“I’m not,” Rutledge said gently, “looking for evidence to convict her. Only for evidence of the child’s parentage so that he can be returned to his mother’s family. Or, failing that, to his father’s.”

She turned away. “I have better things to do with my time than provide you with local gossip. I don’t particularly like Fiona MacDonald. Anyone will tell you that. On the other hand, I think she’s been wretchedly treated, and I’m not going to be one of those throwing stones.”

“Why didn’t you like her?”

“I thought we might become allies. We were alike in one thing, at least. We didn’t squeeze dutifully into the rigid mold of Duncarrick. Silly notion, as it turned out. She kept to herself. I suppose that’s understandable in light of what’s happened since, but at the time I felt—betrayed. As if she’d turned her back on me, preferring instead to ingratiate herself with her aunt’s friends. Apparently, she didn’t succeed very well, did she? In the end they turned their backs on her!”

“Did you receive one of those anonymous letters?”

Her laughter pealed out, harsh and startling in the ambiance of the shop. “I am more likely to be the subject than the recipient of such things. In point of fact, I’ve sometimes wondered why they targeted Fiona rather than me. There are people in this town who would gladly see the back of me.” She gestured at the walls and the hangings that shut off the back room of the shop for privacy, their flamboyance almost a defiance. “But I’m trapped here. I inherited the shop, and I don’t have the money to walk away from Duncarrick and start again elsewhere. I lived in London for a time— worked there before the war and for two years of the fighting, learning my craft from a Frenchwoman who had come from Paris to design hats in London. She closed her shop— no one had a taste for extravagant hats, no one wore them anymore, the war changed that. Women made do with what they had or refurbished them themselves. And I came here. This place had stood empty for nearly three years—it had been a haberdashery.” With an angry shake of the head, she added, “Why am I telling you this!”

Hamish said, “It’s the way you listen, I’m thinking. People forget you’re a policeman—I did mysel’ many and many a time!”

Rutledge asked, more as a shot in the dark than with the expectation of an answer, “In London, did you by any chance know Eleanor Gray?”

She shrugged. “I knew who she was. But we moved in different circles. I had no interest in becoming a suffragette. I didn’t find it an attractive prospect to be dragged off to prison and force-fed by beefy matrons with a taste for sadism.”