Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [78]
“On the contrary, there have been a number of small successes. Not yet a whole. But enough to be going on with.”
She smiled, lighting the remarkable violet eyes from within.
“Then tell me. I shall be the judge.”
“Your daughter did not go to America to study medicine. We have that on the authority of a professor who had been advising her.” It was only a patchwork of truth and fiction. But he saw the small flicker of surprise in her face.
Like Mrs. Atwood, Lady Maude must also have soothed her conscience with the notion that Eleanor Gray had gone abroad to study. Against her mother’s wishes—but surely safely accounted for. Lady Maude had even closed her ears to Inspector Oliver, so certain was she. And then Rutledge had somehow raised niggling doubts. This was news she had not expected to hear. Hamish, who did not care for Lady Maude, was pleased.
“Go on,” she said curtly.
“She was last heard from on her way to Scotland with a young officer by the name of Burns. He had a small house in the Trossachs and enough leave to go there.”
Her voice was cold. “You are mistaken. Eleanor would not have gone anywhere with a strange man.”
“He wasn’t a stranger. She had known him for some time apparently, and a Mrs. Atwood believes that Eleanor was—attracted—to him. They had worked together to arrange for pipe concerts at various hospitals, to cheer the wounded. I was given the impression that your daughter had spent enough time in this man’s company to grow fond of him. Whether as a friend or more than that, I’m not able to tell you at this stage.”
Like a mask, her face remained unchanged. Her hands, holding her cup and saucer, were still quiet in her lap, too well-behaved to indicate by any movement of their own that she was unsettled. But along the firm jawline there was a small nerve twitching.
“When I requested that you be assigned to this case, Inspector, I believed I had chosen a man of intelligence and integrity. I had not expected you to be a listener to gossip and innuendo. You have disappointed me.”
He smiled. “For that I shall apologize. But the fact is, I talked to the person whom your daughter telephoned just before leaving for Scotland with Burns. She had been promised to the Atwoods for a weekend, and had—quite properly—called her hosts to explain the change in plan. You had brought your daughter up well. She remembered her manners even in a time of great distress.”
He set his empty cup on the tray. Check. And mate.
Hamish, in the ensuing silence, said only, “Well done!”
It was rare praise. Rutledge had no time to savor it.
Lady Maude said, “If your information comes from Grace Talbot-Hemings—now Mrs. Atwood—I’m sure she reported the conversation exactly as it happened. She was a truthful child and has no doubt grown into a truthful young woman. This is not to say that what my daughter told her is to be believed. On the contrary, Eleanor might well have left a false trail if she had found passage to the United States and wished to be absolutely certain that no one stopped her. This would also explain her great distress, as you call it.”
Rutledge had to admit that it did.
Lady Maude was not easily broken. She had been the mistress of a king and knew her worth. She had known her daughter’s worth as well, and lived to see Eleanor turn her back on it.
Rutledge thought: Eleanor died in her mother’s heart in 1916 . And he suddenly knew why. The daughter Lady Maude had given up her own self-respect to bear to a Prince of Wales had not been worthy, in her mother’s eyes, of such sacrifice. Eleanor had neither understood nor appreciated the burden her mother carried, and if anything had, in her youthful rebellion, mocked it.
For the most fleeting instant of time, he wondered if Lady Maude might be capable of killing her only child.
Lady Maude also set her cup on the tray with firm finality. “You must realize, Inspector, that your”—she hesitated delicately—“small successes, as you call them, are proving to be a reflection on my daughter’s character that