As Philip Nettle lay dying in hospital, Bowles had made half a dozen speeches that cleverly fostered the notion that it was his own intuition that had come up with the crimes’ solution. He had given interviews to magazines and newspapers. And he had delivered the eulogy at Philip Nettle’s funeral, praising the man rather than the police officer, kissing the grieving widow’s cheek with marked condescension. She had regarded him with bitterness, convinced that Bowles’s callous demands for results had prevented her husband from making a timely visit to his doctor.

Sergeant Gibson, reading the caption under yet another photograph in a newspaper, had said sourly within Rutledge’s hearing, “You’d bloody think the man was standing for Parliament!”

Sergeant Wilkerson had answered, “Aye, there’s hope he will, and leave the Yard for good!”

To order the Shaw file brought to his office on the heels of a visit by Mrs. Shaw would ring alarm bells at the Yard. Old Bowels would hear about it before the day was out, and send someone down the passage to ferret out what was going on. Hanged felons were finished business. Even if Mrs. Shaw found a hundred new pieces of evidence.

The Yard, like the Army, demanded obedience and rigorously followed the chain of command.

“Aye, it’s as guid an excuse as any,” Hamish taunted, “for doing nothing.”

“Or a damned good reason for exercising caution,” Rutledge countered, getting up from his chair.

He went himself to the vast cavern where records were kept and, after some hunting among dusty cabinets, located the folder he was after.

With his office door shut, and no one but Hamish to observe him, Rutledge opened the file and began to read.

At the end of it, he sat back in his chair and watched the reflection of pale November light from his windows as it played across the ugly walls.

The sheets of paper and notes and conclusions that had been meticulously written seemed-in the light of Mrs.