HE WAS GIVEN the key and Constable McKinstry as an observer, and allowed to inspect the inn.

McKinstry moved with nervous apprehension, a man torn between two duties. He showed Rutledge the way the inn was laid out, and then hovered at his shoulder like a second Hamish, both of them carrying on a desultory conversation with him as he moved from room to room of the private wing. By the time they’d finished with the small parlor, then walked into the dining room behind it, and the kitchen beyond that, Rutledge said, “The boy’s room. Have you searched it thoroughly? If I were hiding anything, I’d put it in among his toys, or perhaps at the bottom of a drawer filled with outgrown clothes—”

“But what would she have been hiding?” McKinstry asked wretchedly. “If she’s not guilty, what is there to hide?”

Rutledge turned and started toward the stairs. “This way? Right! The boy’s proper heritage is what we’re after. If anything had happened to Miss MacDonald—illness—accident—she had no family of her own to come for him and take him in. Surely she’d have thought to leave some instructions for the child’s protection? A name, or how to go about reaching a solicitor, perhaps. Eleanor Gray had a solicitor who conducted her affairs for her.” But was Mr. Leeds courageous enough to take on Lady Maude’s displeasure a second time?

McKinstry said, “We’ve looked—”

“—but haven’t found anything. Yes, I know. Look again for that reason!”

McKinstry led the way up the stairs, where several doorways opened onto a central passage. Rutledge followed him. The private wing, as he had noted, was small and old but well-kept and comfortable. It spoke well for Fiona’s sense of duty to the inn and the child in her care.

Hardly, he thought, a den of iniquity, as some had imagined it!

A white cat came out of the room at the head of the stairs, friendly and curious. She was well-fed, Rutledge saw, and not frightened. Someone was looking after her—

He went into the room and saw that it must be Fiona’s. There was a round depression on the pillow at the head of the bed and a thin carpeting of white hairs. This was where the cat slept.

Besides the bed, which boasted a coverlet trimmed in eyelet, there was a chest, a dressing table, and a desk. Two chairs stood beneath the windows, both cushioned in a rose print. He went to the desk first, but left it after a cursory examination. It would be the first place anyone looked. Oliver, for instance, would have gone through it with great care. All that appeared to be left were bills, unused stationery, a penknife, ink, pencils, envelopes, a large book of accounts for the household, and other ordinary items.