Ashes to Ashes (39 page)

Michael came trotting out of the house wearing his coat and carrying Rebecca’s purse. He handed it over, saying, “Dorothy and Heather are tryin’ to decide whether I have a body hidden in my bedcovers. Phil’s bangin’ on the fourth floor loo. Are we leavin’ them alone in the house?”

“If anything disappears in the next couple of hours,” she told him, “we’ll definitely know who took it, won’t we?”

“Aye, hen, that we will,” Michael said, and then caught himself. His face collapsed into the wry, apologetic smile of a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Averting his gaze, he headed for the car.

No, Rebecca thought, unable to work up a good head of exasperation at him, you didn’t say “hen” and I didn’t hear it. She locked the door, joined Michael in the car, and started toward town.

Michael slumped beside her, his legs folded against the dashboard. All she could see of his face was its reflection in the window. Trees and fences glided through the transparent image without making any impact on its pensive expression. When she told him about Steve and the mausoleum key he nodded. “I’m no surprised he had it, and less he gave it back. A wee taste of the inferno to make him see the error of his ways.”

Rebecca darted his back with a sharp glance. You’re one to talk about errors. But there was no point to goading him. Whatever he was dealing with he’d chosen to deal with alone. Instead she asked, “Do you think the fire was an accident? The shed’s always smelled of gas.”

“A smell would no have exploded. The petrol was poured out, maybe splashed over the door. I wonder, though, why no one stank of it.”

“Whoever it was could’ve changed clothes. Or someone came in from outside, so we never had a chance to smell gas on them.”

Michael muttered something about how nice it was in Edinburgh this time of year, and fell silent.

In today’s tentative sunlight the preliminary sketch of Putnam was touched with color. The snow-dusted evergreens in front of Golden Age Village looked as if they were trying out for a greeting card. A couple of workman nailed strings of lights to the eaves of the building. Through the windows of the sitting room Rebecca saw several old-timers, assisted by staff members, decorating a Christmas tree.

Jan came to meet them, trailing tinsel through the bustle and chatter. “There you are! I told Louise a little bit about what’s been going on, and she wants to talk to you.”

The building was toasty warm, redolent of pine branches and Lysol. Rebecca shed her coat, hoping her fingers and toes would take the opportunity to thaw out. Michael looked as if he’d like to shed his sweatshirt as well as his coat. “Too warm for you?” Rebecca asked.

“What’re they tryin’ to do, cook the old folks for Christmas dinner?”

She grinned at him. “Just lie back and think of Scotland.”

With a part groan, part guffaw, Michael turned to say hello to Mrs West, whose wheelchair homed in on him like a tartan-seeking missile.

Jan led the way to a small room down the hall. Louise was propped up in bed, wearing a frilly pink bed jacket, a small Bible open on her lap. At her throat, almost concealed in ruffles, she wore the clay beads Phil had found in the sixth-floor fireplace at Dun Iain.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. O’Donnell,” said Rebecca. “Thank you for talking to us. This is Michael Campbell.”

Michael took Louise’s frail fingers in his most delicate grasp. “Oh my,” she said. “Another handsome one. How do you do it, my dear?”

I don’t, Rebecca replied silently. Michael, at his most noncommittal, pulled up a chair for Rebecca and inspected a print of Dun Iain on the wall above the dresser. “Lithograph. Very nice.”

“Little Jamie— Mr James Forbes, I should say, left that to me.” Louise closed her Bible. “Everyone’s gone now. It hardly seems worthwhile… . “Her voice faltered and died. Her oddly magnified eyes went dull with memory. The two bright spots of rouge on her cheeks made the rest of her face seem very pale. “Well!” she said. “What did you want to ask?”

Jan leaned against the wall. Michael settled on the floor beside Rebecca. She wanted to pat his head as if he were a giant puppy, charming but not quite paper-trained. “About Katherine Gemmell. Do you know who she married and if she had children?”

“She had a son and a daughter, but I don’t remember their names.”

“One name started with a ‘D’”, offered Rebecca.

Louise shook her head. “Her husband was from Pittsburgh. Bill Brown.”

“Was he her first husband?” asked Michael.

“As far as I know.”

“When did Katherine and her family leave Putnam?” Rebecca asked. “Where did they go?”

“Sometime in the forties. They went to Columbus; Bill got a job there, since she was always after him to make more money.”

“She liked her consumer goods, I take it?” queried Jan.

“Oh yes. She never had enough nice things. Always made sure to get exactly what she wanted, too. She kept saying it was her due.”

“She deserved it,” said Rebecca quietly.

Louise nodded. “Exactly. She sure took after Athena; strong-minded.”

“They left in the forties?” Rebecca repeated, hoping that in Louise’s mind one decade had run into another.

“During World War Two. Bill went to work in an airplane plant.”

Michael glanced up. Rebecca glanced down. I hate to lead the witness, she told herself, but there seems to be no help for it. “Mrs O’Donnell, we’re also wondering about Dorothy Garst.”

“Dorothy. I haven’t talked to her in years, since I turned Dun Iain over to her. Always rather avoided her, to be honest; she’s a lot like her parents, constantly telling you what’s best for you. It served them right she was so wild when she was young.”

“Margie thinks she may have been estranged from her folks,” said Jan.

“Sam and Ruth Norton,” Louise said, blithely unaware she was dropping a bomb on her audience. “They moved to Columbus, too, but later than the Browns. In the early fifties, I think.”

Michael sighed. “There’s another theory gone west.”

Rebecca slid down in her chair. Damn. For a moment everything had been so tidy. The mausoleum key, still in her pocket, stabbed her waist. “We thought maybe Dorothy was Katherine’s daughter,” she said.

“Dorothy, Katie’s girl?” exclaimed Louise. “Oh no, no. Katie’s children moved to Texas or some outlandish place like that, years and years ago. James helped them out.”

In the distance someone played “Joy to the World” on a tinny piano. “James helped them out?” Rebecca repeated. “Katherine wasn’t able to, then?”

“The last time I saw Katherine,” said Louise, “she came out to Dun Iain with Dorothy. This was right after the Nortons moved. Katie said Dorothy had just joined her church in Columbus and needed help, too.”

“Oh?” Rebecca sat up. Michael leaned forward, his shoulder pressing against her knee. She barely noticed.

Louise’s eyes blurred, seeing a scene from another place and time. “Katie and James had a terrible row. He was very put out with her, believe me, to come and ask him for money when she’d made such a hash of things.”

“What kind of hash?”

“I’m not really sure. When I came in with tea he was saying something about her leaving Bill Brown for another man— Ed? Fred? Ted?— who he didn’t feel was a good influence on the children.”

“That’s why he helped them to push off,” Michael commented.

“Just so, dear.” Louise smiled benevolently on his upturned face.

“And then?” prompted Rebecca.

“Jamie and Katie just sat there staring at each other, white-faced and tight-lipped, while I served the tea. And Dorothy— well, she was standing by the sideboard looking at the mazer. That’s a big fancy drinking cup.”

“We know what it is,” Michael said hastily.

Louise went on. “Dorothy was a sprightly little thing when she was a girl. Jamie told me later that he might hire her to take my place when I retired, rather than give her a handout. It was three or four years later that Dorothy came back to Putnam and married Chuck Garst. Jamie did hire her then.”

Dorothy, sprightly? Hard to believe they were talking about the same person. Time did peculiar things. “That was the last time you saw Katie?” Rebecca asked. “It wasn’t 1952, by any chance?”

“Yes, I believe it was.”

Rebecca indulged in a brief, silent, aha! Michael realized he was leaning against her and sat up with a start.

“Is Katherine still alive?” asked Jan.

Louise shrugged. “I have no idea. Her children left that same year; maybe she went with them. Maybe she went away with that Ed person. Maybe she’s still in Columbus, and simply gave up badgering Jamie.”

Rebecca shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just too damned elusive. Excuse me,” she added to Louise.

Louise didn’t notice. She fingered the necklace at her throat and closed her eyes. “Poor little Katie. We didn’t think at first she’d survive.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Rebecca. The sudden veer of Louise’s thought gave her a crick in the neck. Michael turned back to the bed, his head tilted. Jan leaned on the back of Rebecca’s chair.

“She was born there at Dun Iain. And she was terribly little and weak. It was a miracle from God that she blossomed out, got so big and strong.”

“I thought it was Elspeth’s baby that was little and weak,” Jan said. “Athena’s baby was sickly?”

“Oh yes. And there was Mrs. Forbes’s little girl, bouncing and blooming. No wonder people wondered if she was Rudolph’s baby.”

“And Johnnie took a scunner to the one they called his daughter, did he?” asked Michael.

“He didn’t like her very much, if that’s what you mean. But Mrs. Forbes raged at him, and at Athena, and even at little Katie. Oh, things were very stiff and sharp there for a time. Then the baby died.”

Rebecca sat forward, her spine prickling. “Which baby died?”

Louise’s eyes roved confusedly for something that was no longer in front of them. “Elspeth blamed that letter. She went through the house looking for it, saying she’d destroy it if she found it. But she couldn’t.”

“Do you know what she means?” Jan asked Rebecca.

Like an explosion run in reverse, Rebecca’s mind detonated not outward but in, shrapnel fitting together instead of flying apart. “The Erskine letter! It has to do with switching a living baby for a dead one!”

“Thank you,” said Louise. Her voice broke. Her eyes closed in sudden weariness. “That’s what I’ve always wondered. Thank you.”

“Switching babies? Oh, my God.” Jan came around the chair, sat on Louise’s bed, and took her free hand. “It’s all right, Mrs. O’Donnell. It all happened a long time ago.”

Michael clambered to his feet and braced himself against the dresser, looking slightly dazed. Louise settled even further into her pillows, a porcelain figure nested in white tissue paper. “It was so long ago. There’s no one left, it’s hardly worthwhile to go on.”

“To go on hiding the truth?” asked Jan gently. “To pretend that Athena’s baby miraculously turned into a healthy one?” The old lady tried to speak and couldn’t. Jan motioned to Michael for the glass of water on the dresser and helped Louise to drink. “You don’t have to tell us anything.”

“Yes, I do,” Louise replied faintly, looking from Jan to Rebecca and Michael. “You shouldn’t go to your grave carrying other people’s sins.”

“Why not?” muttered Michael. “Happens all the time.”

Jan made soothing noises. Rebecca winced. “If you’d like to tell us, we’d like to hear.”

Louise took a deep breath. “Athena went in to get Katie in the morning and found her dead. Only I suppose it wasn’t Katie, was it?”

“Cot death?” Michael asked. “Naething apparently wrong with her?”

“Athena swore up and down she’d been smothered by one of the cats. You know the old story, how cats will curl up on an infant and smother it. But Rudolph thought he knew what had really happened. He went to John and claimed Elspeth had smothered the baby in a fit of jealousy.”

“Ouch,” exclaimed Jan.

Rebecca said, “John believed him, didn’t he?”

“He’d been living with Elspeth’s temper for years. He believed him.”

“And the Gemmells,” said Michael, “wanted Elspeth’s bairn.”

“Do you think they blackmailed the Forbeses?” asked Rebecca. She scooted forward to the edge of the bed, folding her arms on the coverlet.

“There was plenty of talk. Charges and countercharges. I wouldn’t be surprised if it came down to blackmail.”

“What a scandal there would’ve been if the Gemmells had accused Elspeth of murder,” said Jan. “Not to mention that an investigation would’ve brought out the affair with Rudolph and the doubt about who the baby’s father was.”

“I think John could’ve bought Rudolph off,” Louise said. “I think he tried. But Athena wanted the child.”

“And she got it,” Michael concluded. “Losin’ her own baby finally pushed Elspeth round the twist. Not that she had far to go.”

“Did John push her out of the window?” Rebecca asked.

“I don’t know,” replied Louise. “All I heard was Mrs Forbes screaming ‘I want my baby back, give her back to me’. And then she fell.”

“Unpremeditated murder in a moment’s rage,” Rebecca mused. “Or quite intentional if misguided ‘justice’ for her infidelity and for killing Athena’s baby. Although I daresay even John didn’t know whether she really had.”

Jan frowned. “With all due respect, Mrs O’Donnell, do you really remember which baby was born strong and which weak? Could it be that Elspeth herself switched babies because she wanted the healthy one? What if it was Elspeth’s baby who died in Katie’s bed of perfectly natural causes?”

“It’s hard,” the old lady admitted. “I could have the details confused. But somewhere, somehow, the babies were switched. And I know for sure that Mr Forbes was not only in the house but in the ballroom when his wife fell.” Her trembling hand fingered the beads. “He promised me a piece of her jewelry if I never told.”

“Guilty conscience?” asked Michael. “Blood money?” He inspected the lithograph of the castle as if expecting its cool Scottish baronial facade to suddenly crack, slough away, and reveal love and hate snarled like brambles.

“Switching babies, and— well, letting Elspeth die— solved John’s problems,” Rebecca pointed out. Her shoulders were cramping from her intense crouch over the edge of the bed. She sat up.