Hamish was angry with him, telling him he was wrong. But he couldn’t stop himself from grasping at this particular straw. It might solve so many problems ...

“It’s your own armor you’re after, any excuse you can find to shift the blame! Any name to put in place of the woman who bewitched you with her verse! Ye’ll sacrifice him for her sake! Hae ye no conscience, man?” Hamish raged.

Yet he had to know. If there was a chance, he had to know it.

Finally he asked, “Rachel? What are you afraid of? What are you afraid to remember? Who made Anne fall out of that tree? It wasn’t an accident, was it? And who lured Richard away, on the moors? He was only five. How could he have wandered so far on his own? And who put the gun into James Cheney’s dead hand? When Brian FitzHugh was down on that beach the day he died, who was he talking to? Someone he trusted enough to tum his back on him—or her.”

She sat in stony silence. He went on quietly, “They were murdered. You tell me you don’t want to believe it’s true, but you feel it, deep inside yourself. The truth. Just as I do. And Rosamund very likely died by the same hand. Just because the murderer is also dead doesn’t matter. But the truth does. Was it Olivia? Or Nicholas? Who hated—or loved—or envied—enough to commit murder?”

“No one,” she cried, turning to face him, her eyes black with despair. “It’s nonsense, what you keep trying to say. There’s no murderer in this house! I lived here, I ought to know!”‘

“It had to be Olivia or Nicholas. You must choose.”

“No! Nicholas never hurt anyone! Nicholas was not the kind of man who’d kill children—or his own father—or his mother!”

“Then we’re left with Olivia.”

“No—I—there is no murderer, I tell you!”

“But there is. And you believed in it strongly enough that you sent for Scotland Yard!”

“No. I had to know why Nicholas wanted to die! I couldn’t believe he would want to take his own life, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t Nicholas!”

“But he did. Or else Olivia killed him.”

“No!”

She was out of her chair, lunging towards him, her face stark with pain, her hands balled into fists, as if she wanted to pound them against him. Rutledge got to his feet, braced.

She stood in front of him, shaking and livid with emotion, but didn’t touch him. “Go away! Go back to London, damn you! Leave me in peace!”

“But you sent for Scotland Yard. What did you know, Rachel, that made you think it was murder?”

“No—no! I tell you, no!”