“People are sometimes verra’ different under the skin. If he was clever enough to kill, he might ha’ been clever enough to have other secrets.”

“The same could be said of Mrs. Shaw-or the Cutters.”

Rutledge passed the house on Sansom Street without stopping. Fog was curling in off the river, wreathing roofs and sliding over chimneys, giving the house and its neighbors a sinister air.

He told himself he hadn’t yet formulated a strategy for his opening move. Like contemplating a chess game before touching the pieces, he thought to himself. It was very like that-he couldn’t afford to choose the wrong move.

Hamish was saying, “In the end, you must speak to Cutter.”

But how to go about that without arousing Bowles’s suspicions? The Chief Superintendent was a vindictive enemy, when aroused.

Rutledge wished Mrs. Shaw had had the sense to write to him instead of coming to the Yard in person. It would have drawn far less attention. But then he might have read the letter and done nothing, putting it down to a woman’s refusal to let go of the past. Her strong presence, tearful and demanding and fiercely certain, had affected him, as she must have guessed it would.

It might yet prove to be nothing more than that. A brooding that had consumed her to the point of believing in her own phantoms.

A widow whose husband had been hanged for murder must not have had an easy life. Nor her children. He had only to look around him to guess what privations they’d suffered.

Still, she’d survived. It showed in her toughness and her determination. He found it hard to blame her for being bitter and angry. And if she was right, if there had been a miscarriage of justice, he was as much to blame as Bowles and Philip Nettle. Perhaps more so, because he had brought the case to trial.