Legacy of the Dead by Charles Todd Read Free Book Online

heard, the more Rutledge found himself agreeing with Lady Maude that the dead woman found in Scotland was unlikely to be her daughter, Eleanor. None of the facts matched. Still—height and age did. And possibly timing?
    “Would it be possible to see a photograph of your daughter, Lady Maude?”
    “She’ll no’ allow it,” Hamish told him. “But yon solicitor might have one.”
    She glared at Rutledge. “To what end?”
    “Merely to give me some feeling for the person you’ve described. I have found that faces tell me more than facts sometimes.”
    She hesitated. Rutledge was certain he’d given her the wrong answer, and had lost. Then she opened a drawer in the desk. From it she drew a silver filigree frame and passed it across to him without looking at it. He rose to take it from her hand, and sat down again before turning it over.
    The face staring back at him was smiling, one hand on the horse at her side, the other holding a trophy. Beneath the riding hat it was difficult to see her features clearly, but she was an attractive young woman with her mother’s bearing. There was something familiar about the face all the same, and he frowned as he studied it. All at once he made the connection.
    She reminded him quite strongly of one of the royal princesses—
    As if his thought reached her at the same time, Lady Maude extended her hand imperiously, and he had no choice but to return the photograph to her.
    Hamish, following his thought, was scandalized.
    His sister Frances would know, if anybody did. But looking at the woman in front of him, and remembering the photograph she’d taken from him, Rutledge found himself wondering if Eleanor Victoria Maude Gray was— possibly—the child of a liaison between Lady Maude and the late King Edward VII. The king had had an eye for beautiful women. It wouldn’t have been surprising if she’d come to his notice.
    Small wonder, with that heritage, that Lady Maude refused to believe that her daughter had come to die on a desolate Scottish mountainside, or that she had borne a child out of wedlock.
    Eleanor was destined for greater things than a career in medicine—if she was the daughter of a King, and heir to this house and the fortune that apparently maintained it, she could take her pick of wealthy and titled men.
    But if she was as contrary as her mother wanted him to believe, might she not have rebelled against this golden future and found instead some perverse pleasure in making her mother’s nightmares rather than her dreams come true . . . ?
    LADY MAUDE SAT at the broad desk long after the man from London had gone, staring blindly at the closed door.
    How had he tricked her into speaking of Eleanor? She had told a
policeman
what she hadn’t revealed to anyone else—that Eleanor was headstrong, contrary, that her daughter’s heritage had meant so little to her that she had walked away from it and never looked back. She had chosen a common
profession
instead, one that dealt with poverty and squalor and hideous diseases. It was unspeakably cruel and headstrong.
    She would call London straightaway and have that man
broken in rank
—
    Instead Lady Maude went on sitting where she was, reviling him, refusing to acknowledge pain or guilt. Eleanor was
not
dead. The police were incompetent and stupid. She would not allow them to trouble her again.
    Something the Inspector had said came back to her. “Another mother will have to bear that grief . . .”
    Then find
her
and be satisfied.
And let there be an end to
this!
    Sunlight cast long, narrow shadows across the carpet, and still she sat there. She did not need the photograph in the closed drawer to see her daughter’s face, feel the strong presence of her spirit. A mother would
know
—if anything untoward had happened—
    They were trying to frighten her into helping them, these policemen, rather than doing their duty as it should be done!
    Finally she stood up, took a deep breath, and walked firmly to the door. By