He turned away and opened the only other door. It led to a bath. Rutledge closed that and went back to the study. Here were the broken desk and a chair, to one side of the passage doorway. A horsehair settee with two straight-backed chairs at angles beside it faced the hearth. In the corner beside the bedroom door stood the private altar. The candlesticks were there, polished to shine like molten sunlight, but the police had taken away the crucifix used as a weapon. A darker spot on the wood marked its dimensions. It would have been heavy. And one blow would have sufficed. Two at most . . .

Hamish said, “A man could stand unseen between that altar and the wall. If the room wasna’ lit.”

Rutledge was already looking at the space. He wedged himself in it. A broad man could just fit himself in there. And a thin one . . . But could Walsh?

“Yon priest in Norwich?” Hamish had not liked Monsignor Holston. “Perhap he canna’ return to the scene of his crime.”

“If he’d stood in the bedroom, whoever he was,” Rutledge speculated, “until the priest had turned his back to attend to the drapes, it would have taken the murderer a half dozen steps to close the distance between them. Even accounting for Walsh’s longer strides. And wary, alert, Father James would have sensed he was coming. The first blow wouldn’t have hit the back of his head—it would have struck him in the temple.”

“Why was Monsignor Holston afraid in the church, as well?” Hamish persisted, but Rutledge was looking again at the shadows between the drapes and the altar’s tall back.

“I don’t know. That someone would hide in a confessional after the service—enter through the vestry door, and wait for the service to end.” He tried to concentrate again. Even if the draperies had been drawn and the lamps were not lit, Father James couldn’t have missed the signs of a search. Paper on the floor would have gleamed whitely, even in low light. And what householder would have crossed that scatter of papers and books and furnishings to go to the window? His first act would probably have been to call out, Who’s there? And to stand on the threshold, waiting.

In that case, the intruder had been in the bedroom and would have had to call to the priest to lure him nearer. Beside the altar, the slightest movement would have drawn the priest’s wary eyes immediately. And yet, the crucifix— the weapon—had come from the altar, not the bedroom. Unless the intruder had already armed himself . . .

It was a puzzle. And more than a few of the pieces failed to fit.