Oliver pulled his vehicle off the road behind the other motorcar, raising a thick cloud of dust. The only traffic they had seen for miles was a flock of sheep and several carts piled with cabbages and sacks of potatoes. The road in either direction snaked yellow in the sun, like a dry river.
Solitary. But not empty. This place was never empty if you knew its history. Hamish, who did, was silent in the face of it. Rutledge thought, if ever there was a place for the pipes, it was here. Keening a lament on the wind and filling the valley with human sounds to shut out those no one could quite hear.
He forced himself to concentrate. Introductions out of the way, MacDougal went back to his own vehicle to open the door for the passenger he had brought with him.
She was no more than fourteen or fifteen, wrapped against the chilly wind that was blowing down from the heights in a faded plaid shawl that reached her hips. Her skirts whipped and snapped about her ankles. Her hair, in a bun, was a mousy brown, and youth was all that made her pretty.
But she faced the strangers as they were introduced in their turn and seemed to be collected for someone her age.
“And this is Betty Lawlor,” the Inspector ended. “Right, shall I begin, or will you, Inspector Oliver?”
Rutledge said before Oliver could speak, “Do you know the MacDonalds up the glen-” He dredged his memory for a name, and Hamish supplied it.
“-kin of Duncan MacDonald, who died in 1915?”
Betty gave him a sour look. “Aye. I ken who they are.”
“Are you friends, then?”
“Not friends, no.”
“Did you know Duncan’s granddaughter, Fiona?”
“I did. Not well. She was older. My sister’s age.”
Rutledge looked around him at the great expanse of emptiness. “I should think that neighbors here might look out for one another.”
Betty stared at him. “My ain grandfather was transported to Australia for sheep stealing. I havena’ any dealings with the MacDonalds. It was their sheep.”
Rutledge nodded. Oliver, impatient, said abruptly, “What did you find up there, Miss Lawlor?” He pointed to the mountainside above them, a great bulge of rock that seemed top-heavy.
“I was walking up there one day and saw something shining in the sunlight. I picked it up. It was this.”
She extended a work-worn hand and in the palm lay a small brooch. Rutledge and Oliver stepped forward to look at it more closely.
It was oval, with a single stone in the center and around it a circlet of smaller stones, set like the petals of a flower. On the back was a simple pin to hold it closed.
The color of the stones was a smoky brown. Smoky quartz.
“A cairngorm.” Hamish said it before Oliver did.
A stone found in Scotland and popular for jewelry. In the hilt of a skean dhu, in the froth of lace at the throat in eighteenth-century portraits, adorning the necks and fingers of ladies, it was a symbol in its way of the Highlands.
The setting was gold, a dainty filigree.
A pretty thing, and had probably been treasured once.
Rutledge said, “May I?” and took the brooch to examine it more closely.
The stones, well polished, flashed in his hand. The color was striking. He turned the brooch this way and that, to catch the light. Under the pin he noted that something had been engraved. Time had worn whatever it was to a blur.
“See just there. Initials, I think.” He pointed these out to Oliver. “Or a name. I can’t quite make them out-” Working with the light and shadow, he finally said, “There’s an M- possibly an A-a D-surely that’s an A-L.”
Oliver took the brooch and turned it back and forth himself, then shook his head. “Is that an M? Are you certain? Or an N?”
He passed the brooch on to MacDougal. “I looked at it earlier,” he confessed. “With a glass, before I telephoned you. It’s an M right enough.” He paused, and then said, “With a glass you can read the whole of it. ‘MacDonald.’ ”
McKinstry moved, denial in the abrupt shift from one foot to the other. In the ensuing silence, MacDougal handed the brooch back to Betty Lawlor. Her fingers closed over it until the knuckles were white.
“How far from where the body was found would you say this came to light?” Rutledge asked MacDougal.
“Possibly a hundred feet downhill. But it could have washed that far. In the rains and melting snow. After all, if you take into account the fact that it was here for several years, it’s not surprising at all.” He pointed above their heads again, where scree had been brought down the rough face of the peak. “I’d say the brooch must have come from above. There’s no other explanation. People don’t walk just here. It’s too uncertain. Most climbers follow that line over there.” He shifted to show them the preferred path. “And there.” He pointed across the road to the opposite slope. “It’s not impossible someone would be walking in our direction, but I’d say the odds were strongly against it.”
Hamish said, “The cairngorm wasna’ scratched enough to ha’ washed that far!”
Rutledge turned to Betty Lawlor, standing silently as they talked, her eyes moving from face to face. A self- contained child… “How did it happen that you were up there?”
She shrugged. “I walk all over this land. Always have. Helping with the sheep. I doubt there’s a foot of it I havena’ covered at some time or another.”
“But you never came upon the body that was found higher up?”
“I might’ve if the sheep had gone that far up. But generally they don’t just there. Stupid beasts, they are, but not foolish.”
He looked down at her shoes as she spoke, thinking of her walking day after day over such rough terrain-a hard life for a child.
Her shoes were new. Sturdy. He could see the leather toes just peeking out at the hem of her gown. The gown was a hand-me-down, the shawl the same. But her shoes were new. Even the edges of the soles hadn’t been worn yet.
Oliver said, “Tell me what you told Inspector MacDougal when you brought in the brooch.”
She looked at him directly, shading her eyes with her hand. “It was nearly a year ago that I found it. Summer anyway. I saw it in the sun. It was the first day it hadna’ stormed in a week or more. I didna’ like to think it might belong to- to whoever it was they found. Up there. It was pretty, and I wanted to keep it. But I’m afraid my father will find it and beat me for stealing. So I went to Inspector MacDougal to ask him to set it right!” She broke off, then asked anxiously, “You aren’t going to take it away, are you? You can’t be sure it’s hers!”
Oliver said magnanimously, “I’m afraid it must be taken in evidence. But when we’ve finished with it, I’ll see that you have it back again.” His eyes switched to Rutledge’s face. He didn’t have to put into words what was in both their minds. This was the first direct link between Fiona and the mountain. Between Fiona and the bones that might be Eleanor Gray’s.
Rutledge said nothing.
MacDougal asked Betty to take them to the place where she found the brooch, and she turned to spring up the hillside like one of the sheep she watched out for. Strong for all her thinness, and agile, she seemed to fly. Oliver, puffing in her wake, swore under his breath, but didn’t ask her to slow down. McKinstry turned back to stay with the vehicles.
Rutledge was just behind her, watching the new shoes, watching her almost intuitive knowledge of where there was enough stability to place a foot. She had learned from the sheep MacDougal, keeping pace but red-faced, said, “Fra’ the top are fine views. I used to climb here as a lad, with my brothers.”
“Did you know the MacDonalds?” Rutledge asked him.
“I knew one of them-brother of the accused, I’d guess. A good man. He lost his legs and bled to death before they could get him back over the wire. My brother died the same day. Machine-gun fire. I was lucky-shot three times but nothing that kept me from going back.” There was a quiet irony in his voice.
They had come some distance, cutting diagonally across the mountain’s face, slipping and sliding here or there, and Betty had begun to look around, as if trying to find landmarks.
