Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [88]
“Her lawyer will tell you it’s not on.”
“Then let him come as well.”
“A bloody circus!” Hamish put in.
“Then I’m telling you it’s not on! I see no purpose to be served,” Oliver said angrily.
McKinstry came through the door to the dining room and stood scanning the tables until he saw Oliver.
He crossed quickly to Oliver’s side, bent over, and said quietly, “You’d better come, sir. There’s a message from the police in Glencoe.”
“I’ll be there in a quarter of an hour. Damn it, can’t you see I’m in the middle of my lunch!”
“Yes, sir.” McKinstry straightened and started for the door.
Oliver threw his serviette in his plate and got up, swearing under his breath.
Rutledge was finishing his flan. He started to follow, but Oliver motioned him back into his chair.
“No, this is my end of things.”
Rutledge acknowledged his barely veiled order and stayed where he was. It never paid to argue jurisdiction with the local man, even when you were in the right.
Hamish said, “He’s no’ finished what was on his chest.”
“Just as well,” Rutledge retorted. For an instant he thought he had spoken the words aloud.
TEN MINUTES LATER Oliver was back. His face was grim.
“They’ve found something up the glen. We’re on our way. Where’s your motorcar?”
Rutledge explained.
Oliver nodded. “Well, you’d better come along, then. You’ll want to hear what’s said.”
Torn between duty and dread, Rutledge slowly got to his feet.
GLENCOE HAD A long and dark history. The bloody massacre there on 13 February 1692, had left its mark in the very ground. And the great bulge of mountains that overshadowed the valley below seemed to hold a long and bitter memory in their barren rock.
MacIan of Glencoe had failed to take his oath to the King, William of Orange, by 1 January of that year. It wasn’t his fault; he had reached Fort William in time, but there he had been sent on to Inveraray. Still, a punishment was held to be in order.
Campbell soldiers were quartered on the MacDonalds.
The Campbells had lived peacefully for twelve days in MacDonald homes and eaten their bread and salt. Then, without warning on that dark, cold February night, the soldiers had risen from their beds and slaughtered men, women, and children indiscriminately. Those who escaped died of cold and hunger and wounds in the bleak, unforgiving hills. And for the handful of survivors, the name of Campbell was ever after anathema.
As Oliver’s motorcar passed Loch Leven and took the road south of the river that led into the heart of the glen, Rutledge could feel the press of time and anguish, just as he felt Hamish’s unspoken grief. He wished fervently that he hadn’t come. He’d planned to drive here with Fiona; he’d seen her as his shield against the glen, but he knew now, beyond question, that it would have been wrong then just as it was wrong now.
Even Fiona couldn’t protect him from the images in his own mind.
Not far from here, Hamish had been born, grew to manhood, and went off to war. This was land he knew so well, he had described nearly every inch of it to Rutledge the night before he died. It wasn’t imagination that peopled the great empty glen with memories, it was the stored knowledge of a lifetime. And the lasting voice of a soldier who had spoken softly in the candlelight but tellingly, the noisy darkness around the small makeshift hut they sat in notwithstanding, until Rutledge could have recited each and every word in his dreams.
As the miles rolled behind them, Rutledge relived that night with such ferocity that he was back again in 1916, even as he saw every turn of the road.
After a fashion, Hamish had come home.
19
IT WAS A LONG DRIVE. BY THE TIME THEY HAD REACHED the rendezvous point where an Inspector MacDougal was waiting for them, Oliver and McKinstry had fallen into weary silence, and Rutledge, sharing the rear seat with Hamish, was racked by the tension. It was not, by any token, an easy homecoming for either man. Rutledge had never expected to see and recognize landmarks that stood out now with such