Mrs. Davison might well have told the exact truth. People often did.

The whole truth was another matter. And how an investigating officer probed for it determined how much of it came out. Objectivity . . .

Oliver was convinced that Fiona MacDonald was a murderess.

If she wasn’t, how did she come by the child? That was the stumbling block, and her life depended on the answer. And Rutledge was going to have to find it.

BRAE WAS SOUTH and east of Glasgow, on the outskirts of an area that had suffered from fast expansion and then depression in the previous century. The basin of the Clyde had become a forest of steelworks, factories, and mines, but it had never been a scenic wonderland. All the same, what little beauty there was had been swallowed up long since. Lanark, on the other hand, was a pleasant town with associations with the Scottish hero William Wallace, and it was there that Rutledge ate a late dinner before continuing to Brae.

But there was no place in Brae to spend the night, and he was forced to return to Lanark.

It was early in the morning when he came back, and even Hamish could find nothing attractive in the plain houses, the dull landscape, or the feeling that time had dealt harshly with the little village. Even its few streets seemed tired.

Mrs. Davison lived in a brick house that had been well kept, one large enough to have been a manager’s home when industry had mushroomed in the region. The windows were clean, with pretty curtains behind them; there were flowers still in bloom in the sheltered garden to one side, and behind the house vegetables had been grown in long rows that were now brown and untidy except for the dark green of beets and cabbages at the far end. The house stood at the edge of the village, set back from the street behind a low brick wall. A ball, a doll with a china face and no clothes on its white kid body, and a small bucket full of stones littered the walk in front of the door.

She answered his knock herself, a woman with a kind face but very perceptive hazel eyes. She looked him up and down as he introduced himself and then said, “Yes, I’m Penelope Davison. I’ve talked to the policemen in Duncarrick. Why should London have any interest in going over the same ground? I know nothing about Fiona that can help you in any way.” In her own fashion, she reminded him of Lady Maude. The same independent spirit and refusal to be overawed by the law.

“All the same, there are some questions I must ask.”