“Well, yes, I must agree there,” Chambers replied reluctantly. “There was no call to be jealous. I know for a fact that Rosamund saw to his education, then gave him introductions to prominent men in the City when he came down from Cambridge. Just what she’d have done for her own sons! The rest he’s earned on his own considerable merit. Which brings us back to where we started. There’s no possible motive I can see for your choice to light on Olivia, either. Even if Richard did go wandering while in her care.” He finished his whiskey and turned to signal Trask, saying to Rutledge over his shoulder, “But let me put this question to you. Suppose you’re right about her. Where will prosecuting a dead woman, however evil she might have been, take you? Certainly not into a court of law.”

“O.A. Manning is still very much alive,” Rutledge responded.

Chambers turned back, staring at him speculatively. “I begin to see,” he said quietly.

Chambers left after the meal, with a final comment. “I’ll give you a hearing when you’ve got incontrovertible evidence to show me. Until then, I shall do my best not to give credence to a word you’ve told me. And my best is very good indeed, let me assure you!”

Luncheon appeared to have restored his balance.

Rutledge went up to his room, overwhelming fatigue dogging his steps as he climbed the narrow stairs.

The reactions he’d gotten from Chambers proved how far the case he could presently lay out would go in a courtroom. He’d sown seeds of doubt in the solicitor’s mind, but he hadn’t done more than make him think. And a jury is no better than the evidence presented to it. That was a maxim at the Yard.

All right then, where to go next?

The men searching the moors in this wretched weather would have to find more than suspicions . ..

Richard’s body and the manner in which it was found could go a long way towards proving murder. But by whom? What if there were no pansies at his feet to link the small body with the poem Olivia had written?

In the afternoon Rutledge set out in a lowering mist to look for the small isolated cottage where the old midwife lived. Trask had reluctantly told him how to find it.

“She’s harmless, they say, but she gives me the willies!” he’d confided to Rutledge. “Never know where you stand with her. And those eyes—they lay a man bare, like a fleshing knife, but beyond the bone.”

“I’m told she’s a good nurse.”

“Oh, aye, I grant her that. But what does she steal when you’re defenseless?” From the expression on his face Rutledge knew he wasn’t thinking of money. Or the brass candlesticks.

Of such fears witch-hunts were born, Rutledge thought as he set out.