“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 in an obscure province of the Austrian empire. Hamish had carried that memory with him to the trenches. Time stood still for him. It had moved on for her. In five years, people can change. . . .

LEAVING HIS CAR at the hotel, this time in the open rather than in the shadows of the shed, Rutledge went to the shop owned by Ann Tait.

She was folding lingerie into pale lavender paper, and a box stood ready at her elbow. Lifting the paper, she laid it gently into the box and arranged it a little to make it fit snugly. Then she put the lid on the box and set it aside before turning to Rutledge.