It was at this point that Elspeth was mentioned. “Mr. Bain’s wife Elspeth was found not guilty in March of assaulting her child. It was said by a psychiatrist for her defence that she had no recognized mental illness but that she was under her husband’s domination. However, it was admitted that she did nothing to prevent Mr. Bain inflicting horrific injuries to the boy. It was only when a violent blow to the head rendered six-year-old Ben unconscious that she took him to the hospital casualty department and revealed what had been happening. We find it most disturbing that on his discharge from hospital little Ben was returned to his mother’s care. We contacted the social services department today to ask what steps were being taken to supervise Mrs. Bain’s care of her child. We were given no adequate reply.”

Once he knew, the thing become obvious. He remembered the boy, Ben, the white, worried, old-man’s face, the old-fashioned deference when he spoke to adults. Molly always said that battered children were unnaturally polite and well behaved. No wonder that Kenneth and Annie had made every effort to protect Elspeth, to prevent her secret from becoming public knowledge. The stigma of being involved in a court case was bad enough, but this was a hundred times worse. Families and children were very important on Kinness.

It occurred to him then that Will must have known what Elspeth had been going through. George remembered that he and Will had been sitting together outside the hall when Elspeth had run out of the Woollie Man’s sale in such distress and that Will had followed her. Will would have been on Baltasay during the trial and may have seen a report of it there. He hoped that Elspeth had been able to talk to Will. She needed to confide in somebody.

It was eight o’clock and the librarian hovered beside his table. She wanted to go home, but she did not want to seem to hurry him. He handed the newspapers to her, but the words of the article remained with him.

“Were they any help?” she asked hopefully.

“Oh yes,” he said politely. “ Very helpful.”

She walked with him to the door and saw him out into the street. How could she do it? he thought, seeing again the white face of the boy and the photograph of the woman in the paper, her hair pulled back, her face naked and exposed to the camera. How could she allow her child to be maltreated? The angry adjectives of the gutter press returned to him—she’s evil, wicked, he thought. Molly would have said that it was wrong to judge. He did not know all the facts. He wished that Molly was with him to explain.