The elderly barkeep came over to ask if he’d like a refill for his glass, and looked down at the photographs, “The Trevelyans,” he said. “Aye, it were a grand family, that one. I remember the old master, not one to trifle with, but the fairest man I ever came across. Doted on his daughter—well, she were a beauty, and no question there, but a lady, and you recollected your manners around herí But one to say thank you and please, as if you’d done her a favor, not a service. Now that one—” a gnarled finger pointed to the Captain “— he died out in India of the cholera, and Mr. Trevelyan, he claimed he’d lost a son. And Miss Rosamund was so ill of grief, the doctor feared for her life. There were some saying she married Mr. Cheney hoping to forget, but there was love there as well. I saw them together, often, and there was love. But Mr. FitzHugh surprised us all, marrying Miss Rosamend. He wasn’t—he wasn’t Quality, like her. Irish gentry, he said, but who’s to know? Still, she was happy enough. And she doted on the twins. A good mother.”

“Two of her children died young.”

“Aye, they never found the little one. There was a tramp through here not many years back that reminded me of Richard Cheney. Same devil’s look in his eyes. That boy was afraid of naught, and tempted God and Satan with his antics. Ran away from home twice, nearly set the Hall on fire one Guy Fawkes Night, with a bonfire in the nursery. I was a groom at the Hall then, when they kept so many horses, and he’d beg to ride anything with four legs!”

Another customer walked into the bar, crutches still awkward under his armpits. A leg missing. The barkeep heard the uneven thump-thump, looked over his shoulder, and said, “Right with you, Will.” He turned back to Rutledge. “They say Miss Olivia wrote poetry, but I don’t know. Not in a woman’s line, is it? How’d she know about the war, then, and the suffering? Somebody’s got it all wrong.”

He went away to serve the other man, and then to speak to a pair of fishermen slumped in the corner benches, arguing dispiritedly over what had become of the pilchard runs that had once been Cornwall’s fishing wealth, and what to do about the outlanders from as far away as Yarmouth, their big boats overfishing Cornish seas. Rutledge was left looking down at the faces that stared unseeingly back at him. Remembering what the barman had said.

Was that the key? Was that why Nicholas had had to die too? Because he wrote the poetry that had made O. A. Manning famous?

Rutledge shook his head. It wasn’t what he wanted to believe.