“If and when you are, the pain you’ll have to witness will confront you with more questions, emotional and theological, even than the one you’ll be there to answer: who did this? Moral outrage is natural. Without it we’re hardly human. But for a detective faced with the dead body of a child, the young, the innocent, making an arrest can become a personal campaign, and that’s dangerous. It can corrupt judgement. Every victim deserves the same commitment.”

Benton wanted to say, I know that, sir. I’ll try to give it. But the unspoken words struck him as pretentious, the response of a guilty schoolboy to criticism. He said nothing.

Kate broke the silence. “And for all our probing, how much in the end do we ever really know? The victim, the suspects, the killer? Why, I wonder, did Rhoda Gradwyn come here?”

Benton said, “To get rid of that scar.”

Dalgliesh said, “A scar she had had for thirty-four years. Why now? Why this place? Why did she need to keep it, and why now to get rid of it? If we knew that, we might get closer to knowing something about the woman. And you’re quite right, Benton, she died because of who and what she was.”

“Benton” instead of “Sergeant”—well, that was something. He thought, I wish I knew who you are. But that was part of the fascination of this job. He served a boss who remained an enigma to him, and always would.

Kate said, “Isn’t Sister Holland’s behaviour this morning a bit odd? When Kim phoned to say that Miss Gradwyn hadn’t rung for her tea, wouldn’t it be more natural for Sister Holland to check at once if her patient was all right rather than asking Kim to bring up the tea? I’m wondering whether she was taking care to ensure that there was a witness with her when she found the body. Did she already know that Miss Gradwyn was dead?”

Benton said, “Chandler-Powell says that he left Sister Holland’s room at one o’clock. Wouldn’t it be a natural thing for her to check then on her patient? She might well have done so and known that Gradwyn was dead when she asked Kimberley to bring up the tea. It’s always advisable to have a witness when you find the body. But that doesn’t mean that she killed her. As I said earlier, I can’t see either Chandler-Powell or Sister Holland throttling the life out of a patient, particularly one they had just operated on.”