Rutledge said, “But that’s what you’re trained to do. What’s difficult about it?”

McKinstry ran a finger through sugar that in his nervousness he’d spilled beside his teacup. “I can find a man wanted for robbery, I can stop a man from beating his wife, I can tell you who’s the likely culprit when the MacGregors’ house is broken into, and I can look at the old man out in the bothy by the stream and judge if he’s killed himself somebody else’s fat lamb and cooked it. That’s work I know. This isn’t. It’s whispers and gossip spread in passing, and nobody knows by whom. That’s what sits ill with me, the way it began. It’s a word dropped here, a look there, a shrug—and I can’t find out who’s behind it. Inspector Oliver claims it doesn’t matter, that we’ve done our work, and proved the fact of murder well enough for it to come to trial now. But to me it seems to be important to find out how and where the whole business began. The truth is, it appears to be having a life of its own! Like a ghost running about and whispering in people’s ears. That’s fanciful, too, but I can’t explain it any better.”

Fanciful or not, it evoked a clear image in Rutledge’s mind.

“Rumor,” Rutledge agreed, “can be deadly. Especially if people are prepared to believe it. But surely if there was no more to it than gossip, the fiscal and the Chief Constable would never have allowed the matter to come to trial!”

McKinstry shook his head mournfully. “I’ve lain awake nights asking myself that. I can’t see the Chief Constable being taken in, he’s not a gullible man. What does he know that makes him so certain there’s a case?”

McKinstry gave the matter some thought. “Anonymous letters are a coward’s tool. Keep that in mind. And find out who bears a secret grudge against this young woman. It might not be the kind of thing you or I would think to hold against her. It will be something petty. Personal, certainly. And it needn’t be a sin of commission. Omission will do just as well.”

“The worst complainer in Duncarrick is a neighbor of hers. An ill-tempered man, but he’s not likely to go about writing anonymous letters. He’s more the sort to use his fists than hide what he feels.”

“Could he have taken a fancy to her—and been rebuffed? It may be that he believed she was giving favors to others and refusing him.”

There was a comical expression on McKinstry’s face. “Hugh Oliphant in the role of rejected lover? He’s over seventy! His wife watches him like a cat at a mousehole, but he’d choose a pint over a pretty face any day!”