Behind its solid oak, where no one could see her, she leaned her forehead against the cool wood and closed her eyes. And then the child, rousing from his sleep, began to sing off-key to himself, a Highland song she had taught him. She made an effort to collect herself, and called, “I’m coming, darling.” But it was another minute before she could turn and ascend the stairs.

Whatever Alistair McKinstry told his superiors, a fortnight passed before there were other policemen at her door, demanding to inspect the premises: Inspector Oliver, Sergeant Young, and both Constable McKinstry and Constable Pringle. In his anxiety not to offend her, McKinstry had not properly examined the outbuildings, she was told.

Fiona, torn between fear and disgust, told them to search as and where they pleased, then shut the door in their faces and kept the child out of sight.

It was in the stables in the inn yard that they found the bones, well hidden between the back wall and the little room the liveryman had lived in. Inspector Oliver had been the one to notice the unusual thickness of the plaster in one place. He tapped it with a hammer, found that there was space behind it, and tapped again, watching with interest as a spider’s-web crack ran across it. A suspicious man by nature, he went into the dusty room on the other side of the wall and found that a cupboard was not as deep as it ought to have been.

They had the wall down, then, and the skull rolled out before they had even seen the rest of the bones crammed into the long, narrow space. As it came to a stop, grinning up at them, Constable McKinstry smothered a curse.

The long hair still attached in places to the dry bone surely marked it as a woman’s.

IT WAS NOT until late August that they arrested her.

The bones in the stables had catapulted the investigation into a dozen new directions. Inspector Oliver, with grim thoroughness, had scoured Fiona’s past, had followed every lead that came his way, and had succeeded in bringing new information to light—damning information that supported the theory he found so compelling. The procurator-fiscal had seen fit, after speaking with the Chief Constable, to order a trial on the charge of murder.

Fiona found someone to care for the boy and went to jail with an aching heart. She couldn’t be sure who her enemy was, or how he or she had tightened a noose about her neck so cleverly. But she did know one very important thing about this person. The planning and the execution had been quite shrewdly done. Someone had carefully arranged her death, and left it to the law to do the deed for him—or her.

Which meant that someone hated her very deeply.

But who was it?