It wouldn’t take considerable strength to move the bench. It was heavy and cumbersome, but a person could shift it if he or she knew how to “walk” it off the dais and into the bed. And it had rained both days. . . .

The feet were deep into the soil of the bed now, as if the bench had stood there for several seasons. Rutledge used the side of the trowel to scrape away the layer of compost mulch that kept down the weeds. Then he put the tip deep into the ground and lifted the first clump of soil.

It was thick with what he took at first to be roots. And then he saw that he had uncovered a piece of cloth. Clothing, he amended, looking at it closely. No, it was a corner of blanket. No more than two inches by three.

Blankets weren’t put in with compost—they didn’t decay at the rate of garden clippings and hedge trimmings. An old blanket went into the dustbin.

He dug about under the bench for some time, but the ground yielded nothing more.

Hamish said, “Someone buried a pet here, a cat or a small dog, and moved the bench so that the grave wouldna’ be disturbed.”

Rutledge, rocking back on his haunches, reluctantly agreed. A pet wrapped in an old blanket . . .

After all, he hadn’t wanted to find Eleanor Gray here, buried in a back garden. It would finish his investigation in Scotland.

He hadn’t wanted to come to Scotland. Now he didn’t want to leave. There was too much still to be done.

RUTLEDGE KEPT HIS promise and met Hugh Fraser for luncheon. It was a small restaurant that was popular with the noonday throng of marketgoers, and Fraser apologized for that. “But if we go to the hotel, a dozen people will stop by the table, their minds on business.”

“My father followed the law. He found it a fascinating mistress.”

Fraser grimaced. “The law is all right. And I’ve made a good living. My clients come from all corners of the district, from Loch Lomond to Callander. I just don’t have the same taste for it I once had. I never got used to watching men die. France was bad enough, but there we were firing back. The influenza epidemic was very different. There was a nurse bending over me, changing the dressing on my arm, and she collapsed across the bed. The orderlies carried her away like a sack of onions. Before dawn she was dead. It was like some damned medieval plague. The men on either side of me died of it, and seven men in another ward. I remember priests coming in the night, and not enough orderlies to bring us water. My father saw two people drop dead in the street before they could reach home.” He laughed without humor. “You’re a damned good listener, did you know that?”