Cummins gave it some thought. “There was a solicitor connected with the case. His name was Charles Henry. I remember remarking to someone that my grandfather’s name was Charles Henry. Charles Henry Cummins.”

“Who overheard you?”

“Oh, I know who was there at the time. Our Druid leader, the schoolmaster.” He smiled. “Before you leap to conclusions, that Charles Henry—the solicitor—was up in years. In fact, he died soon after the inquest. He was probably dying at the time and no one realized it. Weak heart.” He set aside his menu and raised his glass. “I always knew you were a very good policeman, Ian. Bowles is a fool, damn his eyes.”

The waiter was hovering, and Cummins looked up at him. “Yes, yes, all right. How is the fish here?”

When Rutledge returned to his flat at the end of the day, he found a letter waiting. It was from Rosemary Hume, and it was brief.

It’s time, Ian. Can you come?

He left a message for the Yard, and set out straightaway for Chaswell. When he got there, it was late, but Rosemary was waiting up for him. Even as he walked through the house door, he could hear Reginald’s forced breathing. Rosemary took him directly up the staircase to the room her husband’s cousin had been given.

“He asked to see you alone,” she said as she turned back toward the stairs.

Reginald was in a chair, leaning forward, struggling for breath. He greeted Rutledge with a weary smile and a nod.

“I’m sorry to see you in such straits,” he said, sitting down by the invalid chair. “Is there anything I can do?”

A paroxysm of coughing nearly doubled Reginald in two, and afterward he lay back against his pillows, drained. But he lifted a hand and pointed to his desk. It was a tall affair with bookshelves above, and then the drop-down front that formed the writing surface. Rutledge walked across the room, opened the desk. It was all but empty, and he turned to Reginald.

“Left.”

There were cubbyholes on either side of a small central alcove, and Rutledge looked in the left one. He saw an envelope pushed deep into the narrow space and hardly visible. He pulled it out. Maxwell Hume’s name was scrawled across it in a firm hand, and then, more recently, that had been crossed out and his own name had been written above Maxwell’s. From the state of the envelope, Rutledge realized that Reginald must have written this some years earlier, for the original ink was already fading. “This?”

Reginald nodded.

Rutledge went back to sit by him. “Shall I open it now?”

Reginald said briefly, “Later.”

And so they sat together for the rest of the night, mostly in companionable silence, although at times Rutledge talked quietly about their lives, about the war, and about Max.