“Why didn’t you come forward sooner?” Rutledge asked. “We’ve had sheets printed, police asking questions, going from house to house.” He tried to keep the anger and the shock out of his voice, for the children’s sake and his own, “It was in the papers repeatedly, both a photograph and a request for help.”

“Well, I went straight back to London, didn’t I? And a damned—and a good thing I did, because Susan suddenly went into labor that same night, and everything else went out the window, didn’t it? It wasn’t until I went back to fetch the children that my mother-in-law told me about the—er—what happened to the woman and said I was lucky it wasn’t my wife and my two that was missing. She said she’d had nightmares for days about the poor little dears. Mind you, I’d have never gone to the police if she hadn’t talked on and on about the horror of it all. Which set me to thinking.” He shook his head. “She has a morbid taste for tragedies, that woman does!”

“What happened?”

“The police saw fit to arrest me on the spot, that’s what happened, and if the rector in the church who’d married us and christened these two hadn’t come forward, I’d probably still be there!” He frowned indignantly, still unsettled by the injustice of it all. “That was last night.”

“I’m sorry,” Rutledge said soothingly. “They were trying to do their job.”

“I fail to see how arresting an innocent man is part of any policeman’s job,” Andrews replied, with the first show of spirit.

“Do you remember what the woman was wearing? The one who helped the children?”

“God, no, I don’t know anything about women’s clothes—” he began.

“Was it pink? Or perhaps yellow?” Rutledge waited. All this time, Hildebrand had been standing at his back, across the desk, silent and watchful and hoping—believing!—that Rutledge might still fail.

Andrews shrugged. “I tell you, I don’t know.”

Rutledge turned to the little girl, squatting on his heels before her. “Can you remember the woman who helped you at the train, when you fell?” he asked gently, smiling at her. “Was she pretty? As pretty as your mother?”

Rosie looked down, playing with the sash of her own dress. “Yes,” she said so softly it was just a whisper.

“Tell me.”

“She was pretty,” Rosie repeated.

Over her head Rutledge asked, “Do you still have the handkerchief?” Andrews silently mouthed no.

“I liked her hat,” Rosie said into the exchange. “I want one.”

“Do you? What color was it?”