Mr. Harris, shoemaker. “She’d come in for her shoes, and was polite as you please. I never guessed, until the letter came! I’d known Ealasaid MacCallum for fifty years—she was a good woman, a good Christian. She wouldn’t have allowed such things to go on. It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is!” Question: Had you visited the inn? Before the letter came? “Aye, that I had. It was a respectable place for a pint of an evening. There was always good company, and a man could sit and talk with his friends. The Ballantyne, now, it’s all well and good, but crowded. You can hardly hear a word said to you!” Question: And while you were sitting in The Reivers, there was no indication—as far as you knew—that Miss MacDonald might be using the upstairs rooms for indecent purposes? “I should have guessed when Fiona took over tending bar herself. None of the MacCallums ever had! I said to Mrs. Harris, it’s not right, mark my words, no good will come of it. Ealasaid would never have agreed to it. Fiona blamed it on the war, and necessity, help being so hard to find, but it still wasn’t proper.” Question: Did Miss MacDonald ever offer you an opportunity to visit upstairs? “I’m a married man!”

“Aye,” Hamish commented through clenched teeth, “and sorry for it!”

The writer of these letters, Rutledge thought, thumbing through a dozen more statements, had been very clever indeed. Possibly too clever? She—or he—had known Duncarrick well, to choose the letters’ recipients with such unerring accuracy. The seemingly untutored handwriting and the cheap stationery were no more than carefully thought-out trappings. This could not be, in his opinion, the work of a jealous wife or a jilted lover, driven to striking out.

The widow whose husband had died in the war: “I thought she might be more sympathetic to my suffering, having lost her own husband. But she wouldn’t talk about Corporal MacLeod. Now I doubt he ever existed!”

The elderly woman who cleaned the church: “I went to Mr. Elliot, I was that upset! That she should be sitting among us, a two-faced harlot. And Mr. Elliot said he’d prayed over her from the start—she hadn’t worshiped with what he believed to be sincerity—”

“Is it likely yon Mr. Elliot has written these abominations?” Hamish demanded. “He claims he sees the weaknesses of people—”

It was something Rutledge had been considering. To teach Fiona a lesson? If so, it had gotten out of hand. . . .

Another woman with small children: “Young Ian had lovely manners. I never guessed that he was what he was— but blood tells, doesn’t it? In the end, blood tells! I’m so grateful that dear Ealasaid never lived to see this day. It would have been horrid. She was so happy when Fiona came—”