Rutledge thumbed through the fragile pages, eyes scanning the printed lines. In the back, where the pages were blank, someone had written out a family genealogy beginning with the parents of Patrick Samuel, then his marriage and offspring. The ink and writing changed over the next generations, which followed in sad order. So many of them died in the Potato Famine and the nightmare years afterward that it was more a litany of death than of life. At the top of the last page Rutledge found Brian FitzHugh’s name, and Cormac’s, but neither Stephen nor Susannah were recorded here. Nor, apparently, any other secrets that mattered to an investigation into murder.

After a moment, Rutledge dropped the prayer book into the drawer of the table by the bed, unwilling to go back under it. Then he changed his mind, and put the book back where it had come from. Putting it back took less time than finding it in the first place, and he did it holding his breath this time.

Afterward he dusted off his trousers and jacket, then closed the curtains at the windows.

The house was already too dark to do more than a cursory search elsewhere. Most of the other bedrooms had already been stripped of clothing, closets and desks and chests empty, drawers already smelling musty. But Rutledge, mindful of the hollowed out shelf in Olivia’s room, checked each closet with infinite care.

There was nothing more to find, nothing that told him where Olivia had left her papers—not even whether they were still in the house. Susannah and her husband, Rachel and Stephen, with the help of Cormac, Mrs. Trepol, and the old woman Sadie, had spent days going through the house and cleaning room after room. He wasn’t surprised to find nothing out of the ordinary where they had worked.

He went back to study. But the desk by the window was as sterile as the one in Olivia’s bedroom. It was a wild goose chase—Stephen must have removed any papers left to him. Yet Rutledge had the feeling that a man hell-bent and determined to preserve his half sister’s fame as a poet would stubbornly resist taking them too far, just as he’d fought to keep Olivia’s room inviolate.

To which Hamish riposted, “What do you need the papers for, when you’ve found yon golden trophies? Or are ye shutting out what they say?”

The sun was a red ball on the horizon when Rutledge walked out to the headland, its warmth lingering in the light wind that preceded the stillness of sunset. Behind him the windows of the Hall were ablaze, and the weather vane on the church tower as well. Red sky at night ...

He should have listened to Hamish and gone back to London on Saturday morning. He should have told Rachel this morning that there was no need to reopen the three deaths. Let sleeping murderers lie.