As they rose to leave the dining room, the Monsignor paused on the threshold to the lobby, his eyes heavy with a personal guilt. “I’m a clever man when it comes to the faith I uphold. I understand the nuances of Church Law, and the responsibilities I’ve undertaken. Father James was a man who carried that a step further. He was deeply involved with the needs of people. That’s why he was still a parish priest, while I had moved higher in the Church hierarchy. If he hadn’t been a priest, I think he would have been a teacher. Please keep that in mind as you go digging through his life. You could do a great deal of harm, without ever intending to do it.”

Rutledge understood what he was trying to say—that it was important to exercise discretion in what was brought out into the open.

Monsignor Holston went on wearily, “I’m not sure what I believe anymore. Whether there was a sense of evil in that study or not. I could have imagined it, just as you suggested the first day we talked. I could have been searching for a way to explain the death of a friend. I don’t even know how I feel about Walsh, whether I have compassion for him or not. In the days just after the murder, I was haunted by the need for action, for answers, for proof that this death mattered to the authorities, that out of the shame of it would come some meaning, a memorial to a good man.”

Rutledge said, “I don’t believe you were necessarily wrong about the sense of evil there in the study. My only question from the beginning has been, why should evil reach out to touch a parish priest in a small town, hardly more than a village, on a bleak and marshy stretch of coast? That’s the answer I have to find.”

Monsignor Holston started to say something, then bit back the words. Instead he reached out and clapped a hand on Rutledge’s shoulder. “I’ll make a bargain with you—with the devil, as it were. If you come to me with the truth, and I recognize it, I’ll tell you so.”

And with that he was gone, leaving behind an air of contradiction that was the closest this Norwich priest could come to openness.

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 16

NEEDING AIR TO CLEAR HIS MIND, Rutledge walked as far as the quay. He was trying to pin down what it was that disturbed him about Monsignor Holston’s vehement defense of his dead colleague and friend.

It was the subtle way in which the investigation was being manipulated.

Don’t look here—don’t look there. He didn’t do anything wrong, you needn’t explore that. Like a puppet master trying to untangle the strings of an obstreperous character who wouldn’t play his role properly.