Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [91]
“I knew one of them—brother of the accused, I’d guess. A good man. He lost his legs and bled to death before they could get him back over the wire. My brother died the same day. Machine-gun fire. I was lucky—shot three times but nothing that kept me from going back.” There was a quiet irony in his voice.
They had come some distance, cutting diagonally across the mountain’s face, slipping and sliding here or there, and Betty had begun to look around, as if trying to find landmarks.
Finally she paused and pointed to an area that was perhaps ten feet square. “About here, I’d guess,” she told them.
It was a rocky slope that seemed to be no different from any of its neighbors for a hundred yards in any direction.
“Why are you so sure?” Oliver demanded, mopping his face with a large handkerchief. “I can’t see any difference between this patch and that one—or that one over there.”
“See for yoursel’. I can match that spot just above us with that one across the way—” She pointed to the great bare face opposite, and following her finger, they identified a small outcropping of rock.
If you looked, Rutledge thought, you could find your way easily. But it was always a matter of seeing. To the uninitiated, this was barren ground. Above their heads, another tumbled mass of rock stood out against the sky.
Following his gaze, MacDougal said, “It was there we found the remains. In a slight crevice where water has brought down the supporting scree and left a hollow.” He paused, then said, “You’d have to know it was there. The hollow. It isn’t visible from the road.”
In short, no one would think to leave a body there who didn’t have some familiarity with these mountains.
“Want to climb up?” MacDougal asked.
Rutledge nodded and they walked on, picking their way carefully. It was hot here in the sun, and feet unused to this terrain found it difficult to know where to step with any certainty.
Carrying a body, Hamish pointed out, would not be easy. And for a woman, very nearly impossible. “Unless the corpse was dragged on a rope.”
And there was no one to see such a long, laborious effort. From where he stood, Rutledge could look down at the two motorcars, Oliver standing talking to Betty Lawlor, and a ruined croft some distance away. In the far distance, he saw sheep, but no one with them.
“Hard place for a woman to carry a dead weight,” MacDougal said as if reading his thoughts. “But if that brooch belongs to the deceased, it means she’s not your missing woman. Eleanor Gray.”
“And if it belonged to the murderer, then we have her in custody,” Rutledge finished for him.
They had reached the outcropping where three heavy rocks were lying in a heap. Not so large by the standards of these mountains, but beyond a man’s strength to tumble together so tidily. And where the smaller fragments had washed out from under, there was indeed a crevice. Put a body here in April, and it might be found. But put it here before the weather turns and the autumn storms begin, and it would still be here in the spring. What was left.
Rutledge squatted on his heels. MacDougal said, “You won’t find anything. We were verra’ thorough.”
“I expect you were,” Rutledge said evenly. “I was just thinking that this was a perfect place for bones. What makes you so certain that the body was not here before 1916?”
“Condition, for one thing. And I talked to all the families who run sheep. They were certain it wasna’ here in the summer. A fox or dog had chewed the shoes, and what bits of clothing we found weren’t of any use. First thought was that we’d found a climber. People climb here who havena’ the sense of a beetle! They canna’ believe on a fine day like this one that the mists can come in sae fast, you’re lost before you take ten steps. And she was doubled up, as if trying to keep warm. Loose stones had washed around and over her.”
“Doubled? How?”
“Head on knees, arms around them. Made the body smaller, kept heat in the middle. The bones were still in a huddle, like. The doctor found no injuries, but that’s no’ to say she hadna