Page 78 of Death at a Highland Wedding
“Did you have a lovely walk?” Isla asks as they catch up to us. “I hope so. It is a beautiful day for a stroll, and you need not worry about Mr. Müller. Mallory has already interviewed him and obtained his prints, both finger and foot.”
I lift my hands. “I didn’t fully interview him. I got in a few questions before he declared me too female to acknowledge. Mostly, I wanted to get the prints.”
“Which was very cleverly done,” Isla says. “She lured him into a soggy patch for the footprints and dropped a coin for the fingermarks, all the while pretending she had seen a trap, so he could feel most superior about proving her wrong.”
McCreadie tips his hat to me. “Once again, I bow to your skill, milady.”
“Thank Müller, for having such a low opinion of my intelligence that he didn’t question my awkward tricks. As for the interview, he dodged you two. He saw you heading for his cottage.”
McCreadie smiles. “I know, and having spotted him making haste in the other direction, I used the opportunity to search his cottage.”
“Nice. Find anything?”
He glances at Gray, who takes out his handkerchief and opens it to reveal a hair ribbon, a tin ring, and a scrap of fabric. I frown at the objects. The ribbon is embroidered and distinctive. Taken together, that and the small ring seem like mementos, probably from a young girl.
“Does Müller have a daughter?” I ask.
McCreadie lifts a finger. “A plausible explanation. A daughter who perished—or whose mother took her away—and he keeps these reminders of her, which we have cruelly stolen.”
I take a closer look at the fabric. It’s dingy white, with ragged lace and torn edges. I lift it gingerly in one gloved hand.
“Oh my,” Isla says, recognizing the fabric a moment before I do.
It’s a piece of fabric ripped from bloomers. Women’s—or girls’—underwear.
“It was under a floorboard,” McCreadie says. “I have taken to checking for them, as well as under the mattresses, thanks to Mallory. She is correct—in thinking they are being clever, people can be very predictable.”
“You found all these under a floorboard?”
McCreadie nods. “The fabric was wrapped around the ribbon and ring.”
A girl’s ring and hair ribbon, hidden inside a piece of girls’ underwear, the bundle hidden in the gamekeeper’s cottage.
“It has not been his cottage for long,” Isla says. “I feel obligated to point that out.”
“True,” McCreadie says. “But there were marks on the wood where it was pried up. Fresh marks that indicate the spot had only been opened recently.”
A ring. A ribbon. Underwear. All belonging to a girl. Recently hidden from sight.
After a twelve-year-old girl fled from the gamekeeper here.
Yes, Nora might have died of measles, but that doesn’t mean Müller didn’t do something to her. Something terrible.
We need to dig deeper into Nora’s case. That will mean speaking to her family and, perhaps more importantly, her friends. I think back to the children Simon had seen lingering around the coach and the note I found in there. That note linked Nora’s death to Cranston. Childish superstition from the stories she told of having been “cursed” by Müller? Or was there more to it?
As a female constable, I’d worked my share of sexual-assault cases, not so much investigating as interviewing the survivors. Some of those had been children. I imagine twelve-year-old Nora roaming around the estate grounds. Müller catches her. Really catches her, not just shouting in Austrian as she flees.
I won’t speculate on what happens after that, on an empty estate with the owner in Edinburgh. Afterward, how does Nora deal with the trauma? She’s twelve, still a child, but in this world, she’s a young woman whose marriage prospects have been irreparably damaged, and she’s old enough to know that. Instead she weaves a story where she escaped ahead of the irate gamekeeper, her attacker reduced to an impotent buffoon, running after her and shouting in his own language.
She said he cursed her. And, if he did what we fear, that’s not completely untrue. He cursed her to a life of shame and humiliation if anyone found out what happened.
What if shedidtell someone what happened? It’d be a friend, rather than an adult. A friend who couldn’t do anything about it, because Nora couldn’t afford for anythingtobe done.
What if it’s a half-told tale, full of holes to cover Nora’s shame, and the friend misinterprets her to mean Archie Cranston is the culprit? Or blamesCranston because it happened on his land, and Müller is his employee? That friend leaves a message in Gray’s coach.
He deserved it for what he did to Nora.
We can’t interview Nora’s family or friends just yet. We need more information to narrow down our questions. I’d also like an excuse to speak to Nora’s family without arousing Ross’s suspicions.
