Finally she paused and pointed to an area that was perhaps ten feet square. “About here, I’d guess,” she told them.
It was a rocky slope that seemed to be no different from any of its neighbors for a hundred yards in any direction.
“Why are you so sure?” Oliver demanded, mopping his face with a large handkerchief. “I can’t see any difference between this patch and that one-or that one over there.”
“See for yoursel’. I can match that spot just above us with that one across the way-” She pointed to the great bare face opposite, and following her finger, they identified a small outcropping of rock.
If you looked, Rutledge thought, you could find your way easily. But it was always a matter of seeing. To the uninitiated, this was barren ground. Above their heads, another tumbled mass of rock stood out against the sky.
Following his gaze, MacDougal said, “It was there we found the remains. In a slight crevice where water has brought down the supporting scree and left a hollow.” He paused, then said, “You’d have to know it was there. The hollow. It isn’t visible from the road.”
In short, no one would think to leave a body there who didn’t have some familiarity with these mountains.
“Want to climb up?” MacDougal asked.
Rutledge nodded and they walked on, picking their way carefully. It was hot here in the sun, and feet unused to this terrain found it difficult to know where to step with any certainty.
Carrying a body, Hamish pointed out, would not be easy. And for a woman, very nearly impossible. “Unless the corpse was dragged on a rope.”
And there was no one to see such a long, laborious effort. From where he stood, Rutledge could look down at the two motorcars, Oliver standing talking to Betty Lawlor, and a ruined croft some distance away. In the far distance, he saw sheep, but no one with them.
“Hard place for a woman to carry a dead weight,” MacDougal said as if reading his thoughts. “But if that brooch belongs to the deceased, it means she’s not your missing woman. Eleanor Gray.”
“And if it belonged to the murderer, then we have her in custody,” Rutledge finished for him.
They had reached the outcropping where three heavy rocks were lying in a heap. Not so large by the standards of these mountains, but beyond a man’s strength to tumble together so tidily. And where the smaller fragments had washed out from under, there was indeed a crevice. Put a body here in April, and it might be found. But put it here before the weather turns and the autumn storms begin, and it would still be here in the spring. What was left.
Rutledge squatted on his heels. MacDougal said, “You won’t find anything. We were verra’ thorough.”
“I expect you were,” Rutledge said evenly. “I was just thinking that this was a perfect place for bones. What makes you so certain that the body was not here before 1916?”
“Condition, for one thing. And I talked to all the families who run sheep. They were certain it wasna’ here in the summer. A fox or dog had chewed the shoes, and what bits of clothing we found weren’t of any use. First thought was that we’d found a climber. People climb here who havena’ the sense of a beetle! They canna’ believe on a fine day like this one that the mists can come in sae fast, you’re lost before you take ten steps. And she was doubled up, as if trying to keep warm. Loose stones had washed around and over her.”
“Doubled? How?”
“Head on knees, arms around them. Made the body smaller, kept heat in the middle. The bones were still in a huddle, like. The doctor found no injuries, but that’s no’ to say she hadna’ turned her ankle or twisted her knee.”
Hamish said, “Doubled o’er, she’d fit behind the seat of a car, out of sight.”
Rutledge said, “If she was already dead, rigor had passed.”
“Aye, that’s right. Or hadna’ set in. The birds and foxes must have stripped the body in a matter of days. We couldn’t find one hand or the best part of a foot. Other bones had been pulled apart to get at the meat. The skull had rolled into her lap.” MacDougal sighed. “We’ve had a walker or two lost in these parts. But we always ken how they got into the glen. They’d be seen and reported. One left a bicycle. Another begged a lift on a crofter’s wagon. With this one, there’s no way of establishing when-or how-she came to be here. We don’t know the question to ask, do we? And it’s possible she came over the top, from the other side.”
“What’s your opinion of the engraving on the brooch?”
“I have none. It spells out ‘MacDonald,’ and that’s your patch, is it no’?” MacDougal grinned, then shrugged. “It could hae come from the dead woman’s clothing, if she was murdered and dragged up here. Climbers don’t wear much jewelry as a rule. Or it came from the murderer’s, trying to drag up that corpse. We do na’ have well-dressed middle-class women promenading up this mountainside, losing the odd brooch or two.”
“The center stone of the brooch isn’t scratched enough to have been washing down a mountainside since 1916.”
“Yes, I ken what you’re suggesting. Still, if it lodged somewhere for a time, then came down in the rains Betty spoke of, it might not have tumbled about all that much.”
If-if-if- Investigations were made and lost on “ifs.”
“We’ll have to take the brooch back with us. Oliver will give a receipt to Betty.”
“It’s a valuable piece to her,” MacDougal agreed. “I’m surprised she brought it to me in the first place. But her father’s a devil when he’s drunk. If he found she had such a thing, he’d beat her for stealing it and use that as an excuse to take it from her. She was probably counting on me to speak up for her if that happened. Betty spends the summer wi’ the sheep, as far away from him as she can get. I’ve seen her out here in all weathers, a small figure with naething but a dog for companionship.”
Rutledge got to his feet and looked around. This was a very beautiful valley-and very bleak. “Wild” was the word most often used to describe it. He thought about the February night when the massacre had begun, and how the soldiers had run through the darkness with torches, searching for those who had fled. Driven by blood lust. A nightmarish way to die…
“Is there any other?” Hamish asked quietly.
Rutledge shivered in the warm sun.
“Did you come here?” he asked Hamish silently. “You and Fiona? When there was no work to be done on the farm?”
“Aye, we came. With horses. Sometimes we climbed. Or we’d find a place out of the wind and eat the bannocks we’d brought wi’ us. She liked the glen. The silence, but for the wind. And the closeness to her kin…”
MacDougal was asking if Rutledge had seen enough. He nodded and they started back down, slipping once or twice.
“The Lawlor girl. What sort of family does she come from? Aside from the drunken father?”
“Poor enough. She’s the middle girl. They work hard and go hungry sometimes, I’ve no doubt.”
“Why didn’t she bide her time and quietly sell the brooch for whatever it might bring? Even a little money would allow her to escape from the glen and her father and her poverty.”
“She’s too young,” MacDougal said simply. “In another year or two she might have. That’s why she wants it back. If you take it, she’s locked into this life. There won’t be other brooches waiting for sharp eyes to pick them out!”
Joining Oliver and Betty Lawlor, they descended to the road. Oliver bent to brush off his trousers where the cuffs had collected a fine pattern of dust.
Rutledge said to the girl, “I’ve been admiring your shoes.”
There was a flare of fear in Betty Lawlor’s eyes, then she said defiantly, “I earned the money for them!”
It was a silent journey back to Duncarrick. McKinstry was wretchedly weighing the damage the brooch would do to Fiona MacDonald’s case. Rutledge, in the rear seat, could see the fine lines around his eyes, as if his head ached. But he drove with skill and attention to the road, wherever his mind was.
Oliver, on the other hand, was a satisfied man. His investigation had borne fruit, and he could see the end of it now. There was a smugness in his face, and from time to time his head dropped to his chest, relaxed into sleep.
Rutledge, remembering Betty Lawlor’s face when Oliver had offered her a scrap of paper in exchange for the
