Rutledge used his handkerchief to clear off a space, then took out the photographs and made a fan of them on the table. “What can you tell me about these people?” What light there was from the narrow windows fell across them, gently touching their faces.

“Ah—more secrets than I want to remember. That’s the gift of old age, Inspector. You begin to forget. And in for-getfulness is peace.”

“But I’d like to know their secrets. To satisfy myself that all’s well. That there was nothing done—now or before—that should have roused suspicion.”

The old man chuckled. “Suspicions? A doctor always has suspicions, he’s worse than the police. But sometimes there’s more compassion in silence than in words. When you can’t undo the harm that’s been done, sometimes you bury it with the dead. James Cheney killed himself, and I said it was an accident cleaning his guns. Why burden Rosamund with more grief than she already had? The boy was lost, there was no bringing either of them back. Father or son. And Olivia was in such a state that I thought she’d lose her reason, swearing she’d never let Richard out of her sight, except to look at a plover’s nest she’d found. And Nicholas saying that it was his fault, he hadn’t watched out for either of them when he’d known he ought to. And the servants crying, and no man about the place but Brian FitzHugh, to see to the burying.” “FitzHugh was there when Cheney died?” “Oh, aye, he was, he’d come and go—about the horses they raced, Miss Rosamund and her father. Winners, the lot of them. Good bloodlines. Like the Trevelyans. And now only Miss Susannah is left. And she’s more Irish than Cornish, if you don’t mind my saying it!”

“What do you know about Cormac FitzHugh?” “Nothing,” the old man said, finishing his beer. “He never needed me for any doctoring, not a splinter in the foot nor fall from a horse. When they sent him away to earn his own living, I was glad. Miss Olivia said one day she’d write some poems about him. I paid no heed to it then, I thought it was girlish foolishness, romantic nonsense.”

Rutledge stared at the watery eyes in the bearded face. Was the doctor trying to say that the love poems were written by Olivia to Cormac FitzHugh? That they had nothing to do with her half brother Stephen, whatever he’d tried to believe?

Tired from a restless night, Rutledge sat in a chair by his window and let himself drowse, He was just into that soft, floating ease between sleeping and waking when he heard sharp taps, a woman’s high heels, coming briskly up the stairs. And then sharper taps as she rapped on his door.