“Yes, yes! Olivia killed them, you say. Or Nicholas. Dead people who can’t answer, can’t defend themselves! Well, let me tell you what I think! While I was at the Beatons, I made a telephone call. To a friend of Peter’s who knew you as well. He tells me that after the Armistice you spent months in a private clinic—a head injury, he said. Quite severe, he said, because you weren’t allowed any visitors. Nurses told him that for a time you didn’t even know who you were. Everyone was surprised when you returned to the Yard—they didn’t think you were well enough, that you’d recovered sufficiently to take on stressful work. He’s right, you aren’t capable of carrying out your duties! That’s why you aren’t in London, looking for that man—that’s why you were sent out to Cornwall, to get you safely out of the way, and why you’re searching out old, imaginary murders. You can’t do any better!”

Shocked by her vehemence, he turned away towards the windows, looking out at the sea, his back to her, his face hidden from her angry eyes.

“You sent for Scotland Yard,” he reminded her for a last time. “If I’m mad, if I’m imagining the need for this investigation, then some of the blame must be yours.” It was on the tip of his tongue to say more, and he caught himself in time, and added only, “I’m sorry, Rachel. More than you know.”

His refusal to defend himself, the odd tone of his voice, brought her up short.

They were a woman’s weapon, words. She’d deliberately wielded them to wound, to hurt him, to stop him. She’d telephoned Sandy MacArdle because he was a gossip, and she’d known he was a gossip, and she wanted the worst possible interpretation put on anything Ian Rutledge had done, to use that knowledge herself as savagely as she could.

And suddenly, she felt sick, ashamed. “Oh, Nicholas,” she cried to herself with weary grief, “why did I have to love you so much!”

Rutledge still had his back to her, the set of his shoulders betraying his own pain, waiting for her to go on.

She found she couldn’t.

“Why did you want the portrait?” she asked quietly, after a time.

He was watching the sea, but his eyes were blind to its beauty. Only the pain within him seemed real. And to his credit, he told her the truth.