Hamish mocked, “Aye, so ye say. You’re no’ sae perfect, none of us is-”

“You weren’t there; you don’t know anything about this case!” Rutledge retorted in anger. “You weren’t there!”

Mistaking the direction of his sudden flare of anger, Mrs. Shaw prodded defiantly, “If you killed my Ben wrongly, you owe me restitution. My children have gone hungry without him, and I’ve had nothing to give them, no way to offer any life at all. It’s my children I’m defending. It’s too late now for Ben.”

Struggling with his own vulnerability just now when the war seemed to have returned with unexpected and extraordinary force, and against his will already half convinced by the intensity of the widow’s determination, Rutledge made an effort to explain how the Yard would see her demands. He said, “We can’t reopen a case-”

“You can!” she told him, interrupting. “Here’s a wrongful death, and I have the proof. What’s to become of me, and my children? Why should Henry Cutter go scot-free while we suffer for what he did?”

The locket lay between them, tearing his life apart as well as hers.

It couldn’t be true. He’d been careful. So had Philip Nettle.

How could he destroy the past, when that was all he had?

And yet… and yet if he had failed Ben Shaw, what then? Why should his past be sacred? Untouchable?

Nell Shaw got to her feet, a middle-aged woman with nothing to be gained by coming to him, except relief from her personal tragedy. An unattractive woman with no graces, who would always provoke dislike and even loathing.