Harvey smiled with sour satisfaction. ‘‘We’re not all clods here in the wilds of Cornwall, whatever London may have led you to believe.”

“No one has suggested that you might be,” Rutledge said, moving with great care now. “Tell me what reasons you have to back up your opinion.”

“Read her books, man! My wife is a decent woman, she’d never so much as feel or think what Miss Marlowe thought fit to put down baldly in print! It’s unwomanly and disturbing. A mind capable of such immodesty is in my estimation capable of the worst in human degradation.”

He’d spoken with such venom that Rutledge found himself wondering what Olivia had done to raise Harvey’s hackles. He thought he knew. She’d been Miss Marlowe of the Hall, quiet and unassuming, someone he could patronize, the cripple who was content to be seldom seen and not often heard. A tidy round peg in her tidy round hole, like Mrs. Harvey. And then the truth about O. A. Manning had come out, and Harvey had been made to look or feel a fool for misjudging her. That would be unforgivable, and he’d judge her with a vengeance now. Rutledge quelled the urge to rise to Olivia’s defense, his own temper held on a tight rein.

Harvey had already moved on to his next grievance. “Now tell me what this new evidence you spoke of might be. Those rags they found out on the moors? You’ll never prove they belonged to the boy. Could have been put there any time in the years before or since. Don’t they teach you your business in London?”

“Quite well,” Rutledge said through his teeth. “And I intend to continue going about it until I’m satisfied.”

Harvey was furious, but something about the other man’s voice, the steel in it, the natural air of command that came with years in France, made him stop short and reexamine his opponent. His first impression had been of an ill, weary man with no stamina for the course. Someone who could be bullied and sent back to London with his tail between his legs. Stake your ground, wield your temper like a club, and he’d soon apologize and be off.

Instead he’d come up against hard core, and more experience than he’d expected. Harvey tried to think if he’d heard the name Rutledge before in connection with any of the major cases the Yard had handled. It rattled him more that he couldn’t. Knowing what Rutledge might be capable of gave him more range to push. Not knowing left him in pitch dark on a steep cliff.

Rutledge, meanwhile, was making his own assessment. Of a man who did his job thoroughly and properly, but lacked imagination to do it cleverly. That was going to matter a great deal.