Shortly after dawn, Reginald put out a clawlike hand and gripped Rutledge’s arm with surprising strength. Rutledge gave him his own hand, and waited.

“Forgive me.” The words were hardly more than a whisper.

He said, “You’re forgiven. With all my heart.”

“Truly?”

“As God is my witness.”

After a time, the room fell quiet, the struggle to breathe finished. Rutledge held the thin hand for a while longer, and then laid it gently in his friend’s lap and closed Reginald’s eyes. He took the letter, then remembering, put it in his pocket where Rosemary wouldn’t see it.

And he went down the stairs to where Rosemary, her eyes red with crying, was drinking tea. She passed a clean cup to Rutledge, and he poured his own. It was lukewarm, but he drank it for her sake.

A little later she said, “I finally slept. And then I awoke with a start. I didn’t know where I was. It was then I heard the silence.”

“I’ll speak to Mr. Gramling soon.”

“He didn’t want a priest at the end. He said it would be wrong to ask for anyone to save two souls, his as well as Maxwell’s.” She hesitated. “Did he kill himself, Ian?”

“No. God, no, Rosemary. He—simply stopped breathing.”

“I thought that was why he wanted a policeman at the end.”

“I wasn’t a policeman upstairs tonight. I was a friend. I’ve sat with the dying before this.”

She reached out and put her hand over his. “I’m sorry. Thank you.”

Half an hour later, he left her still sitting at the table and went out to find Mr. Gramling.

Rutledge didn’t read the letter until much later that day, when he had gone to visit Maxwell Hume’s grave.

Max,

I hesitate to put this on your conscience as well as mine. But I face my first battle tomorrow, and if I die, I don’t want to carry this with me into whatever hell I find. And so I’m writing to you, and when you read this, you will know I’m dead and out of any man’s reach. I must tell you that when I was much younger, I killed a man. I should have taken my chances with the courts. But I was very frightened, and the people I turned to told me that given the circumstances, I would ruin the rest of my life if I went to the police. I listened to them, not because I really believed them but because I wanted to believe them. And so through circumstances that aided us and the careful planning of two other people, we carried it off.