Rutledge said, “If that’s true—that a dead woman’s photograph could do such harm—I can’t imagine that Father James would have kept it, much less passed it on. He wasn’t, from all I’ve learned about him, either cruel or callous.”

“But don’t you see? It was given to me. Out of simple fondness—a gesture that was meant in all innocence. That’s the trouble, it could be misconstrued—interpreted in another light. It would sully her memory, to no purpose. If you won’t tell me, I’ll go to Gifford myself—”

Relenting, and at the same time testing the waters, Rutledge answered, “I can’t tell you. But if it matters, this was bequeathed to a woman, not a man.”

Sims leaned back in his chair, a man emptied of all feelings. “Yes, that makes a kind of sense. Thank God!” And then he repeated silently, Thank God!, his lips moving without his knowledge, as if they uttered a prayer.

Hamish’s first question came when the motorcar was turning through the vicarage gates into Trinity Lane. “He didna’ ask you who the woman was. He didna’ care.”

“I think he cared—but he felt it was right—just—that she should have it.”

“Which means he already kens the name of the woman.”

“Or—thinks he does. Interesting, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Barnett was crossing the lobby when Rutledge came into the hotel. He stopped her, and left a message for May Trent to give him a time and place where they could meet. He included the words Official Business.

She was still out, Mrs. Barnett informed him as she took the folded sheet of notepaper and put it safely in the drawer of the reception desk. And might be staying the night with her friends.

He didn’t think that was likely. May Trent was avoiding him.

Rutledge went over the cuttings again, looking for any connection between May Trent and any other passenger on the ship and for anyone with a name beginning with V.

But he found no guidance in the reports of the sinking, the survivors, the missing, or the dead. Nothing that leaped out at him as the answer he sought.

He was on his way down the stairs to put in a call to the Yard, to ask Sergeant Gibson—who had an absolute gift for ferreting out information—to look into the shipping files at Lloyds and the White Star Line for women passengers whose Christian name began with a V. The first words out of the crusty old Sergeant’s mouth were likely to be “And are there any other miracles, sir, that you might require of me?”

Instead he met Mrs. Barnett coming up to find him. “There’s a telephone call from the Yard, Inspector. It’s urgent.”

He thanked her and followed her back to the narrow little office. “Rutledge here,” he said into the phone.