Rutledge hesitated and then decided on discretion. Oliver was protective of his own investigation, and any evidence that might conflict with his carefully constructed case would immediately be suspect. “Enough to convince me that if the accused met Eleanor Gray in Brae, there is no evidence to prove it.”

It was a cool morning, the kind of day that reminded people in the north that winter would be long and dark and dreary. Rutledge hadn’t finished his breakfast when Oliver strode in and joined him, going directly to the point.

He said now, “Well, I did tell you that we’d been thorough.” He studied Rutledge for a moment, rubbing the menu he’d been given against his freshly shaven chin. “If the movements of the accused are accounted for, then we’re left with the time it took her to travel from Brae to Duncarrick. And the road she took. It must have been there that the two women met. A matter of days, surely!’’

Rutledge weighed the fact that Fiona had not worked out her time in Brae, though she’d told her aunt she must do so.

Where had she gone for those few weeks? Back to the glen where she’d been born? Or down to Lanark to meet someone?

No, it couldn’t have been planned ahead. She hadn’t known she would be summoned to Duncarrick by her aunt.

But what if—what if she’d been aware for some time that she was to meet someone on or about a certain date— and the summons from her aunt had given her the perfect opportunity to leave Brae at the right moment, without excuses or explanations? She had loved the Davison children, she had cried when she left them—but leave them she did.

No lies told to Mrs. Davison. No lies told to her aunt. Just the simple fact that suddenly Fiona MacDonald had been given a gift of time.

And therein lay the mystery of Eleanor Gray and the child.

If she wouldn’t tell him what she knew, there might be another way of examining her past. . . .

Rutledge said to Oliver, “I’d like to search the inn if I may. Can you arrange it?”

“What on earth for?” Oliver demanded.

“I don’t know. Yet. But it’s worth looking to see whether—for the boy’s protection if not her own—she left something there that might help us. A connection to the child’s background that might have been overlooked because at the time no one understood what it represented.”

Oliver shook his head. “I’ve been through the inn. Upstairs and down, the public and the family quarters. There’s nothing.”

But Rutledge knew more about Fiona MacDonald than Oliver did—and what he wanted to find, if they still existed, were any letters that Fiona had written to her aunt before she came to Duncarrick.