Running probing fingers through the jumble of belongings stored in the trunk, he came across the corners of an envelope, fairly large and rather thick, but unevenly so, as if there were several things stuffed inside. Lifting out the assortment of hats and gloves and hiking boots that lay on top, he picked up the packet, testing its weight in his hands. It had been neither hidden away nor in plain sight.

Letters from Father James’s dead sister Judith? Or the ones he had written to her, with that enigmatic reference to the Giant?

Inspector Blevins would be pleased if they were!

Rutledge sat down on the dusty floorboards, his elbows resting on his bent knees, and held the envelope upright between his spread feet.

There were no identifying marks—it hadn’t been mailed and there was no name on the outside.

As he opened the flap and looked in, Rutledge said “Ah!” in almost a sigh. A fat collection of cuttings met his eye. Drawing them out, careful not to lose one, he could already see that they were newspaper and magazine accounts of the sinking of a ship that was unsinkable.

Sorting through them at random, he noted that certain developments had been clipped together—the publicity over departure, the tragedy, the search for bodies, reports from Ireland, editorial reflections on the tragic loss of life, lists of the dead and missing, accounts of the ensuing inquiry—as if Father James had carefully cataloged each new addition to his accumulating data. In the margins were handwritten notes, referring the reader from one article to another.

Dr. Stephenson was right—this had all the hallmarks of an obsession, not a passing fancy. Too much work had been done to coordinate all the information. Photographs from news accounts ranged from smiling Society figures boarding the great liner to pitiable corpses lying in plain wooden coffins in Ireland, eyes half shut and faces flaccid.

It was, in all conscience, Rutledge thought, a gruesome collection.

He looked down into the trunk to see what else might have been stored there, then ran his fingers again through the oddments of belongings that had formed the bottom layer. A frame came to light, one edge caught in a knitted scarf. Rutledge retrieved it and turned it over.

A young woman standing beside a horse, her face bright in the sun, smiled up at him, her hair shiningly fair. Judging from the lovely hat in one hand and the stylishness of the dress she wore, she was well-to-do.

But who was she? Was this the photograph that Father James had left to May Trent? There was no resemblance between the two women. Nor was there any to Priscilla Connaught. Rutledge hadn’t met most of the other women in Osterley. Frederick Gifford’s dead wife? The doctor’s daughter? Someone from the priest’s youth?