McKinstry, closing the book and lowering the feet of the chair to the floor, looked wretchedly at Rutledge as he listened to his request. “Fiona never confided in me. I’ll tell you what I can, sir, and what Inspector Oliver wrote in his report.” He put the book on a shelf behind him and added, “Did he send you? Aye, I thought so.” Wryly, he confessed, “It’s my punishment to be made to talk about her! The Inspector hasn’t forgiven me for the fiasco with the first skeleton. If I’d been thorough, it would have been my embarrassment, not his.”

“I need dependable facts. You’re most likely the only inhabitant of Duncarrick who isn’t afraid to admit you knew her. Man or woman.”

“That’s true enough.” McKinstry sighed. Considering how to begin, he looked at the ceiling, smudged with smoke from the stove, and arranged his thoughts.

“I was in France when Fiona arrived in Duncarrick. I remember my mother writing that Ealasaid MacCallum was having trouble with her right arm shaking and had sent for her niece to come and help out at the inn. Later she told me that in her view Mrs. MacLeod was a respectable young widow with a baby to care for, but strong and capable for all that. She’d lived in Brae, and if I should hear any news of men from there, my mother would be glad to pass it on.”

He stopped, squaring the blotter and moving the ink pot to the other side of the desk. Then, absently, he moved it back again.

“To be honest, I never asked Fiona about her life before she came to Duncarrick. I was jealous, if you want the truth, of her husband. Only he wasn’t, was he?” He sighed. “Fiona left her grandfather’s croft in the spring of 1915, I do know that. She couldn’t run the farm on her own. It’s inhospitable country at best, but the old man had made it pay.”

“Aye,” Hamish said unexpectedly. “He knew the land better than anyone I ever saw.” There was a wistfulness in the voice at Rutledge’s shoulder. “Fra’ him I learned how to handle a team and to find water, when we needed to dig a well. I took a forked willow stick, skinned and dried. He said I had the gift—I could feel the stick stir and bend in my hands. And it was sweet water I found!”