor was it guilt.
He struggled to concentrate, called on his intuition to bridge the gap between what he had seen—and what it meant.
Silence came back to him. Nothing but silence. And then—
The woman, he realized suddenly, must still be alive. The child’s mother. And for some reason, even to save her own life, Fiona MacDonald dared not name her.
11
LOCKING THE CELL BEHIND HIM, RUTLEDGE STRODE past the woman collecting her brushes in the emptied pail and went out into the main room, where Constable Pringle sat reading through a stack of reports. He looked up as Rutledge handed him the key ring.
“All settled, then?” he asked.
“For the time being,” Rutledge answered.
He thanked the man and went out into the street. The day was fine, and there were people everywhere, attending to whatever business brought them out on a fair morning. Carts and wagons and lorries vied with motorcars for space on the roadway, and he heard a vendor shouting as a passing horse snatched at an apple from the baskets piled high on a trundle. Rutledge felt alone.
Hamish railed on in wild fury, begging, cajoling, pleading for Fiona, obsessed with what had been done to her. And helpless to change it.
As the warmth of the sun touched his face, Rutledge took a deep breath, willing the tension to subside, willing Hamish into silence, closing his mind to the harshly sharp image of the woman he’d left in the comparative darkness of the small room at the back of the police station. Walking helped, each stride seeming to keep pace with the rhythm of Hamish’s voice, forcing it to remain just out of sight behind him.
What had appeared to be a search for Eleanor Gray had become a complex confrontation with the past and a young woman who might be cleared—or damned—by what Scotland Yard found out about both women.
It was a grave responsibility. It was also a professional conflict.
Rutledge turned toward the hotel, seeking sanctuary without realizing it, seeking the peace and quiet to think. Everything he’d learned here had changed its shape, throwing evidence and emotion and belief into a maelstrom of doubt. And then something Hamish was saying caught at his attention. He found himself listening now.
“It began as a moral issue,” Hamish told him. “That’s what you told yon constable. And who better to ask than the man who didna’ ken what to do about it?”
Mr. Elliot. The minister.
Rutledge reached the main square and went away from the hotel toward the church rising tall and dark from the pavement. Bare of ornament, it seemed to thrust heavily toward the sky, built by men who found in their faith a strong and abiding force but very little beauty. There was no churchyard here, but he thought it must lie behind the building. He’d noticed a wedge of green grass surrounded by a low wall of the same stone as the church, broaching on the street behind. And when he came to the corner of the church, he realized he was right. Headstones marched in tidy rows almost to the apse.
He paused to read the board by the main doors and at the same time saw the small wooden sign on the Victorian house just beyond the church. “Pastor” was written there in Gothic lettering.
He walked on and knocked at the house door. A woman opened it to him. She was young and frail, but she answered briskly enough, “Yes, sir?”
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Elliot if I may. Is he in?”
“He’s just come back from the kirk,” she replied. “Step in and I’ll ask if he’s receiving visitors just now. May I give him your name?”
“Rutledge.”
“Thank you, sir.