Nicholas? Somehow Rutledge couldn’t quite see that parallel. What could Nicholas have given and taken away again from Brian FitzHugh? He reread the poem, and shook his head. Be patient, man! he told himself. Olivia knew the answer to that—she’d leave it for him somewhere if not here.

Hamish, in the back of his mind, was more or less agreeing with Harvey about women penning such lines. “A tormented soul—” he began.

“Yes. And a damned brave one,” Rutledge retorted.

Later there was a reference to a man passing through a wood, finding Death waiting for him there, and facing it with courage and disdain. Death struck, and laughed. The man managed to break away, but felt no sense of victory, only of postponement.

For Death could come again, and it was not what he

desired ...

Not yet, with so much of life in his grasp.

So much of life . .. and yet Nicholas had chosen suicide.

Rutledge was tired, his eyes burning, his head spinning from the effort he was making to follow the remarkable thread set out for him. To sort through Olivia’s allusions, to find the bedrock of accusation beneath. And yet he felt he was missing something. What was behind what Olivia was trying to tell him? She hadn’t written a great body of poetry just as a memorial to her family’s suffering. Or just as a record for any astute policeman who might stumble over the evidence she’d documented in it. It was a warning. A very public forum of denunciation, but to what end? She must have said. Somewhere . . .

Then where had he, Rutledge, gone astray? Surely it wasn’t just his own stubborn insistence on closure, surely Olivia would have wanted that too. Then why hadn’t he seen it? What didn’t he know about the Trevelyan family that might have guided him now?

Another poem to Rosamund was moving, a tribute that made his eyes sting with tears as it spoke of her life, her loves, her deep belief that she could find peace for herself and her family.

And the last line left him chilled.

“When he couldn’t have her, the hound of Hell destroyed her.”

They were all there. Anne, Richard, Rosamund, James, Brian. All of them. Except the last pair to die .. .

He went through the book again, searching. Finding nothing. And then he saw something unexpected. It was in a poem—on the surface—about Rome, and two small children suckled by a wolf. Romulus and Remus, who grew up to found a great city. Only this was not a city, this was a tower of the heart. He’s missed it, confused by the legend. Mistakenly taking the wolf literally, as an animal and not as a childhood nightmare of death and fear that drove two people to a strange and tender interdependence.

I have loved, and he has listened, both have given

holy grace.