The Scottish police were convinced that the mother’s refusal had to do with the fact that the daughter had been pregnant. The English police were reluctant to conclude that that was the cause of the quarrel between the two women. Some stiffness between the two jurisdictions had developed—the Scottish police believed they had already identified Eleanor’s murderer, while the English police were unsure that the girl was in fact dead.

Rutledge looked out the window at the rain streaking the grimy panes and the wet pigeons huddled in whatever shelter they could find. He’d hated the rain in the trenches, it was a torment of body and spirit. Wet wool, the stench of urine or vomit, the heavy sweetness of rotting flesh, the stink of dirty bodies, the slick, black, filthy mud that weighed down boots and caked faces and hands and matted hair under the helmets. The low clouds that hid the gas—

The drive north ought to be pleasanter than the weather here, he mused. And Hamish, a countryman at heart, found that thought agreeable as well. Rutledge took out his watch, realized that he might reach York before nightfall. He stood and stretched, set his current files in order, then walked out of his office and closed the door behind him.

Down the passage, walking toward the stairs, Bowles heard the faint sound and smiled with contentment.

Chapter 4

4

LADY MAUDE GRAY LIVED IN AN IMPOSING HOUSE THAT could be described as palatial. It sat in a vast acreage of park-land that gave it privacy and offered fine views from all its windows. The village of Menton, which lay on the main road a mile and a quarter beyond the massive stone pillars that flanked the long drive, had been moved to its present location in the eighteenth century. Not even its church steeple was visible from the attics of the house. Where the village had once stood, a very fine allée of trees and grassy lawns led to a reflecting pool that mirrored a cloudless sky.

It had once been, Rutledge thought, glimpsing the sun-washed house in the distance as he made his way up the drive, a fortified abbey in the Middle Ages, but later architects had created a country house in the ruins, with the choir and apse of the abbey church, presumably the family chapel now, comprising one wing. The arched buttresses flowed smoothly upward toward a pinnacled roof, and the gray stone of the house fabric matched them to perfection, giving a sense of great age to the entire dwelling. The west front, the main entrance, boasted a graceful spread of steps rising from the drive; a formal garden set with an ornate fountain gave human dimensions to the spectacular view across the countryside that spread out beyond it. Hamish, regarding the view, grumbled, “A lonely place, this. You can hear the wind and feel the emptiness.”