cold, and Fiona MacDonald had pulled a shawl around her shoulders.
Her own face was white as Oliver made some apology for their abrupt departure some ten minutes earlier. Rutledge realized that she must be expecting some news of her trial. Or-of her child. The tenseness in her shoulders betrayed her as she waited for Rutledge to speak.
“Inspector Rutledge has come from London to look into the identity of bones discovered up the mountainside in Glencoe. He has questions he wishes to put to you.”
“Yes, very well,” she said, her voice soft, hardly more than a whisper.
Rutledge had no idea what he had expected to learn. His mind was a blank wall of nothing. He found himself looking away from her, not wanting to meet her eyes. But he managed to speak to her, feeling his way. “You’ve been asked before, Miss MacDonald-but can you give us any information that might help us find the child’s real mother? Or failing that, if she’s dead, her family? Surely you must be concerned for his well-being, and he’d be far happier with a grandmother or an aunt than in a foster home.”
“Will he?” she asked. “I’ve killed no one. I expect to return to my home and to my child.” Her voice was resolute, but there was fear in her eyes.
“If he’s not your child,” Rutledge said gently, “I doubt you’ll be allowed to keep him, even if you’re found not guilty. A young woman having to make her own way, with no husband or family of her own, could be considered unfit to make a suitable home.”
“Then I’ll marry,” she said with resignation. “I’ll make a home, give him a father!”
“You have no claim upon the boy. The law has its own views on the care of orphans.” He tried to keep his voice quiet, without condemnation.
Fiona bit her lip. “I don’t believe you!”
“Everything has changed, you see. When you first came to Duncarrick, you were thought to be a married woman, a widow. No one had any reason to question your right to the child. Now there is every reason.”
“No, I’m the only mother he’s known-!”
Changing his approach, Rutledge asked, “Did you write that letter to Mr. Elliot? The anonymous one mailed from Glasgow?”
Oliver stirred behind him. He hadn’t thought to ask that.
But the shock in Fiona MacDonald’s face answered any doubts Rutledge might have had.
“No!” There was passion in her voice, not mere certainty. Why? Then she added, as if to cover it, “The letter damned me.”
“You might have realized that those notes were bearing fruit. You might have wanted to protect yourself.”
“Then surely I’d have gone about it with more wisdom! I-I can’t-this letter is something I dream about in the night. It frightens me. I have been shown it and cannot recognize the handwriting. I have asked Mr. Elliot if he knew who had sent it, and he claims he doesn’t. But he tells me to throw myself on the mercy of the courts and save my immortal soul. I’ve asked the police if they’ve discovered the sender, and they tell me they don’t need to know who it is. But surely the author matters to them as much as it matters to me !”
“Do you suppose Eleanor Gray might have written it? With the best of intentions, unaware of the use to which it might be put?”
The name failed to register. “Why should a stranger defend me? I don’t know any Grays. Certainly not an Eleanor Gray. Ask her, not me.”
He hesitated. His head was aching so severely, he could hardly breathe, much less think clearly. “There’s very good reason for us to believe that Eleanor Gray gave birth to the child you have been raising and called your son.”
There was a flicker of something across her face, gone so quickly that Rutledge wasn’t sure he’d seen it. Humor? No, it was something else.
“What do you want from me? Lies? I don’t know this woman.”
“Perhaps you didn’t know her name. Was her death an accident? Or an illness-the result of childbirth?”
She smiled sadly. “If this Eleanor Gray is dead, how could she have written to Mr. Elliot or anyone else?”
Touche! “The Grays have money. They are able to give the boy far more than you ever can. It would be possible, I think, for arrangements to be made to visit him. You’d not lose touch entirely. In a crowded asylum for orphans he won’t receive the love and attention he needs. Surely that weighs with you?”
“It weighs with me, Inspector,” she said tiredly, “but not enough to lie to you. I don’t know Eleanor Gray. I know nothing about when or how she might have died, and I can’t tell you if she gave birth to a child. There is nothing I can do for her family except to tell the truth. And I have.” There was disappointment in her tone. “Is that what you wanted-what brought you here? The need of a comforting story to take to a grieving woman? I also grieve, and no one will tell me about my son. Whether he’s well or ill, whether he remembers me or has been made to forget me.” Her face nearly crumpled, but she fought for and won composure. He could see the tears in her eyes.
“He’s well,” he answered, ignoring the smothered protest behind him. She had a right to know. She might be a murderess The thought stopped him cold.
Rutledge couldn’t remember returning to the hotel and picking up the key to his room.
The woman at the desk, true to her word, had chosen well. Cream walls and white lace curtains were set off by the sea blue of the bedding, the patterned carpet, and the chintz-covered chairs. Stiff silk flowers stood in a blue-and-cream bowl, and there was a blue-trimmed cream shade over the single lamp on the corner table. He hardly noticed. But there was a pair of windows looking down on the square, where rain-wet pavement glistened and shop lights cast gaily colored splotches across the puddles.
He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to remember what he had said to Fiona MacDonald-and how she had answered him. His mind refused to give him what he wanted, and in the background, Hamish was such a force that the voice in his head seemed to scream louder than the sounds of people or vehicles outside or the nearby church clock sounding the hours one by one.
The next morning, when Rutledge arrived at the police station, Constable Pringle was there alone. A ruddy man with sandy hair and the freckles that matched. He stood and formally introduced himself as Rutledge gave his name.
“Inspector Oliver isn’t in-”
“I’ve only come for five minutes. Oliver and I interviewed the prisoner yesterday. I have a question or two that arose while I was reading over my notes.”
“I shouldn’t leave my desk,” the constable said, uncertain.
“No, that’s all right. I can find my own way.”
Pringle went to a cupboard and took down a ring of keys. “This one.” He handed Rutledge the lot, singling out a heavy one in the middle.
“Thank you.”
With Hamish ominously silent, like a dark cloud foretelling a storm, Rutledge walked down the passage to the room where Fiona MacDonald was kept. A plump woman in a blue uniform was scrubbing the last few feet of the passage, her face red with effort. She moved aside as Rutledge passed and went back to her task as he set the key in the lock.
He found that his hands were shaking.
Opening the door, he saw that Fiona had risen to meet him, the wary expression on her face changing to surprise. “Inspector,” she said carefully.
He closed the door to give them some privacy.
“Last evening-” he began, and then dropped the pretense that he had been going over his notes. He said instead, “I’ve come to clarify a point or two. Do you wish to have your barrister summoned?”
“I’m more afraid of Mr. Armstrong than of you,” she answered. “The way he stares at me, I feel… unclean. He despises women, I think. We are weak vessels in his sight, better left uncreated.” She tried to smile and failed.
There was a brief silence. She studied him, and he wondered what she saw in his face. But he didn’t want to know.
“Did you ask for this case?” The words seemed drawn from her against her will.
“No. I was summoned to deal with the missing Gray woman. Until I came through that door-” He stopped.
