Rutledge bent down, untied his shoes, and looked at his stockings. They were wet with rain. The shoes themselves were pliable with rain water. But when he upended them, water didn’t run out. The stockings and the lining had absorbed it. Interesting point, he told himself as he laced them again.

“And no one else raised objections about the horse?”

“Mr. Cormac did. He said his father wouldn’t have taken Lucifer among the rocks, not without good reason.” Wilkins came back to sit down at the table, refilling his cup and offering more to Rutledge, who shook his head. “We found a bee caught under the girth,” he said. “Where it’d stung the horse. And that satisfied the lot of them. But I walked back down there later and had a look around. Before the stir, mind you, Master Nicholas’d drawn his boat up on shore just a few yards away, and turned it over, planning to come back and work on the seams. Well, I looked under it, and I found the print of Mr. Brian’s riding boot, next to the print of another shoe, but the tide had half erased that. He were on foot, then, talking to someone. He weren’t alone down there on the shingle, not the whole time!”

“He might have been there when Nicholas Cheney brought the boat in, and helped drag it above the tide line.” ‘‘Then why didn’t Master Nicholas say so?” “All right. Who would have wanted to kill FitzHugh?” Wilkins sighed. “That were the problem, you see. Not Miss Rosamund—siie were Mrs. FitzHugh—she’d not be likely to send him off. The twins, now, they were little ‘uns, and you’d not see them on the strand or near the headland or in the stables without their nanny in tow. Miss Olivia were a cripple. Mr. FitzHugh were Mr. Cormac’s own father. None of the servants, that I knew of, had any quarrel with him. Mr. FitzHugh had a temper, mind you, but he were fair, and no one held any grudge that I’d heard about. And that left Master Nicholas, whose boat it was. Why would he want to harm his stepfather? It made no sense to me. So I held my tongue and waited to see what happened, and when naught did, I kept on holding of it.”

Nicholas might have no reason to kill his stepfather, but he might well have covered up for Olivia, if he’d had any fear that she was involved.

With the brace on her leg, could she have moved around among the rocks?

He asked that question aloud. Wilkins thought about it. “She weren’t one to plead helplessness. I’d see her struggle to do what she wanted to do. Aye, she could get over them rocks, spider fashion, pulling her leg along. Slowlike and careful. But where she had the will, she got her way.”