Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [89]
Glencoe was haunting—and haunted.
Ahead, where the unpaved road entered a narrow neck of the glen, they could see a motorcar pulled off to one side, under the frowning slopes. A man climbed down from the driver’s seat as they approached.
He was square, with flame-red hair and freckles so thick he seemed to be deeply tanned. Grinning at them, he raised a hand and called as Oliver slowed down, “Have ye brought the entire force from Duncarrick, then?”
Oliver pulled his vehicle off the road behind the other motorcar, raising a thick cloud of dust. The only traffic they had seen for miles was a flock of sheep and several carts piled with cabbages and sacks of potatoes. The road in either direction snaked yellow in the sun, like a dry river.
Solitary. But not empty. This place was never empty if you knew its history. Hamish, who did, was silent in the face of it. Rutledge thought, if ever there was a place for the pipes, it was here. Keening a lament on the wind and filling the valley with human sounds to shut out those no one could quite hear.
He forced himself to concentrate. Introductions out of the way, MacDougal went back to his own vehicle to open the door for the passenger he had brought with him.
She was no more than fourteen or fifteen, wrapped against the chilly wind that was blowing down from the heights in a faded plaid shawl that reached her hips. Her skirts whipped and snapped about her ankles. Her hair, in a bun, was a mousy brown, and youth was all that made her pretty.
But she faced the strangers as they were introduced in their turn and seemed to be collected for someone her age.
“And this is Betty Lawlor,” the Inspector ended. “Right, shall I begin, or will you, Inspector Oliver?”
Rutledge said before Oliver could speak, “Do you know the MacDonalds up the glen—” He dredged his memory for a name, and Hamish supplied it.
“—kin of Duncan MacDonald, who died in 1915?”
Betty gave him a sour look. “Aye. I ken who they are.”
“Are you friends, then?”
“Not friends, no.”
“Did you know Duncan’s granddaughter, Fiona?”
“I did. Not well. She was older. My sister’s age.”
Rutledge looked around him at the great expanse of emptiness. “I should think that neighbors here might look out for one another.”
Betty stared at him. “My ain grandfather was transported to Australia for sheep stealing. I havena’ any dealings with the MacDonalds. It was their sheep.”
Rutledge nodded. Oliver, impatient, said abruptly, “What did you find up there, Miss Lawlor?” He pointed to the mountainside above them, a great bulge of rock that seemed top-heavy.
“I was walking up there one day and saw something shining in the sunlight. I picked it up. It was this.”
She extended a work-worn hand and in the palm lay a small brooch. Rutledge and Oliver stepped forward to look at it more closely.
It was oval, with a single stone in the center and around it a circlet of smaller stones, set like the petals of a flower. On the back was a simple pin to hold it closed.
The color of the stones was a smoky brown. Smoky quartz.
“A cairngorm.” Hamish said it before Oliver did.
A stone found in Scotland and popular for jewelry. In the hilt of a skean dhu, in the froth of lace at the throat in eighteenth-century portraits, adorning the necks and fingers of ladies, it was a symbol in its way of the Highlands.
The setting was gold, a dainty filigree.
A pretty thing, and had probably been treasured once.
Rutledge said, “May I?” and took the brooch to examine it more closely.
The stones, well polished, flashed in his hand. The color was striking. He turned the brooch this way and that, to catch the light. Under the pin he noted that something had been engraved. Time had worn whatever it was to a blur.
“See just there. Initials, I think.” He pointed these out to Oliver. “Or a name. I can’t quite make them out—” Working with the light and shadow,