The Monday papers had been awash with news of another killing in the City. Bowles had been interviewed in depth about the Yard’s pursuit of the murderer, and talked ful-somely of modern forensic science and its role in tracking down the guilty party. Bowles leaned towards cold fact rather than intuition and a careful analysis of the killer’s reasons for acting now, against this particular victim, and in this particular place. Rutledge had found that scientists were not always the best witnesses in the box, and as often as not a good man for the defense could walk rings around them.

He looked at his own cold facts. That Corrmac had seen Olivia shove her sister out of an apple tree. That Olivia hadn’t had the heart to dispose of her trophies of the dead, even in the face of her own death. That they were an admission of guilt in six possible murders, not just the two that Cormac laid at Olivia’s door—indicating, perhaps, a cooler, more cunning skill as the child grew older.

But these facts, alone or together, were not sufficient proof of guilt in a courtroom. Cormac was young at the time, his own memory might have been at fault. A good barrister might point out that Olivia could have had those small articles in her possession for any number of reasons: she’d been given them, she’d taken them as a childhood prank, she’d won them in a wager. In themselves, without more evidence to lay out beside them, they couldn’t be viewed as the fruits of sin.

Her papers might hold a confession. However convoluted or concealed in verse. But poets and writers were allowed literary license. That too could prove to be more circumstantial than conclusive.

Who then among the living might give him the proof he needed? Who would make a dependable, incontrovertible witness in the box?

He set out to look for one.

Constable Dawlish, finishing his breakfast in his wife’s sunny kitchen, came out to the parlor to listen and found Rutledge’s line of questioning hard to follow.

So did Hamish, who was still contending that they’d both live to regret staying on in Cornwall, and was muttering ominously about Rutledge’s own stubbornness.