“No, no, you don’t understand. She arranged for pipes and drums to visit the manor houses that had been turned into clinics or hospitals. We had about twenty officers ourselves, broken bones generally. She invited the pipers here first, to see what the response might be. And it brought the men to tears. They were so buoyed up! It was amazing. She had two young officers with her who had helped find the pipers. Both were Scottish, and both were quite taken with Eleanor. I thought she rather liked the dark one. She was upset when he went back to the Front.”

“Do you recall the names of these men?”

“Good gracious, no, not after all this time. I do remember that the fairer one spent a considerable part of his day in our stables. The horses were gone, of course, but it was the construction that interested him. The stonework was eighteenth century, and he admired it.”

“And the other officer? The one Eleanor Gray seemed to like?”

Mrs. Atwood frowned. “His father was something in finance. I can’t tell you what it was. We were so crowded, and there was so much happening. I tried to be polite, but the truth is, I barely listened.”

“Please try to remember.” It was a command sheathed as a polite request.

She shook her head. “It was so long ago. And you can’t imagine what it was like, the house at sixes and sevens, things packed away in the attics, no room to entertain. Though we did make an effort when we had fewer patients.”

“But she saw this man more than once? Perhaps having dinner with him in London as well as bringing him here for the pipers?”

“I can’t be sure. They’re all Mac-this and Mac-that, aren’t they, the Scots? And Eleanor was in London, I could hardly keep track of her friends.”

“Yet you say she rather liked him and was upset when he went back to France.”

She bit her lip. Caught in her own tangle of truth. She turned and walked to one of the windows, looking out with her back to him. After a silence, she said, “I think the dark one, the one she liked, was named for a poet. How odd—I had forgotten that! Yes, I’m sure he was the one. There was some joke about it the first time he came. We asked if he’d read from his works—teasing, of course! And he said he might, after a good dinner. But he never did. A charming man with a charming accent. I hope he survived the war.”

So Mrs. Atwood had seen him more than once. . . .“There are a number of Scottish poets,” Rutledge said gently.

“Yes, I know. How absolutely maddening! I remember the teasing—I remember his smile as he answered. I remember that his father was in finance—”

It was Hamish who made the leap, quite unexpectedly. “Robert Burns.”