NEXT DAY I WENT AGAIN to ask Treasurer Rowland for a copy of his letter to Isabel Slanning, and to see whether she had replied. I had done much thinking about what old Vowell had told Philip and me. It seemed all too possible that, forty years before, Isabel or Edward, or both, had killed their stepfather. Again I remembered Isabel’s words to me, weeks ago, about her brother: If you knew the terrible things my brother has done. But what could be achieved by confronting them now, without new evidence? I knew Philip would be seeing Edward, perhaps had done so already. I had an uneasy feeling that the consequences of that old tragedy might ripple out anew.

My uneasiness was not assuaged when Rowland’s clerk told me the Treasurer would not be available for appointments until Monday. It struck me that there was something a little furtive in the clerk’s manner. I made an appointment for that day; it was three days hence, but it was at least a firm commitment.

LATER THAT MORNING I was working in chambers, researching a precedent in a yearbook so that when the new term started next month I should have everything prepared. There was a knock at the door and John Skelly entered. His eyes behind his thick spectacles had a reproachful look, as often this last month. Not only had I frequently been out of the office, leaving the work to fall behind, but I knew he was conscious that Barak and Nicholas and I shared some secret he knew nothing about. It was better he did not, and safer for him, a married man with three children. But I knew he must feel excluded. I must talk to him, thank him for the extra work he had done for me, give him a bonus.

I smiled. ‘What is it, John?’

‘There is a visitor for you, sir. Master Okedene. The printer who came before.’

I laid down my book. ‘What does he want?’ I asked a little apprehensively, remembering how his last visit had led us to the tavern and the fight with Daniels and Cardmaker.

‘He says he has come to say goodbye.’

I told him to show Okedene in. He looked older, thinner, as though his strong solid frame was being eaten away by worry. I invited him to sit.

‘My clerk says you are come to bid me farewell.’

He looked at me sadly. ‘Yes, sir. I have sold the business and we are moving in with my brother, at his farm in East Anglia.’

‘That will be a great change in your life.’

‘It will. But my family have never been at ease since Armistead Greening’s murder and Elias’s disappearance. I hear Elias has never been found, nor those others who used to meet with Master Greening.’

I hesitated before replying, ‘No.’