She surprised him.

“Turn back the clock to that trial,” she said baldly, staring fiercely at him, “and this time find some way of bringing out the truth!”

Caught utterly off guard, Rutledge found himself fumbling for words. “I don’t quite understand-”

“The truth who it was killed them, the old ladies.” She began to dig in the purse she carried with her, and pulled out a small handkerchief. Unfolding it on the edge of his desk, she added triumphantly, “That’s your proof, right here! It won’t bring my Ben back, nothing will, but it should clear his name!”

Inside the square of cheap cloth was a locket without its chain. In the center was the face of a man in profile, carved in onyx from what Rutledge could see of it, against a pearl-gray background. A lacework of black-enameled laurel leaves framed it. She opened the locket for him next: inside lay a delicately braided coil of graying chestnut hair, protected by a crystal cover.

She watched him as he studied it, guarding it against any intent on his part to take it from her, turning it in her rough hands with the delicacy of a merchant exhibiting his wares.

It was mourning jewelry, worn to remind the wearer of a loved one.

“May I?” he asked. She nodded, and showed him the reverse.

And on the back of the locket were several lines engraved in the gold case: Frederick Andrew Satterthwaite, loving husband, d. April 2, 1900.

Satterthwaite had been the name of one of Shaw’s victims.

“He couldn’t sell it, could he?” Mrs. Shaw was demanding. “Not with that inscription on the back of it! Anybody would have known at once where it come from. What surprises me was that he kept it at all. But I suppose he couldn’t think what to do with it. And it’s pretty, in a morbid way. That’s gold it’s set in.” A red finger with a chewed nail pointed at the setting, tapping it.