She squeezed her eyes tightly to hold back the tears, as if on the back of the lids, the past was still vivid and clear. “He wasn’t a priest then. He was only John James. But he was Gerald’s best friend. I went to him and asked him to persuade Gerald not to do this. He told me the best thing I could do for Gerald if I loved him was to let him go. Let him enter the priesthood.”

The tears began to fall, but her eyes were shut still, closing Rutledge out. “So I let him go. I—I truly believed that once he had his way, once he’d embarked on his studies, he’d quickly discover that it wasn’t what he wanted after all. I was convinced that he loved me too much for this— this fancy—to last. I gave him my blessing and let him go !”

Rutledge waited in the bitter silence that followed, uncertain whether or not she had finished. He could imagine how she must have felt, abandoned for what—to a woman—seemed an inexplicable rejection of her and her love.

Finally she opened her eyes and looked across at him.

Her voice was shaking so much he wasn’t sure he heard her clearly. “In his last year before being ordained, Gerald killed himself. And neither God nor I had him, in the end. I couldn’t torment God. I tormented Father James instead. Gerald’s death lay at his door, and every time he looked at my face in his congregation, he was unable to forget how wrong he’d been, how he’d failed Gerald, and me—what, in his sanctimonious faith in his own judgment, he’d done to us. Just as I could never forget Gerald. . . .”

Rutledge waited by the bedside until the sedative Mrs. Nutley had given her sent Priscilla Connaught into the comforting oblivion of sleep.

“Keep an eye on her, will you?” he asked as they left the room.

“You can depend on me, Inspector.”

As he walked on down the stairs to the door, the older woman, following, said quietly, “In my experience, it helps sometimes to unburden the heart.”

But he wasn’t convinced that confession would do much for the sleeping figure he’d left in the darkened bedroom.

The only certainty was that Priscilla Connaught’s secret had had nothing to do with the priest’s death.

Frederick Gifford’s house was set well back from the road, just past the school. It stood in a small park of old trees that reminded Rutledge of the vicarage at Holy Trinity. Driving through the gates and up to the door, he could see that the house was gabled and probably very old.

The maid who admitted Rutledge left him in the parlor. From another part of the house he could hear people talking, as if Gifford had guests.