Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [65]
He went into the room and saw that it must be Fiona’s. There was a round depression on the pillow at the head of the bed and a thin carpeting of white hairs. This was where the cat slept.
Besides the bed, which boasted a coverlet trimmed in eyelet, there was a chest, a dressing table, and a desk. Two chairs stood beneath the windows, both cushioned in a rose print. He went to the desk first, but left it after a cursory examination. It would be the first place anyone looked. Oliver, for instance, would have gone through it with great care. All that appeared to be left were bills, unused stationery, a penknife, ink, pencils, envelopes, a large book of accounts for the household, and other ordinary items.
Hamish was no happier about his task than McKinstry had been, and reminded Rutledge that he had no right to pry here, police business or not.
Ignoring Hamish’s irritation, he went through the drawers of the chest, found them neat and orderly, then looked at the back of each. Nothing.
Behind a curtain, clothes had been hung on a wire, and there was a pair of shelves for hats and shoes, but nothing of interest. A sweet perfume followed him as he let the curtain drop. Then he lifted it again, remembering another time and another place. He examined the shelves closely and found nothing. But a floorboard had moved as he stepped deeper into the small space, which was no larger than a cupboard.
Squatting on his heels, he examined the board and found that it was not loose. But the baseboard behind it, he thought, might be. He took out his pocketknife and, finding a seam, tried to pry out the board.
It didn’t come. It was firmly nailed in place, and it had been imagination that had made it appear loose. Wishful thinking.
He moved through the room, searching the dressing table next, then pulled out the bed, which stood against the wall that formed part of the stairs on its other side.
The baseboard here was indeed loose. Eight inches or more yielded to his questing fingers as he worked his knife into the seam.
He stood up quickly as he heard McKinstry come down the passage from the boy’s room beyond.
“Nothing, sir. I’ve looked at every possible place she might have hidden something. Where else should I try?”
“Where did she do the inn’s accounts? Is there an office in the inn proper?”
“Yes, sir, behind the bar. It isn’t an office in the true sense—more a small cubby that has a curtain across it. She kept her account books there.”
“Then you begin with that area. I’ll just finish here and join you when I’ve satisfied myself I’ve looked everywhere.”
McKinstry nodded, and there was a glint in his eye, as if he was glad that nothing had turned up.
But it should have—Fiona had had warning enough to hide private papers from the police, but would she have risked the child’s safety by destroying them?
When the constable’s footsteps had reached the bottom of the stairs, Rutledge waited for them to fade along the lower passage, then turned back to his own find.
Squatting on his heels again to reach into the dark and dusty hole, he nearly leapt out of his skin when the cat brushed against his leg. She started away in alarm, then came again for petting. He rubbed her ears and soft throat, then gently pushed her aside.
From the hole he brought a box, tin, he thought, and no more than ten by eight by six inches in size.
There were letters in it, the deed to the inn, several old envelopes of papers that seemed to go back in time to Miss MacCallum’s father, and a collection of odds and ends that must have been considered family treasures—a man’s pocketknife made of stag’s horn, a pocket watch that had an elegantly engraved case bearing the name MacCallum, a pair of ivory crocheting hooks with a matching ivory thimble, and a little medicine flask made of silver with a fine engraving of the Tollbooth in Edinburgh. And a letter bearing Rutledge’s own handwriting. The letter he had sent from France to a grieving young woman who had just learned that the man she