He tried to shift the subject in his mind as well, to distract Hamish from coming too close to the truth. And to distract himself from the feel of Aurore’s hand resting so lightly on his arm.

What was he going to do about this problem before him? Was the dead woman Margaret Tarlton? Or Mary Sandra Mowbray?

“Aye,” Hamish reminded him, “it’s a proper puzzle, and if you canna’ get to the bottom of it, no one else will!”

Still—did it truly matter, if Bert Mowbray had been the one who killed her, what her name actually was? Murder was murder. The identity of the victim was secondary. It didn’t change anything. Death was quite final, and a man would be hanged as surely for murdering a nameless tramp as he would be for killing a peer of the realm. The only difference was in the public attention the trial would receive.

And yet Rutledge knew that to him it mattered.

A victim had no one in the law to speak for him or her. The police were bent on finding the guilty party. The courts were set up to determine guilt, and if guilt was proved, to offer sanctioned retribution for the crime committed. Prison or the gallows. Society was then satisfied by the restoration of order. Civilized order, where personal revenge and vendettas were foregone in the name of law.

Was that any consolation to the victim? Did it make up for the missed years of living?

When he himself had stood in the trenches, facing imminent death and seeing it reach out for him in a multitude of disguises, the concept of dying gloriously for King and Country had taken on a different image, a certainty of life ending in a shock of pain and sheer terror, with nothing left of the man he was or might be. Only a bloody ruin to be tumbled into a hasty grave if he was found—if not, lying where he’d fallen, obscenely rotting on the battlefield where even the crows dare not come for him. And in those months when he’d wanted to die, to bring the suffering to an end, he had thought longingly of what might have been … if there had been no war. Yes, he knew, better than most, what the dead have lost.

And where was Margaret Tarlton, if she wasn’t lying in that grave?

It always came back to the children. Find them—or not—and he would have his answer. But you couldn’t wish children dead, to solve a mystery.

Rutledge said aloud, “We’ve come full circle.”

“Aye,” Hamish said in resignation.

As he strode into the Swan, the young woman behind the desk called, “Inspector? Inspector Rutledge!”