“I buried it. In a field somewhere along the road. It was dark, and I couldn’t see to dig, and there was a dog barking somewhere, and I was so frightened. Then Ian began to cry, and I shut my ears and kept digging until I could roll her into the hole I’d made. Someone had piled branches and tree limbs nearby, ready for burning. I pulled them over the raw grave and left them there. It was at the edge of a field, near a wall, where no one would plow-”
“You’re lying-!”
“No, I’m telling the truth at last-Mr. Elliot said to me that confession would free my soul, and it has-I’m ready to die… I want to die -! ”
It took Rutledge nearly ten minutes to stop Fiona’s tears and make her listen to him. Shaking her lightly, he forced her to look at his face. Her eyes, rimmed red from crying, were the saddest he’d ever seen. Dark pools of anguish in her white face.
He wanted to hold her and comfort her. Instead he said, “Fiona. If you confess to murder, there is nothing I can do to save you. Do you understand that? You will be hanged. With joy and thanksgiving in Duncarrick. If I swear that I won’t speak Mrs. Cook’s name again, will you promise me to say nothing to Oliver or Armstrong? Nothing! ”
She said wearily, “I’m tired. I want this to end. I don’t want to remember Hamish and I don’t want to think about Ian, and I can’t bear -” She stopped, shaking her head.
“It will only be for a short time. I have to search for Eleanor Gray. Do you understand that? And if I find her, you won’t have to tell anyone about Mrs. Cook. Will you trust me a little longer?”
After a moment, she said, “I don’t want to trust you. I don’t want to see you again.”
“If you won’t do it for me, then for your grandfather- and Hamish.”
“They are dead. I’d rather be dead with them. It hurts too much to live.” Then she pushed him away and said, “Very well, then. As long as you keep your promise, I shall keep mine. But I haven’t the strength to sit here in this silence, alone and afraid, much longer! If I am going to die, I want to do it before I disgrace myself!” She caught her breath on a sob. “Courage is elusive in the dark of the night.”
He stood up. She seemed very small and helpless. He knew how confinement shredded the soul. But he had seen her strength. And he was touched by it.
“I’ll send word as soon as I can. Through McKinstry. You can trust him.”
“He’s- Yes, I trust him.”
Rutledge took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it out to her. She took it gratefully.
He walked to the door, wanting to say something. To offer her courage. Or to tell her she’d be safe. But he didn’t turn.
And Fiona MacDonald didn’t stop him as he left.
Leaving the cell key with Pringle, Rutledge went to The Reivers, summoning Drummond en route to unlock the door again.
Rutledge took the stairs two at a time, intent on restoring the sandalwood box to Fiona’s room.
Drummond lumbered after him, far lighter on his feet than a man his size ought to be. “I did what you asked. Now you owe me an explanation,” he said at Rutledge’s heels.
Rutledge set the box in the drawer, carefully arranging it among the gloves and the handkerchiefs. Then he turned to Drummond with his answer ready. The man was blocking the doorway. Clarence, half rising from the pillow on the bed, looked at both of them with wary eyes. A sudden move and she would be gone, out of sight.
“Something belonging to Fiona MacDonald has been found near the place where Oliver thinks the body of the child’s mother was hidden. In Glencoe. Fiona told me it was safe here at The Reivers. But she was wrong.” He let out a breath in frustration. “Oliver has all he needs now to convict.”
“Are you telling me something has been stolen from here?”
“The police at the scene think the murderer dropped it while trying to drag the woman’s body high up the slope on a mountainside. A sheepman’s daughter found it. I don’t know what to believe.”
“I have the only other key, and it was given me by Ealasaid MacCallum herself. Fiona handed hers to Oliver when they took her away. Are you calling me a thief?” Drummond’s voice was dangerously quiet.
“No, damn it. I’m saying that what was found in Glencoe is enough to hang Fiona MacDonald. However it came to be there. And if she’s right, that it was here in Duncarrick in July, then someone must have come in here secretly and taken it!”
“Fiona doesn’t lie. I’ve never known her to lie!”
“She lied about the child.”
Drummond gestured angrily, and Clarence fled over the side of the bed in a single fluid movement. “That’s not the same thing. You know it isn’t the same!”
Rutledge started toward the door. “Drummond. I have to leave Duncarrick for a time. Keep an eye on the inn. It wouldn’t do for more-evidence-to find its way to Oliver.”
Hamish warned, “It’s a thin line you’re walking! There’s no way to know where his loyalties lie!”
Rutledge responded silently, “Call it the Biblical casting of bread upon the waters. I need to find out if he’s friend- or foe. He has custody of that child!”
Drummond let him pass. As they went down the stairs, Rutledge said over his shoulder, “If I can put a name and a history to the bones in Glencoe, I will. That’s the only way to break the chains tying Fiona MacDonald to murder.”
When Rutledge arrived at the smithy, he found that the motorcar was repaired and ready to drive.
The young mechanic came out of the small shed where he worked, rubbing his black, greasy hands on a greasier square of cloth. Grinning, he beckoned to Rutledge. “Come look at something.”
“I’m not sure I want to,” Rutledge answered, following him. “What’s wrong with my engine?”
But the mechanic said nothing. When he got to a workman’s bench full of tools and parts and a jumble of odds and ends, he reached for a grimy jar that was sitting behind a coil of rope. Holding up the jar, he said to Rutledge, “Now take a look.”
The jar was full of petrol. Except at the bottom, where a layer of something else moved less sluggishly.
“Water!” Rutledge said, surprised. “There was water in my tank!”
“When all else fails,” the mechanic said happily, “expect the impossible. Yes, indeed, ordinary water. Stopped you as efficiently as an artillery shell. And with greater accuracy, I might add! I drained off the lines, let the jar’s contents settle, and there you have it. A mechanical marvel.” He put the jar back on the bench. “Been swimming in that motorcar, have you?”
Rutledge paid the inflated bill without comment.
As they drove out of the smithy’s yard, Hamish said, “This meddling with the car was no’ the same as searching your room. And if there’s anyone who will ken where to look for whoever is responsible, it’s yon constable.”
“If it was mischief,” Rutledge responded, “then the timing was remarkably opportune. I don’t like coincidence.”
McKinstry was coming out of the barbershop when Rutledge spotted him and offered him a lift as far as his house. In response to Rutledge’s question about malicious property damage, the constable shook his head. “We don’t see much of that. Too easy in a town this size to guess who the culprits are likely to be. The Maxwell brats, now, they’re a wild lot, and it’s only a matter of time before their mischief turns to something more serious. The Army might make men out of them, but their father never will-too quick with his fists.” He added with curiosity evident in his face, “Any particular reason for your interest?”
“I wondered about it, that’s all.”
“It wasn’t mischief that lay behind the notes written about Fiona. If that’s what you’re getting at!”
“Not at all.” Rutledge changed the subject.
It wasn’t until he’d dropped McKinstry at his door that Hamish said, “He didna’ speak of the brooch to you.”
“No,” Rutledge answered. “He doesn’t want to accept what it means. For that matter, neither do I. If no one took it from The Reivers-” He left the thought unfinished.
Hamish told him, “She didna’ kill!”
But the woman in the back room of the police station was not the same girl that Hamish remembered haying in the summer of 1914, the sun warm on her face and laughter in her eyes. The day war had begun in a small town
