“Killing anyone? Miss Marlowe? I’d sooner believe my own husband, God rest his soul, could do such a thing! Whatever put such a nasty idea into your head? Not anyone in Borcombe, I’d trust my life to that!” The indignation in her voice was very real.

“And you’d be willing to swear, in a court of law, that no one in the Hall—none of Miss Rosamund’s family—was capable of murder?”

She regarded him severely. “I don’t know what they are getting up to in London,” she said tersely, “to send you down here with such questions as that to ask decent, law-abiding folk, but I’ll tell you straight out, that if there was murder done in the Hall on the night that Miss Olivia and Mr. Nicholas died, it was a cruel and godless person that did it and he’s nobody we’ve ever seen in Borcombe or want to see. Now if there’re no more you want to ask me, I’ve plants in my garden that still need to be watered!”

Back in his room at The Three Bells, Rutledge sat in the chair by the window with the books of O. A. Manning’s poetry in front of him. But looking at the slim volumes, he found himself thinking instead about the poet. About the woman who had found such resources of understanding within her. And yet who had killed herself because her strength somehow came to an end.

Could a man or woman be so deeply aware of the mysteries of the human soul and yet be capable of such terrible crimes as the murder of children? Could she live with that knowledge of herself, and still create such beauty? Was that, finally, why she had killed herself? Assuming that Cormac FitzHugh had told Rutledge the truth . . .

How did you write poetry? How many words did you put on paper, and how often did you throw them away because they didn’t say what you heard in your spirit? How many poems went wrong, how many lines were flat and soulless, how many were trite and tired and empty? How many pages were crumpled up and tossed aside before a few unexpected words sang in your head, while you responded with blood and bone? How easy had it been—or how painfully arduous? How tiring or overwhelming?

He thought about the opening lines to one of the love poems.

Love

Comes on wings of fire

That sear the heart with longing

And a white-hot heat.

In its wake, no peace remains,

Only the scars of a terrible loss

That mark the end of innocence.

How many times had she revised that until she was satisfied?

He’d been inside the study where she had worked and died.

It was amazingly tidy.