Half an hour later, having told the Yard where to find him, he had set out for Gloucestershire and Hume’s home just over the border.

It was late when he got there, and he found lodging in the small hotel that stood on the main street of the town. He had hoped to arrive in time to speak to Rosemary that evening, but the drive had taken longer than he’d anticipated.

He had never been to Chaswell. It was a pretty little town, and Max had spoken of it often, but after the war neither man was fit for casual visits, although they had stayed in touch desultorily by letter.

The next morning, he went to Hume’s house. It was set back from the road, a low wall surrounding the front garden and two steps leading to the grassy walk up to the door.

Before he’d lifted the crepe-hung knocker, the door opened, and Rosemary Hume stood on the threshold, staring up at him with haunted eyes. Rutledge said, “I’ve come to do what I can.”

She flung herself into his arms and wept on his shoulder. It was the only time he was to see her cry. Pulling away at last, she wiped angrily at her tears before he could offer her his handkerchief. In the background he could hear voices, but she pulled the door closed behind her, to shut them away, and said, “He shot himself. He went to the far side of the churchyard, and shot himself, where I wouldn’t be the first to see him. And when they came to tell me that he was dead, I wanted to take up that revolver and shoot him again. The fool. The poor, wretched, damned fool.”

“He wrote to me. But by the time the letter came, it was too late.”

“He left only a brief message for me. He told me he loved me too much to drag me down into his despair, and he asked my forgiveness. That was all,” Rosemary told Rutledge. “After what we’d endured together, what we had tried to salvage out of his despondency, all he could leave me were a few dozen words. I deserved more, Ian, I deserved to know what he was planning and why. I could have accepted it then, hard as it would be, because I was included. But I was shut out.” She was a small, slim woman with fair hair and very dark blue eyes. There were heavy circles under them, now, with grim lines about her mouth.

Rutledge, who had broken such news to other people more often than he could count, said, “Rosemary. It’s natural to be angry with Max. All the same, I don’t think he could have borne telling you that he’d failed. That’s how he had seen it, his failure. And so it was a private matter because of that.”

“You’ve been a policeman too long, Ian,” she answered him coldly. “I was his wife, for God’s sake. What does it say in the Bible? Something about a man and a woman cleaving together? And in the marriage vows? Forsaking all others? I shall never forgive him. Until the day I die, I shall never forgive him.”