“The Yard, is it?” Stephenson said, giving his visitor his full attention. “Oh, very well, I can spare you five minutes! No more.” He put the cap on his pen and sat back in his chair, locking his fingers together and stretching his arms in front of him.

He was a brisk man, Rutledge thought, but not cold. And he appeared to be competent, for his eyes examined his visitor openly, and behind the short, neat beard, his mouth twitched with interest.

The nurse withdrew, closing the door, and Stephenson said, “You don’t look well, you know.” He gestured toward a wing chair.

“It isn’t surprising. I was shot some weeks ago.”

“In the line of duty?” Rutledge nodded. “That explains it, then. You still carry that shoulder a little higher, as if it’s stiff. What brings you to Osterley? This business about Father James?”

“I’ve been asked to reassure Father James’s Bishop that everything that can be done has been done in the matter of the priest’s death—”

“Then you should be speaking to Inspector Blevins, not to me.”

“On the contrary. The questions I have to ask are medical.” Rutledge’s glance moved from the prints hanging on the blue walls to the bookcase stuffed with medical treatises and texts.

Stephenson pointedly shuffled his papers. “If you are asking me in some roundabout fashion to tell you which of my patients was likely to have committed murder, I can’t help you. I’d have gone straight to Blevins if I’d had even the faintest suspicion that one of them could have been responsible.”

Rutledge smiled. “The patient I’m inquiring about is Father James himself. You were his physician. And I’ve been told that he had something on his mind shortly before his death. His housekeeper believes that he might have been seriously ill, and was keeping it from her. If it wasn’t his health that troubled him, then we have another avenue to explore. If it was, we can close that door.”

“I don’t see how his state of mind will help you find the thief who killed him. But I can assure you that Father James was as healthy as a horse, save for a few bouts of sore throat now and again. Bad tonsils, but never serious enough to require more than a box of lozenges for the soreness. They worked well enough, most of the time.”

“And yet he came here to see you several times in the weeks before he died.”

“There’s nothing surprising about that! Religion and medicine walk hand in hand, as often as not. I confer with the priest or the Vicar as frequently as I summon the undertaker. People grieving or in pain or frightened need comforting, and that’s the role of the church when medicine has done all it can.”