“No. Perhaps you’ll have better luck with this one! I never met the man, but I have been searching for a letter I’d gotten from Rob when he was in London, convalescing. It was on the occasion of my birthday, and he said”—there was a rustle of paper, as if Warren was turning pages—“here it is: ‘I found seven people to celebrate your birthday. Eleanor, of course, and a girl James had asked me to look up, and Edwards was there with the Talbots, who were rather grim. The other brother, Howard, is listed as missing, and naturally they fear the worst. Edwards felt they needed cheering up! And I also invited Alex Holden, who lives in Duncarrick, for God’s sake, practically next door in Scotland. He was at loose ends, feeling in the mood to celebrate anything. The bone in his leg refuses to mend properly, thanks to the bloody Turks, and he’s got another round of surgery to face. We drank to you and to Victory and again to you but lost count after that, and then ate something before we were completely drunk and forgot what was due the absent guest of honor. I set a glass at your empty place—’ Well, you needn’t hear the rest. Alex Holden. You can add him to your list.”

Chapter 26

26

RUTLEDGE SAT IN THE AIRLESS CLOSET, HIS MIND RACING, Hamish, ahead of him at first, then falling behind as fact after fact dropped into place.

Alex Holden of Duncarrick. Sandy Holden—of Duncarrick—

Alex or Sandy. Short for Alexander. Zander Holland— Major Alexander. The tags on the wounded were sometimes garbled. Or lost—

He had met Sandy Holden, for God’s sake, when he first came to Duncarrick—out by the pele tower, with his sheep! And seen him a number of times in the town since. Rutledge said aloud, “I’ll give you any odds you like that they’re the same man—!”

All this bloody time, the man he’d been searching for had been under his nose.

The fiscal himself hadn’t seen fit to give Rutledge that name!

“There’s no proof Burns knew the two men had met,” Hamish pointed out.

“No. Probably not. But you’d think, wouldn’t you, that after he came back to Duncarrick, Holden would have spoken to the fiscal—a simple word of condolence—‘I met your son once, at a dinner in London. I was sorry to hear he didn’t make it home from France.’ ”

“Unless he had something to hide—”

“The fact that he’d spent two nights in Captain Burns’s house in Craigness? With Eleanor Gray? Who is now missing? Yes—if he had anything to do with her disappearance. Even if he’d simply provided her the money to sail to America.”

The airlessness was making his head ache. Rutledge opened the door and went up the stairs to his room, his mind still racing.