Blevins turned back to look at the marshes. His profile was set, hard. “I had asked the Chief Constable to speak to the Yard about keeping you on here, and a Chief Superintendent by the name of Bowles agreed to it. Now I’m not sure I did the right thing.”

Suddenly Rutledge could see through Blevins’s fury. He resented the fact that the man from London, with his polished airs, had been treated with noticeable favoritism by the local gentry when he himself never had. . . .

“Sedgwick won’t make any friends for you. I can tell you that,” Blevins went on. “And if you have ambitions in London, he won’t do you any good. He’s not old money.”

“I never believed he was,” Rutledge answered coldly. “And as for any favors he might do me, I choose my own friends and pick my own enemies.” He let the words lie there, a challenge.

Blevins looked at him again. “There was a rumor. The Chief Constable had heard that you came back from the War a broken man. Half the policeman you were. If that.”

Unspoken was the rest of what Blevins wanted to say. “You might be in need of patronage . . .” But the words hung in the very air between the two men, accusatory and damning.

Hamish was saying something, but Rutledge was intent on fighting his own battle.

“I came back from the War broken by the waste of it,” he told Blevins, his voice harsh. “It was a bloody waste of lives and we brought home nothing—nothing!—to show for four years of dying in trenches not fit for swine. I asked no favors from anyone, and I received none. I did my job as well as I knew how, just as every other man back from the Front tried to do his. No one gave me back my past, and no one will hand me my future. Whatever your grievance is with me now, it has nothing to do with the War, and nothing to do with my skills as a policeman!”

Blevins stared at him, and then looked away, surprise in his eyes. Behind the thin face and the polite manner was a will stronger than he’d believed. “All right. I apologize.” He took a deep breath. “I’m at my wits’ end, that’s what it is. Look, I have to put together—and damned soon!—a sound enough case against Walsh that I can take to trial. Otherwise I have to let him go. We can’t hold him forever on suspicion. And right now, that’s all I’ve got!” Blevins took two quick steps away, and then turned back to Rutledge. “It’s like chasing wraiths, nothing can be nailed down!”

“Have you told him about Iris Kenneth’s death?”

“No. I find I can’t stand the sight of the man. He’s taken to sitting there smirking, like a damned gargoyle. One of my constables swears he’ll choke Walsh into confessing.” A twisted smile crossed his face. “Damned fool is half Walsh’s weight!”