The second door to the right led into a large study, with a bank of long windows covered with heavy velvet draperies that shut out the light. Rutledge was reminded suddenly of what Monsignor Holston had said, that the room had spoken to him of evil. Whether what he sensed now was evil or not, he couldn’t say, but the dimly lit room seemed—not empty. Waiting.

Hamish said, “It isna’ the corpse, it’s been taken away. But the spirit . . .”

“Perhaps.” Rutledge hesitated, and then, shutting the study door behind him, crossed the carpet to pull the draperies open, watching the wooden rings move smoothly down the mahogany rod with the familiar click-clicks. Brightness poured into the room, and that odd sense of something present there was banished with the light.

He found that his feet were set in a scrubbed and faded portion of the carpet, where someone must have tried to remove the blood that had puddled from Father James’s head wound. An onerous duty for the grieving woman downstairs. Rutledge stepped away from it, then looked at it in relation to the windows.

If the victim had been struck down just there and from behind, he must have been facing the window. His back to his attacker. Rutledge went to test the latch, and then look out—almost directly into the windows opposite, where he could see an old woman in a chair, knitting.

Everyone described Father James as middle-aged but fit. But Walsh was a very large man. Even if help had come, what could even one of the strapping sons next door have done? It had taken four men at the police station to subdue Walsh. And by the time anyone had reached the study, the priest would have been dead. Yet if he was as capable as all the people who knew him had claimed he was, he would have abandoned any hope of aid, and tried to deal with the intruder in some fashion.

“If he wasna’ afraid of the man,” Hamish said, “he wouldna’ have called for help. If he was afraid, he’d ha’ kept an eye on him!”

“Yes, that’s what I’d have done,” Rutledge answered him. “Even if he knew the intruder, he’d have been wary . . .” Or—too certain of his powers of persuasion?

“Here, if you need the money that badly, take it, and go with my blessing. . . .”

“It’s easier to smash the back of a head—when there’s no face staring into yours,” Hamish pointed out. “With the bayonet, we didna’ look into the face.” And that was also true. Dead center, twist, withdraw. A belt buckle above the blade, not a pair of human eyes . . .

So why had the priest turned away? Toward the windows, rather than toward the intruder?

Only an exceptionally trusting man would have done that.