WHEN HE REACHED Duncarrick, he bathed and shaved, went to bed, and slept two hours. Then he went in search of Constable McKinstry.

Rutledge ran him to earth making his rounds, coming back from the east end of town with a clutch of small boys in his wake. Their faces were long, downcast. Truants by the look of them. McKinstry dropped them off at the school, where a stern school-master had been watching for him. The boys went in through the door with the air of the condemned, dragging their feet.

“Future criminals,” McKinstry said, catching sight of Rutledge standing in a shop doorway. “But they’re not bad, really, they just have no taste for learning. I probably didn’t either at that age. And they’re fatherless. It doesn’t help.”

“It’s an excuse they’ll hear until they believe it.”

“Still, we make allowances.” The constable grinned ruefully. “The headmaster, now, he won’t.” As the grin faded, he added, “I thought you’d finished with us.”

“Not finished, no.” They turned to walk along together. “Do you remember, when you came to ask Morag if you could speak to me, what you told me about solving crimes in Duncarrick? You said you knew the people, and that that was often the key to finding who had stolen a horse and why—who had killed a lamb and why.”

“Yes. It’s true—”

“But in Fiona’s case, you were at a loss. You couldn’t draw on your knowledge of this town to find out who was persecuting her.”

“That’s right. I don’t have the experience to put with the knowledge.”

They crossed the square and dodged a milk dray lumbering past. Rutledge said, “I’m working at a disadvantage also. Eleanor Gray is pulling me in one direction, and Fiona MacDonald is pulling me in another. I can’t find the link between them. In life, I mean. How they met, why they met, when and where they met.” He took a deep breath. “If Fiona didn’t murder Eleanor Gray, then whose bones do we have on a mountainside in Glencoe? And if those bones belong to Eleanor Gray, then how did she come to die there in a wilderness four or five months after she arrived in Scotland?”

“The brooch—”

“Yes.” Rutledge stopped outside the hotel. “The brooch. It’s damning. But it doesn’t put a name to the bones, does it? Only to the killer.”

McKinstry rubbed his eyes. “I lay awake at night and try to find an answer. Inspector Oliver says she admitted that the thing belonged to her mother. He came to me later and asked if I’d seen Fiona wearing it after she moved here to Duncarrick. And I can’t remember!”

“Why not?” It was curt, accusing.