Into the silence he asked, “Do you trust Constable McKinstry?”

Surprised, she said, “Yes. I think I do. Why shouldn’t I? He wanted to marry me.”

Hamish said, “If he wed her, he’d have custody of the child. Is that what began this business, her refusal?”

“Why didn’t you marry him?” Rutledge asked. “Ian would have had a proper father.”

“I didn’t want to marry. I didn’t want to wake up in the morning and find his face on the pillow next to mine. Or anyone else’s. I don’t love him. I gave my heart away once. I never want to do it again. It hurts too much!”

He thought of Jean. Yes, it hurt far more than it should, to love.

Fiona smoothed her hands together. “Have you ever made a house of playing cards? I used to do it for the Davison children sometimes. It always falls in upon itself. That’s my dilemma, Ian Rutledge. How to keep the cards from falling in on themselves. And try as I will, I don’t see the way to prevent it. It will be better for my son to grow up hating me or not even remembering my name and face than for the cards to fall in.”

“Someone tried to kill me yesterday.” The admission was forced out of him. He hadn’t intended to say anything. “Someone shot at me and it wasn’t by accident. It was a clear line of fire and he missed by very little. A warning perhaps. And I can’t fight back because I don’t know how! How many lives will you put at risk for your son?”

She winced, then recovered with an effort. “You’re a grown man. You can fight back, even against shadows. A small boy can’t.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want you to die. Any more than I want to die. But it’s a risk that I must take. God help me!”

RUTLEDGE WALKED BACK to the hotel, depression settling in like a black shroud. He went to the telephone closet and began the long, wearing task of tracing the house that had been a military hospital during the war. Saxhall or Saxwold.

There was no listing for a Saxhall, but there was for Saxwold.

In the next hour, he tried to locate any staff who had served there. Chiefly the matron or doctor in charge. He found one sister, who gave him the name of three more, and the last one pointed him to Elizabeth Andrews.

In another half hour he was speaking to her. She had been the nurse in charge of Saxwold’s most seriously wounded men, and was now at a hospital in Cambridge.

Her voice came over the telephone clearly, forceful, with the slight accent of Yorkshire in it.