Mrs. Davison smoothed the white tatted cover on the arm of her chair. “I wondered about that myself. Brae left her to herself. And I think that’s what she needed most. I wondered, once or twice, if she might be a married woman who’d had an affair and the man died. Time to heal, you see. Away from everyone who didn’t know and couldn’t understand.” She shrugged. “Perhaps that’s an overly romantic view of her. There could be any number of other reasons. Fiona gave no sign of missing her other than the occasional remark that anyone might make. When the cat had kittens, she said something like ‘Mrs. Cook told me once that she’d never had a cat or a dog of her own. It’s too bad she couldn’t have one of these.’ ”

Hamish said, “I canna’ see a child romping with a dog in Lady Maude’s house.” It was true. . . .

Rutledge said, “Do you recall her first name? Her husband’s name?”

“I don’t think I ever heard her speak of him by name. It was usually ‘my husband.’ But her name was Maude. I thought it was rather pretty.”

A coincidence . . . it was a common English name.

“Did you say anything to Inspector Oliver about Mrs. Cook?”

“I saw no reason to. I told you, it wasn’t actually a friendship, it was simple loneliness. I don’t suppose they’d have spoken a dozen words to each other ordinarily! But the young women here in Brae had gone away to do war work, and the ones with children, like me, spent a rather dreary war. Fiona and Mrs. Cook, the outsiders, naturally were drawn together.”

“I’ve been trying to locate an Eleanor Gray in the hope that she might throw some light on Miss MacDonald’s situation. Has she visited Brae?”

Mrs. Davison shook her head. “We aren’t a crossroads here, though it may seem as if we are. There was never an Eleanor Gray here. I’d have known if there was.”

WITH MRS. DAVISON’S permission, Rutledge sat at the rough kitchen table with the three children Fiona had cared for: a girl and two boys. The girl was shy, but the boys were eager to talk.

The picture they drew was of a young woman who could sit on the floor and play games with them, who read to them in the evening if they went to bed without fuss, and who knew the most fearsome tales of Highland feuds and battles.