Rutledge’s mind was whirling. Did Fiona MacDonald sometimes feel Hamish’s presence, just as Rutledge had felt Ross Trevor’s in The Lodge outside Edinburgh? It was odd how some people left their stamp so vividly on a time or a place. And she would know, better than most, how profoundly Hamish had loved the Highlands. Had she wept into her pillow because there was no marker where she could take her grief? Or had she walked the hills and felt closer to Hamish than she could have in any churchyard?

This brief, silent, strained confrontation affected Rutledge’s perception of Fiona MacDonald. Of the crime she’d committed—was alleged to have committed. Of the debt he owed to Hamish MacLeod for being the instrument of his corporal’s death. It magnified the burden he’d carried back from the war in the dark reaches of his mind.

He turned around and walked out of the room without a word, and Oliver, startled, was left standing in the doorway, staring uncertainly at the woman Rutledge had come to see.

Rutledge, breathing hard, his heart pounding, his mind a blank, blundered into the corner of a desk and then somehow found his way to the outside door. He flung it open and stepped out into the rain, oblivious.

It was some minutes before he realized that Oliver stood just behind him, sheltered by the doorway, saying something to him—

“I’m sorry—” He kept his back to Oliver, afraid of what could be read in his face. He added lamely, realizing it was expected, “Suddenly I needed air—” He could feel the rain wetting the shoulders of his overcoat, and his hair felt heavy with it, matted flat to his skull. How long had he been standing there—for God’s sake, how long—! He couldn’t remember; he couldn’t think; he couldn’t clear the horror out of his mind.

And Hamish, after that first cry, had gone silent, a black weight on his spirit, like the weight of the dead.

Rutledge forced himself to swallow the sour taste in his throat, and after another minute turned to Oliver. “I’m sorry,” he said again. And then, slowly taking a grip on his emotions, “I—It must have been something I ate—”

“I’ve never seen a man turn so white. I thought you’d seen a ghost.”

“No . . .” Fiona MacDonald was no ghost.

What am I going to do? he asked himself silently. I must call Bowles, tell him I want to be relieved—

But that was addressing his own needs. What of hers?

What, in God’s name, of hers?

What if he failed her and she hanged? He’d have no choice but to kill himself: he couldn’t add that burden to the other guilt he carried. It would be a bitter defeat, after all he’d striven to recover of his own past, to fall prey to Hamish’s . . .