“Matthew wouldn’t have hurt anyone,” she said earnestly. “That Inspector Blevins won’t believe me, but I hope you will. I can’t say any fairer than that!”

He helped her into the lorry. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you, Miss Kenneth.”

At the last moment she leaned down, speaking for his ears alone. “I owe you. And I pay my debts. A friend of mine did a bit of work once for a man in Norfolk. I never knew what village, but he was rich, and he paid her well to impersonate a lady. But she never did live to enjoy the money. I always thought he’d killed her. Two months later, they found her in the river, like that poor girl you thought was me. Naked as the day she was born, and drowned.”

“When was this?” he asked, his curiosity aroused.

“It was before the War. About two years before the War. I’d like to see you find the bastard yourself, and put that sanctimonious policeman’s nose out of joint. Serve him right to be made to look a fool! And a bit of his own back for Matthew.”

And she was gone, the empty lorry lumbering down the road in the rain like a drunken walrus. May Trent, who had stepped out in the shelter of the hotel doorway, said, “She’ll manage, you know. Her kind always does. Somehow.”

“We more frequently find them floating in the Thames. I hope to God she’s not taken out of the water one day soon.”

Rutledge opened the umbrella and held it over her head as they walked to the yard, where the motorcar stood waiting. He was hearing Monsignor Holston’s admonition, offered quietly in the lobby of the hotel.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” he said. “That’s what Father James did.”

Hamish had silently answered in Rutledge’s mind. “Aye. It’s worth heeding.”

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 28

AS HE WAS ABOUT TO CRANK the motor, Rutledge said to May Trent, “I’ve just thought of something. I’ll be back shortly.”

He turned and walked with long strides to The Pelican.

Ten minutes later, he was back with Peter Henderson, who nodded at May Trent and climbed into the rear seat of the car without a word.

Hamish was a hum of wordless admonition in Rutledge’s mind, reminding him that this night’s work could become a debacle.

Dusk was falling quickly, the rain shifting for part of the way to a drizzle that seemed to coat the motorcar and its passengers in tiny drops of moisture. As they passed down the avenue of trees in East Sherham that led to the gates of the Sedgwick estate, Rutledge slowed to a walking pace. And Peter Henderson, like a wraith, was out of the car and gone in the mist before May Trent had even turned to see what was happening.