Everything hinged on that locket.

The autumn weather was at its worst-the clear skies of Guy Fawkes Day had long since given way to a week of heavy clouds and a cold wind. Today, the breath-sucking fog seemed to follow Rutledge out of London, cloaking everything and everyone in a clinging, damp, choking vapor. It ran ahead of him toward the Downs, silent fingers reaching through the hedgerows and shrouding the trees.

He could barely see the verges of the road, and slowed for fear of running into a farm cart or lorry, invisible around the next curve. Hamish, a presence at his shoulder, was restless with the tension of driving.

“It wasna’ necessary to leave sae early! Ye’ll kill us both before this weather lifts!”

Rutledge wasn’t sure he would be sorry to wind up in a ditch, his neck broken. But his sister would mourn. And a handful of friends. And Jean, who had married her diplomat and sailed for Canada, would learn of his death on her wedding journey.

He smiled wryly at that. He had no illusions now about his former fiancee. Jean would read the news and sigh prettily, and say to her new husband, “My dear, I’ve just heard-a very dear friend has been killed on a road south of London. I-I must believe it’s a blessing. He was-he was never the same after the war, you know. I daresay-but no, that’s not fair. I should never wish to believe he’d found a way to end it-”

And the diplomat, not very diplomatically, would reply briskly, “You mustn’t blame yourself, my dear. It’s all in the past now.”

Hamish commented, his voice clear in the dim interior of the motorcar, “Aye, it’s no’ a bonny thing to say. But it might be true, nonetheless.”

Rutledge concentrated his attention on the road.