A Long Shadow: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd

Author:Charles Todd [Todd, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9780061208515
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Published: 2011-10-25T05:00:00+00:00

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 heroine 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.

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