The last volume, Lucifer, had very little of the lyricism of Keats, and more of the strength of Milton. The writer was coming into maturity, looking at life and death as if they were the same, a coming from darkness and a returning to it, a brief, bright, glorious span that was often marred by man’s own incapacity to learn and trust.

He found the poem that had disturbed Inspector Harvey, and read it first. What Harvey hadn’t remembered was the title. It was, oddly enough, “The Failure.” Rutledge thought about that for a time, then moved on.

The poem about Eve seemed on the surface to answer the question of the tree of knowledge, from which she’d taken the apple. Eating it had opened her eyes to the realities of life and cost her the Garden of Eden.

But looking at it not as verse, instead as the experience of a young girl faced suddenly and shockingly with the death of a loved one—her own twin—Rutledge saw something else. Something he’d have missed if he hadn’t delved so deeply into the history of the Trevelyan family. Eve was Olivia, tasting of the knowledge that evil existed, and struggling to understand it, to find a place for it in her small, comfortable, once-safe childhood world. Losing her own Garden of Eden. Watching helplessly as the serpent twined itself into the branches and plucked the apple. But it was Anne who had fallen, and the last lines proved it to him.

The apple was one I knew, had loved, and would not wish

to fall—

lt was myself, my other self and terrified, my soul denied

it all

Denying that murder had taken place? Refusing to believe in it?

But then Anne’s death was the first to happen. And they were all children at the time. Whatever Olivia might have seen, whatever she might have understood—or feared—murder was not a reality she was ready for. Cruelty, perhaps, she’d comprehend that, because children are capable of great cruelty. A knowledge of murder would come afterward. Meanwhile, Olivia had lived with silent, terrified grief.

He sat there, forgetting to watch the sunset, forgetting the coffee growing cold in his cup, his mind focused on the finely printed words on the richly watermarked page. Then after a time he moved on again.

Several pages later, when he had nearly convinced himself that the interpretation he’d given to “Eve” was subjective, not objective, he found the next movement in a symphony of pain and grief.