Rutledge shook his head. “He must have discovered something. Did you meet Fiona? Was there any communication between you?”

“We met at night sometimes, at the pele tower. But after Alex came home, we stopped. Drummond—I don’t know, he’s very loyal to me and my family. He wouldn’t have told anyone what he knew. Drummond brought me home, you see, from Lanark, when I was well enough to travel. But his sister was jealous of Fiona. Sometimes jealous people see more clearly. And Alex is a master at finding out secrets. He was trained to spy.”

“The persecution of Fiona was a test?”

“The anonymous letters? At first, yes. To make me tell him what he wanted to know. But I wouldn’t, and it escalated. He spread lies to Mr. Elliot and to Oliver—to the fiscal and other influential people, for all I know—until they came to believe that they’d thought of it themselves! When McKinstry didn’t search the stables, it was Alex who persuaded Inspector Oliver to go back. He reminded him of those old murders, before the war, that hadn’t been solved. That pricked Oliver’s pride. Alex knew the Jacobite bones must be hidden somewhere—he’d come across an old story about them in some of my father’s papers. That was to be the end of it, but by that time, Inspector Oliver was rabid to find a body. And throughout the whole ordeal, Alex would come home and tell me what he had been doing that day to make Fiona’s life unbearable. And watch me, until I could crawl off somewhere and hide my anguish!”

“Mrs. Holden. How did your husband come to know Eleanor Gray?”

“I’m not sure that he ever did. I’ve never heard him speak of her at all.”

“There’s some evidence that he could well be the man who drove her north, just after Captain Burns died. If he did, he may have been the last person to see her alive. I’d come to believe that he was after the boy because young Ian might inherit Eleanor’s fortune once it was established that he was her child.”