Rutledge stopped there and closed the journal, returning it to its resting place. Hamish for once was silenced, his voice if not his presence shut down in the face of truth. Rutledge felt his heart racing, his mind torn between triumph and depression. Triumphant that there was something more than lines of verse on which to base his case, and depressed that Olivia Marlowe had had to sacrifice herself to keep her younger half brother and sister alive. Had that been what drove her to suicide? A threat against Stephen: his life or yours?

Was that the bargain struck with Lucifer? Or only a part of it?

Mrs. Trepol stuck her head around the kitchen door and said, “Will you be taking them with you, sir? Mr. Stephen’s things?”

Rutledge got to his feet and began to stack the boxes into the closet again.

“Go on keeping them safe for now,” he told Mrs. Trepol. “Let them stay where they are. I’ll come for them myself before I leave. Sooner, if I can. And I wouldn’t bother either Miss Rachel or Miss Susannah about them now. They’ve got enough on their minds, I don’t want to worry them about Mr. Stephen at the moment.”

She thanked him gravely and followed him to her door, closing it after him.

Hamish, never silenced for very long, had found his voice again. “I’ll hear no crowing, now or later! Ye didn’t find them, did you? They had to come to you, out of nowhere, and you can’t take any of the credit for that!”

“I don’t want credit,” Rutledge said, walking down the path and closing the gate behind him, still torn between taking the boxes with him and leaving them where they were. He turned towards the inn once more, only part of his mind taking in the emptiness of the street, the quietness—no noisy children, no neighbors gossiping over garden walls, no young couples strolling hand in hand through the evening light. He’d seen it before, the way villages drew inward in a time of crisis. “I’m starting with the statements. After that, I’ll have Harvey collect that letter. Once I’ve organized all my own information clearly in black and white, he’ll be able to see how the letter corroborates it. And if he can see it, London will have to do the same.”

“And what about Stephen FitzHugh? Did he find yon letter? Was that why he left the boxes here?”