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perplexed frown told me all I needed to know. His current investigation was not going well and it would not be a clever move on my part to bring up the subject of Sister Mary Michael’s mysterious note from Danny.
    So in my mind I went over and over the details of that brief and frustrating interview and realised that she had told me something of importance. That his relative Father Sean McQuinn, whom I had presumed would be dead by now, was not only alive but occasionally came into Edinburgh and visited the convent.
    And suddenly I was quite eager to visit Jack’s parents on the off chance that the priest might have news for me.
    Jack was surprised by this burst of enthusiasm but my preparations in the days that followed were accompanied by ghosts of thepast, the agonies of the last three years with their false hopes and dreams.
    Reason and pride – of the wounded variety – insisted that if Danny were alive, he would never have allowed me to suffer so. We were a devoted couple. He was my only love and my despair, for I thought that love awakened when I was twelve years old would last forever.
    I had never imagined the remotest possibility that I could love again, desire and marry another man – and yet, Jack Macmerry was on the threshold of disproving that theory.
    I believed that Danny had loved me too, although doubts crept in sometimes that he was not quite as passionate or single-minded in his devotion as I had been. After all, I had pursued him to America and rather forced his hand if truth were told. That did arouse feelings of guilt, but I told myself firmly that such overwhelming emotions were more natural to womankind who stayed at home, raised families and waited on their men. Feelings which I had to admit sat uneasily alongside the women’s rights I so fervently supported.
    In the end, it all came back to that inescapable wounded pride and the reassurance I needed that if Danny were still alive and well and in Scotland, I was the first he would have got in touch with, the most important person in his life.
    And on days when logic needed extra sustenance I told myself that the old nun had been mistaken and for her, confused by the passage of time, three weeks could have been three years. So taking comfort and refuge in Sister Angela’s consoling explanation regarding common Irish names I looked forward to Eildon and meeting Father McQuinn.
    He would confirm that Danny was indeed dead and that there no longer existed any impediment to my marriage to Jack Macmerry.

Chapter Four
    As it turned out, I was to travel alone by train to meet my future in-laws for the first time.
    Jack was summoned to appear as a police witness in a Glasgow court. This last minute change of plans put me in an ill humour, recalling as it did childhood occasions in the household of a Chief Inspector where my sister Emily and I soon realised that Pappa was never there when we needed him.
    In despair and anger, I thought, was this to be the set pattern of my life as a policeman’s wife – for the second time? Was I being foolish, indeed insane, to expect anything better?
    I should have realised when I followed Danny to America that life was to be no romantic bed of roses. Hazardous and uncertain, it had eventually made me a widow. I had now learned to live with that bitterness and grief but was I in my right mind even to consider a second marriage to a policeman, especially since I was independent, with a successful career?
    Although Jack certainly did not approve of my choice, he knew when to keep his mouth shut and to accept that I could deal with ‘discretion guaranteed’ cases that were not within the scope of the Edinburgh City Police.
    Domestic incidents involving the behaviour of relatives, cheating husbands and wives, betrayed mistresses. My logbook was full of them. Where the arrival of a uniformed policeman would have caused alarm and despondency, a respectable young woman could, without suspicion, gain access to houses to