Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [70]
“I’ve been led to believe that Fiona never confided in her aunt—never told her, for instance, that she wasn’t the boy’s mother. Surely she must have told someone? A woman she trusted—a friend or neighbor—your brother—”
Miss Drummond stared at him consideringly. “Any secret’s best kept if it’s kept. You should know that as a policeman! Fiona was friendly in a quiet fashion, respectful to her elders. Nice ways about her, as if she’d gone to school to learn them. But all I’ve ever heard was that she’d loved her grandfather and he was a bonny piper. Oh, and that she’d been happy with her soldier before he died. More than that I never asked and she never spoke of. Now, it’s time you went, or Drummond will be home and shout at both of us. He doesn’t like anyone prating about Fiona or the lad. ‘Least said, soonest mended.’ That’s his view!”
“There’s only one other question before I leave,” Rutledge said, holding his ground. “I’ve been told that men were attracted to Fiona MacDonald. Was that true?”
He was met with stony silence. Miss Drummond’s face had changed, the color shifting to a mottled red, as if some emotion had risen swiftly and as swiftly been stamped down. Anger? Or jealousy? After a few seconds, the woman before him, her voice very different, said tightly, as if the truth had been forced out of her, “They say still waters run deepest. I don’t know. Fiona’s not by nature a talkative woman, the kind you’d sit and gossip comfortably with. I never could tell what to make of her. I never got close to her. Men, on the other hand, they saw something else. I can’t put a name to what it was. They’d watch her, and wait for her to smile, and then their faces would light up. I’ve seen my own brother staring at her, mesmerized by something I couldn’t feel or understand. As if he thinks he’s found the core of her and wants it. If you ask me, Drummond’s besotted with her. And if you want the whole truth of it, Elliot is as well. He raves on about sin like a man who knows what it means to burn with desire at night!”
“But surely the police haven’t fallen under her spell—”
“Haven’t they now? McKinstry would save her if he could, he’s in hopes of marrying her. Oliver used to stop by the inn of an evening before he went home, sitting there like a suitor, and him with a wife. And what troubles the Chief Constable and the fiscal is that she refuses to bow her head and confess to what she’s done, and beg for mercy, the way a woman should. They see it as defiance of their authority, and it unsettles their faith in their own importance. I’m not surprised they all want her hanged. Don’t you see? It’s the best way to be free of her!”
WHEN RUTLEDGE WALKED into the hotel, the man at the desk said, “There’s been a telephone call for you, sir. From London.”
He took the message and read it.
Call Sergeant Gibson.
One of the best men at ferreting out information of any kind, Gibson had a reputation for being thorough as well.
Rutledge went into the telephone closet, set his hat on the little table there, and put in his call to the Yard.
Gibson came on very shortly to say, “Inspector Rutledge, sir?”
“Yes. I’m in need of good news. I hope you’re going to tell me you have found Eleanor Gray.”
“No, sir, that I haven’t. But I talked to suffragettes she’d marched with and was known to be friends with. They haven’t seen her in some three years. What they tell me is that she went off to Winchester one weekend and never came back to London. At least not as far as anyone knows. Most of the women thought Lady Maude had had enough of her