“Gwen, I’m sorry,” he said. “To the bottom of my soul, I’m sorry.”

“He was just getting ready to spill something important when you came out.”

The pain on her face made him look away. “Mick Malone is a world-class liar,” he said. “I once saw him keep an entire pub fascinated by his tale of smuggling a piece of the true cross out of the Vatican while the Swiss guards chased him across Christendom for a solid year. You can’t believe anything he says.”

“Then why didn’t you let him talk?”

It was a fair question, and Patrick struggled with how to respond. When did his obligation to the client end and his duty to be a decent man begin?

“I can usually tell when Mick is lying,” he said. “He brags and struts and waves his arms, commanding attention like an actor on the stage, but once he blabbed a story to me when he was sloppy drunk. We were alone in his boardinghouse. He sat slumped in the corner with his head lowered in shame.”

God help him, he was going to tell her. She deserved to know. The law could never punish Mick, and Gwen deserved peace of mind for the foul crime Mick had perpetrated against her family.

It was the night after they submitted the manuscript of Mick’s book to the publisher. Mick had insisted on buying a bottle of cognac to share with Ruby, but when they arrived at his home, Ruby had gone to visit her mother in Brooklyn. Mick wanted to share a dram, and Patrick saw no harm in it, even though Mick’s room was a hovel with only a single kerosene lamp to illuminate the grubby interior. The stink of dirty laundry was strong, and Patrick took only a few sips of the cognac, but Mick bolted it down, one dram after another, until half the bottle was gone.

And that was when the true story came out. Patrick remembered every detail as though it were yesterday.

“He was a cute little kid,” Mick had said, the light of the kerosene lamp carving deep hollows into his sorrowful face. “I’d been watching him play in the backyard of that mansion for weeks, learning his schedule and biding my time. Every day he took his dog outside to run around on the lawn and do its business. His nanny usually came out with him, but sometimes she stayed inside because it was cold that winter.”

The cognac soured in Patrick’s belly, but he dared not interrupt, and Mick kept talking.

“There was a big old pear tree in the yard next door, and I hid in its branches to watch the boy bring his dog out after lunch each day. It was an English bulldog, which is a completely useless animal. No good as a guard dog, no good for hunting, and lazy as the day is long.”