After a swift, appraising silence, both men moved to chairs and sat down, as if the confrontation was finished and the conference begun.

As a form of peace offering, Rutledge said, “Apart from your natural disinclination to see a case opened again for no sound reason—and I understand that, I’d dislike it myself— were you quite serious when you said that Miss Marlowe was capable of anything? Any degradation. Would you for instance include murder in that list?”

And then Harvey surprised him a second time by vacillating. “Yes and no.”

“If you discount her poetry, and her reputation there, what gave you the feeling that she was different?” Or was it all hindsight, the willingness to believe that Olivia hadn’t hoodwinked him completely .. .

Mulling it over, Harvey said, “It was not something I could put my finger on, mind you. It was more her interest in the subject of crime that made me uneasy. People, most especially women, don’t think to ask the questions she asked, unless there’s worry in the mind, or fear. Or even depravity. Now in a pub talking to a man about my work, I’ll be asked a hundred questions, from how I know I’ve got the right miscreant to whether I’ve watched a hanging. That’s different, it’s curiosity, the same as he’d ask an undertaker or even a glassblower about his trade. Idle conversation. You can tell the man knows naught about it, and you could give him lies and he’d be just as satisfied.”

Rutledge nodded. The farmers and tradesmen and lorry drivers he’d fought with had often found it odd to be in the same trench as a policeman. As if he viewed all mankind with innate suspicion. Expecting the worst.

“So it was different when Miss Olivia asked me what made a man take another man’s life. What goaded him, whether he was evil by birth and nature or only caught up in a web of happenstance he couldn’t fight his way clear of. Whether murdering ran in families or wasn’t inheritable.” He paused. Rutledge realized that Harvey had kept this conversation buried deep inside himself for a very long time. And was only reluctantly revealing it now. Because he was a fair man, whatever he lacked in cleverness. “Whether a murderer could truly repent and change. And her as fair and innocent looking as the day she were bom! I didn’t know about the poetry, not then, but I can tell you it gave me the willies, because she was that intense I knew it wasn’t idle talk, meeting the new man in charge and making polite noises about his job. She wanted—she wanted something more. And I couldn’t have told you on peril of my life what it was.”