“The cabby has said you threatened to kill her—” Hildebrand began from the doorway, but Rutledge waved him into silence.

“You were angry with her, weren’t you? For deceiving you, for putting you through such anguish. When you believed you’d come home and buried her with the children? And then—suddenly—she was alive, and so were they, and the first emotion you felt was anger. A great, fierce anger.”

“It was the shock—and the train wouldn’t stop—I was beside myself—I said things I didn’t mean. I’d never harm her.”

“Not even for taking your children and going to live with another man?”

Mowbray sat with his head held by the palms of his hands on either side of his temples. “I’d want to kill him” he said huskily, “for getting around her. Making her do it. I’d blame him, not her.”

“His solicitor’s just left,” Hildebrand put in again. “told him what to say. You’ve heard more from him already than I have! It’s—”

But Rutledge ignored him, cutting across the flow of words as if they hadn’t been spoken. “Where did you leave the children? Can you take us to them? Let us help them?” He waited for an answer, then added gently, “You’d not want the foxes or dogs to find them first.”

Mowbray raised his head, and the pain-filled eyes made Rutledge swear under his breath as he met them. “I don’t know,” the man said wretchedly. “I don’t know where they are. Tricia was always afraid of the dark. I’d not leave her alone out in the dark! But I can’t remember—they tell me I killed her, and my Bertie, but I can’t remember! Night and day—that’s all I can see in my mind. The children. It’s driving me mad!”

Rutledge got up from his chair. He’d seen men break, God knew he of all people could recognize the signs! There were no answers to be had now from Mowbray. The haunting images he’d seen—or been told he’d seen—had been seared deep into his brain, and separating them from reality would be nearly impossible.

Hamish, in the back of his own mind, was dredging up memories that were also safer concealed in the shadows, and he fought them grimly.

Mowbray was watching him like a beaten dog, and Rutledge turned to go, not trusting his voice, unable to offer any comfort. Mowbray’s eyes followed him. Then the two men were out the door, leaving their prisoner to the silence and his conscience. Rutledge said nothing as the key rasped again in the lock and Hildebrand turned to put it back in its cupboard, but he could still feel the sense of suffocation, of hopelessness and horror and fear they’d left behind them.