“No. I told you, the body had been stripped. If you’re going to that trouble, you don’t leave the body and the clothing in the same hole. It would make no sense, would it? Next point. I have a witness who says that Brian FitzHugh was talking to someone on the beach just before he died. Can you see Olivia trying to make her way down through those rocks? Wouldn’t Brian have gone up to meet her, to save her the effort? Finally, if Nicholas was jealous of Rosamund’s remarriage to Brian, he wouldn’t be eager to see Thomas Chambers move in to fill FitzHugh’s shoes either. And it looked very much as if that could happen. But Chambers lived in Plymouth, not Borcombe. Nicholas couldn’t reach him. He could stop his mother from taking a new husband. In the grave, she wouldn’t betray him again. She was his.”

She backed over to the bed, her eyes still on his face, her own very bleak, her mind listening, whatever her heart was denying. She sank down on the edge of the coverlet, and as she did, he caught that same illusive hint of perfume again, and so did she. Straightening hastily, she moved across the room to the desk instead. As far from the fragrance as she could get. “You can’t prove it!” Rachel told him defiantly. “You can’t prove any of this. And I won’t let you ruin Nicholas’ memory with speculation and doubt. Olivia was famous. They won’t let you tear her down either, wait and see. You’ll end up ruining yourself. But I’m going to find out what drives you so hard, and I’m going to stop you, before I’ve lost my own way, and start believing this filth. This was a close, happy family! Why do you want to destroy it?”

“I want the truth,” he said tiredly.

“No, you don’t,” she told him coldly. “You’ve come out of the war a broken man, I can read that much in your face. You need to prove yourself again. And you think that the dead are easier targets than the living. All right, I don’t know what made Olivia want to kill herself. I expect it was suffering that drove her to it. And I don’t know why Nicholas wanted to die. But I’d rather go through the rest of my life wondering than lose him entirely. You don’t have anything to lose, do you? You’ve never loved anyone enough to give yourself for them. I must have been mad, asking for Scotland Yard to be sent down here. I believed in justice, and you only believe in revenge!”

She was moving before she’d finished, catching him off balance, and was out the door, slamming it behind her. He could hear her running down the gallery, almost stumbling in blind haste.

He didn’t need Hamish’s warning. Remembering the stairs, remembering how Stephen had fallen on the worn treads, Rut-ledge swore and was across the room in four swift strides, going after her.