Rutledge’s eyes came back from the sea to Harvey’s face. Something in them made the other man wary. “I’ve never been more serious. Olivia Marlowe believed that there was a murderer loose in her family. She believed she knew the identity of the killer, and that she had proof of a sort. Of a sort, mind you. Not the kind of proof you and I might use to ask for an arrest warrant, perhaps, or that a good barrister couldn’t make laughable in a courtroom. But she believed it. And she tried to document it as carefully as she could.”

“That’s—that’s preposterous!” Harvey blustered, his neck brick red and the color rising fast. “I’ve never heard a more ridiculous fiction in all my years as a policeman! This is my country, I’d have known if there was murder done here. My predecessor would have known!”

“Precisely why,” Rutledge responded, “I need these statements. I see no point in taking unsubstantiated rumors back to London. In my opinion we should set Olivia Marlowe’s fears to rest once and for all. She was famous, and there will be biographers. They shouldn’t be left to draw conclusions that might reflect badly on the police.” He shrugged. “What may come of it is the truth. I can’t think of anything fairer than that.”

“That damned woman was a bother when she was alive, and worse now that she’s dead,” Harvey fumed, thinking over what Rutledge had said. And from the sound of it, Olivia Marlowe wasn’t going to stay quietly dead. He hadn’t reckoned on biographers trampling about his turf and prying into village business. Asking questions, raising doubts, stirring up people. He’d thought that was finished when the reporters had come to find out about O. A. Manning. The specter of an endless parade of troublemakers still to arrive was decidedly unsettling at best.

Rutledge watched the slow, careful progress of Harvey’s mind as he considered the situation facing him. And then came to his decision.

Harvey had been told the truth. Not all of it, but the cold, hard kernel of truth that was the center of what Rutledge was doing. The rest would come when the facts were down on paper and irrefutable. When the warrant was required.

“Yes, well, I can understand what you’re saying, that there’ll be no peace for any of us. If the Home Office wanted this case reopened, we’ve already had the first round. Some newspaperman may get wind of it next, God forgive us, and we’ll be on the front pages! And the academics will be the worst of the lot, reading whatever they damned well please into her verse, and turning Borcombe upside down to show they’re right.” He sighed. “Oh, very well. Do what you have to do. Just make what haste you can.”