“My father took me there sometimes as a boy. He was obsessed with tales of betrayal and murder.” He pushed his rain-matted hair out of his eyes. “My father would have made a bloody Highlander if he hadn’t been born in Carlisle. He collected all those weapons you see in the hall, buying them up all over Scotland. It gave him a sense of history. I put them up when I married Madelyn. It was something from my own past. The rest of the house was hers.”

He looked at Rutledge for a long while, ignoring the rain. The patience of the hunter, waiting for the rabbit to break cover. But Rutledge was patient, too, and as skilled. Holden said at last, “You know the truth now. What do you think you should do about it?” When Rutledge didn’t respond, he continued, “I don’t intend to be railroaded into a sentence of death by Lady Maude and her lawyers. She was a distant and uncaring mother according to Eleanor, but she’ll raise heaven and earth to see me dead once she’s told I killed her daughter.” There was cold menace in the calm voice. “If I were you, I’d go back to London and let the MacDonald woman go to trial and pray that she’s acquitted. What is she to you, after all!”

What, indeed? Rutledge didn’t know the answer to that himself. He sat there feeling the rain soaking through his shirt to the skin, and fought his anger.

“Don’t threaten me!” he told Holden.

“Call it a friendly warning, Inspector. But keep in mind the fact that I could walk into The Ballantyne or anywhere else you believed yourself safe, and you’d be dead before you heard me come through the door. You can bank on that.” He put his car into gear again. “I didn’t intend to kill Eleanor Gray. And I won’t hang for it.”

The lights swung in the darkness, turning the slanting rain to silver. And Holden smiled at Rutledge before the car disappeared down the drive, a black shadow against the stark brightness of its lamps.

ALL THE WAY to the hotel, Hamish’s voice pounded in Rutledge’s head, demanding to know how much he believed of what Holden had said.