“Have you asked yourself why?”
“He’s something of a curmudgeon, I’m told.”
“I found him very polite. Although he may not go on being polite, if he discovers I’m here to see you.”
“How did you find me?”
“I sent you the small package, if you remember.”
He felt like a student being put in his place by his teacher. “Yes, of course. Sorry. I’ve got other things on my mind.”
“I can see that.” She rose to go, and he stood as well.
“I’ll find out if the inn can run to a cup of tea.” For a moment she regarded him intently. “If there’s anything I can do, please ask. I’ll only stay on for a day or two. But I was worried, you see. And you did come to me first.”
With that she walked out of the room, and he let her go.
Hamish said, “She’s an outsider. She’s no’ afraid of the wood.”
It was a change of mood that surprised Rutledge. But he answered slowly, considering the matter, “Yes, it’s true.”
He crossed the street to Mrs. Ellison’s house and knocked loudly. She answered the door and for a moment was clearly considering shutting it in his face. But he said, “It’s about your daughter.”
She allowed him to come in, then, to stand like a tradesman in the entry.
“What do you want with my daughter?”
“Inspector Cain discovered a letter in his predecessor’s files. It was from a Mrs. Greer, of London, asking to be paid for six months’ lodging at her house. Your daughter had left without settling her account.”
She replied curtly, “To my shame. But I will say on her behalf that she’d lost her husband, she had had to give up her child, and she went to France to heal. I haven’t told anyone, it’s too embarrassing. I hope you’ll respect my request to keep the matter between us.”
“What’s become of Beatrice Ellison Mason, Mrs. Ellison. You must know.”
She looked away from him. “She’s dead. I never told Emma that. She preferred to think her mother was in London, painting. She went to Paris, you see, married a Belgian there, and she was in Liège when the Germans bombarded the city. She must have been one of the casualties, because I haven’t had any news of her since July of 1914.”
“She wrote to you?” he asked with surprise.
She turned away from him, scorn on her face now. “No.
I had other means of learning her whereabouts. Someone I went to school with was living in Paris, and she sent me news when she could. That’s how I knew of my daughter’s second marriage. I would think that other children had come then, and Beatrice must have felt awkward telling her new husband about Emma.”
“Why should he care, if he loved her?”
“Beatrice often made rather free with the truth. And Mason isn’t the most romantic name for an artist. She called herself Harkness, I understand. It has a finer ring to it, I expect.”
“Is she telling the truth?” Hamish asked.
Rutledge thought she was. There was conviction in her voice, and he could see that she was tense with feeling, her hands clenched together until the knuckles showed white.
“Why did you let your granddaughter write to a London address that didn’t exist? That must have been a cruel disappointment when the letters were returned unopened.”
“You aren’t a mother, Inspector,” she snapped at him.
“How can you be the judge of what’s best for a young, easily impressed child who thought Maid Marian was a hero-ine and who wanted to spread her own wings?”
“The truth from the beginning might have been easier.
There’s still the chance that she went to London in search of her mother. And London is no place for a young girl alone. Anything could have happened to her there. Doesn’t that frighten you?”
“She would never have done such a foolish thing. You didn’t know her.”
“Then perhaps she went there looking for a young man who had marched off to war.”
If he had struck her, she wouldn’t have looked any more shocked and angry. “How dare you!”
“You were young once—”
“My granddaughter was a God-fearing young lady. I saw to that. Get out of my house!”
He left then, aware that he had upset her and that any other questions would have been useless.
Mrs. Ellison had barricaded herself in a comfortable, private world of her own, secure from hurt. Struggling to ignore the loss of her only child and her only grandchild.
Refusing to understand that she might have driven both of them away with her strong sense of propriety and family duty. Artists came to a no-good end, and it could be argued that Beatrice had chosen her own fate. But that young girl’s bedroom was still waiting for young Emma, regardless of the fact that she might have grown into an entirely different person if she was still alive. Harder, perhaps, disillusioned, certainly, and possibly no longer innocent.
After the door had closed, he wished he’d asked her for the name of her school friend in Paris.
As he walked through Dudlington, trying to clear up the mounting pile of evidence that went nowhere, contradict-ing itself at every turn, Rutledge saw Grace Letteridge coming out of the butcher’s shop.
She hesitated when she looked up and found he was striding toward her, then straightened her shoulders and stood there waiting for him.
As if I were the guillotine, he thought, and Hamish added, “She doesna’ want to talk about the past.”
When he came up to her, she said, “I’d like to hear that Constable Hensley has died of infection.”
He made himself smile. “It wouldn’t help, would it?
He’s not the source of your anger.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s cold, and the street isn’t the proper place to talk about private matters. Will you come to the police station, or shall I accompany you to your house? Either way, there’s no tea to be found in either of them.”
She laughed ruefully. “I do have tea. Come on, then, and I’ll make us both a cup.”
They walked back to her house in silence. She’d refused to let him carry her purchases, and he didn’t press.
She took his hat and coat and pointed him toward the parlor. He stood there, studying the watercolors done by Beatrice Mason. They were good, he couldn’t fault them technically. But he wondered if she would have made the essential leap to London tastes, a quality that would have made her first-rate. As Catherine Tarrant and others had done in oils. It would depend, he decided, on her dedica-tion and how quickly her skill matured.
“She had a husband and a child,” Hamish reminded him.
“They would ha’ dragged her down.”
What if her dreams had faded, and she realized that a little talent could be more heartbreaking than none? It might explain her decision to marry her first husband and then her second. Security, while she played at being an artist.
Security while she went to parties or showed her portfo-lios, and talked about her work. Hardly the glory she might have hoped for, but talented wives were given a very different reception from young women struggling alone in rooming houses with no entree into society.
He turned as Grace Letteridge came back with a tray of tea things. “You’ll have to make do without cakes or sandwiches. But at least it’s warm.”
Rutledge took the cup she handed him, adding sugar and milk from the tray.
“You like her work, I think?” Grace said, glancing up at the paintings.
“She has a wonderful sense of light,” he told her.
“Yes, that’s what struck me. Harder to achieve in watercolors, I should think, than in oils.”
She took a chair on the far side of the room and said,
“All right, what is it? You’re bursting to ask questions, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been trying to piece together some of the things I’ve learned as I asked questions about Hensley and Emma Mason—and lately, asking questions about her mother as well. Is Beatrice Ellison Mason living comfortably in Liège, do you think? Or did she die in the German attack in 1914?”