“I meant,” said Armstrong, looking up at him with a sour expression, “that the name could have been engraved on the back just before the brooch was put where it might be found, to please the police.”
Oliver held on to his temper and said, “Which is exactly why you are here. We want to show it to the accused and ask her its history.”
“Ah, yes.” Armstrong handed back the glass and took off his spectacles. But he held on to the brooch. “I don’t think I can allow that. Her answer might be self-incriminating.”
“I should hope it might be,” Oliver retorted through clenched teeth. “That’s the intention of the police, to prove her guilt.”
“It’s no’ the place of a policeman to worry his head about innocence,” Hamish said. “Nor the church either!”
“You may show it to her,” Armstrong answered after letting Oliver stew for several minutes as he looked at the brooch with concentrated attention. “But I will not allow you to badger her. Do you understand?”
Oliver got to his feet and retrieved the key from behind his desk. “You’d better come as well, Rutledge. She might have something to say about the dead woman.”
They walked back to the cell and Oliver unlocked the door. As it swung open, Fiona rose from her chair to face them. She looked at the three men, then her eyes swung back to Rutledge’s.
He could read the silent message she had sent him: What has happened?
Armstrong went up to her and took her hand with unctuous courtesy, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. “There’s nothing to fear, my girl. The police want to ask if this object belongs to you. Please answer that question and that question only.”
He opened his palm, and the dim light in the cell caught the brightness of the gold but left the smoky stone dark.
Fiona stared at it. “It’s my mother’s brooch.”
“Not yours, then?”
“No, I-”
Armstrong cut her short. “There you are, Inspector. It does not belong to the accused.”
But Oliver could read faces too. He could see clearly that while the brooch had belonged to Fiona’s mother, at some time it had been in her possession.
“Is your mother alive?” he asked, already knowing the answer to that.
“She died when I was very young.”
“Do you remember her?”
“No. A shadowy figure. Someone with a sweet voice and soft hands. I think I remember that.”
“Then you were too young to be given the brooch?”
She glanced at Armstrong. “I was too young, yes.”
“Who took charge of it at her death?”
“My grandfather must have done. There was no one else.”
“Is your grandfather still living?”
“He died in 1915.”
“And you were the only daughter of the house?”
“I was.”
“Your mother’s brooch would by right pass to you, not to your brothers.”
Fiona nodded.
Hamish said, “The conclusion is plain! The brooch must have come into her possession in 1915. A year before the body was left up the glen. They’ve damned her now!”
But Armstrong had nothing to say in her defense.
There was a gleam of triumph in Oliver’s eye. “I’ll have that brooch now, Mr. Armstrong, if you please!”
Armstrong passed it over to him, then rubbed his palms together as if to rid them of the feel of it.
Fiona opened her mouth, was on the verge of speaking, and caught instead the swift but barely perceptible shake of Rutledge’s head. She closed her mouth and looked down at her hands clenched together now at her waist.
As if he’d heard the unvoiced question, Oliver answered it. “This is evidence now. Thank you, Miss MacDonald!”
Oliver turned on his heel and went out of the cell, followed by Armstrong. Fiona looked quickly at Rutledge, but he said nothing, turning his back with the other men and leaving her alone. But before the door closed finally, she saw him look over his shoulder and smile reassuringly.
It was a reassurance he did not feel.
After Armstrong had taken his leave, Oliver waited until he had heard the outer door close behind the lawyer and then said to Rutledge, “Sit down.”
Rutledge went back to the chair he had vacated to shake hands with the departing Armstrong. He knew what was coming.
Oliver was saying, “Look, in my view, we have all we need to proceed to trial. This brooch is the connection we didn’t have before-it provides a link between the woman MacDougal had found up the glen last year and the accused. And it will see her hang. There’s no reason I can think of for going back to Glencoe with her. I think you’ll agree to that.”
The thought of facing the ghosts of Glencoe again, even with Fiona, turned Rutledge’s blood cold. But he said neutrally, “We can’t be sure we’ve identified the corpse. There’s no proof yet that she ever bore a child.”
“But there’s proof that the accused never bore one. If the accused didn’t conceal the body there, who did? Why was her brooch found so close to the makeshift grave? Not a stranger’s brooch, mind you, but one with her family’s name on it!”
Rutledge said with infinite care, “Still, it’s circumstantial-Armstrong could make the point that she had lived hard by the glen.”
Hamish said, “But he won’t. He doesna’ care enough.”
In the silence Oliver stood up and went to the single window. Its glass was dingy-no one had washed it in years. But he stood there with his back to Rutledge, apparently looking out on the street, and went on. “What you do to satisfy Lady Maude is your business.”
“Fiona MacDonald is the only person who can tell me if the woman she’s accused of killing is Eleanor Gray.”
“I doubt she ever will. She’s likely to go to her grave with that secret!”
It was the one point they saw eye to eye on.
“I’d like to talk to her. Now that she’s seen the brooch.”
Feeling expansively generous, Oliver said, “Go ahead. I’ll give you as long as you need.”
He turned from the window, picked the key ring up from his desk, and passed it to Rutledge. And he repeated, “As long as you need.” But there was a final ring to it now.
“Thanks.” Rutledge took the ring and walked down the hall again.
Hamish said, “Oliver willna’ find it so easy to dismiss Lady Maude. The Yard willna’ either!”
Rutledge answered, “But Lady Maude doesn’t want to hear the truth about her daughter. She never has.”
As far as he could tell, Fiona MacDonald had not moved from where she had been standing when the three men had walked out of her cell a quarter of an hour earlier.
He closed the wooden door and stood with his back to it. She said almost at once, “Why did they take my mother’s brooch?”
“You’re sure it belonged to your mother?”
“Yes, of course I’m sure! My grandfather let me wear it on her birthday. To remember her. All day I could wear it, pinned to my dress. And I was always very careful, very proud. I felt close to her.”
He could see the small child, dressed in her best clothes, gingerly moving about the house so as not to tear her skirts or soil her sleeves. And the grandfather still mourning his dead daughter in his own fashion, instilling into Fiona the feeling that her mother was near-if only for this one day each year.
It was, in its way, a very sad picture.
“Where did you keep it? After you moved to Duncarrick.”
