just passed him. On your right.”

“No, sir, I didn’t,” the man answered him, craning his neck to look back the way they had come. A brewery lorry was pulling in just behind them, blocking Rutledge’s view as well.

It would do no good to set the constable down to follow Hood; he hadn’t seen the man.

Rutledge took a deep breath and said, “Never mind.”

They reached the clinic, and the constable took up his stance by the door.

Passing through the outer lobby, Rutledge nodded to the porter on duty, then walked through to Matron’s sitting room.

There he was almost swept into an embrace by a joyful Jenny Teller, her face blindingly bright with happiness. Over her shoulder he saw a man stand and step away from his chair, a tentative expression on his face.

“Oh!” Jenny exclaimed. “I thought it was Edwin. Do come in, Inspector Rutledge. I want to show you that I was right all along. Here is my husband. Walter, this is the Scotland Yard inspector I’ve told you about.”

And Walter Teller had the grace to stare sheepishly at Rutledge. He had changed from the younger man in the photograph that his wife had let Rutledge borrow. There were deeper lines on his face, fatigue mostly, and an uncertainty, Rutledge thought, about his reception.

He needn’t have worried. Despite his shabby appearance, hair that looked as if he’d combed it with his fingers, and the beginnings of a beard, Walter Teller was the most wonderful sight in the world to his wife’s eyes.

Then who was Charlie Hood?

As Rutledge crossed the room, he caught the distinct odor of incense with a soupçon of cabbage on Teller’s clothing. He found himself remembering what Leticia Teller had said, that her brother would salve his conscience in serving the poor of London.

“I’ve sent for Edwin and Peter, but the doctors want to take Walter away and examine him,” Jenny was saying.

Rutledge felt an odd mixture of relief that the man was alive and a strong sense of anger at what he had put his family through.

“Mr. Teller,” he said, his voice cold.

“I know,” Teller admitted. “I’ve done a terrible thing. But I can’t tell you why or even tell you where I’ve been. I came to my senses outside a greengrocer’s shop this morning, watching as he put trays of vegetables in his window. I went inside and asked him what day it was, and where his shop was. He told me I was drunk and to get out. I’d never been spoken to like that before. On the street, I passed a milliner’s shop with a mirror in the window, and I saw myself then. Small wonder the man thought I was drunk or mad.

Jenny, tears in her eyes, said, “You mustn’t think about it. You’re safe now, you’re here.”

Teller’s gaze was on Rutledge, wanting him to believe, wanting him to accept what he was saying.

Rutledge was saved from answering by the appearance of one of the doctors, urging Teller to come and let them examine him, but Jenny said, “No. His brothers are on the way. Please, we’ve been so worried. Let them see he’s safe now. Then you can have him.”

But Rutledge thought it was Jenny herself who couldn’t let her husband out of her sight just yet. She clung to his arm, as if still not sure this miracle was real, or if she had dreamed it.

Dr. Sheldon said, “Half an hour, and then we really must insist.” He left, shutting the door behind him.

Teller said, “Jenny. Do you think Matron might arrange a cup of tea? I’m dry as a desert.”

She was of two minds about leaving him. Rutledge said, “I’ll be here,” and finally she walked out the door, looking back at her husband, as if she expected him to vanish before her eyes.

Teller said quietly, as soon as she was out of earshot, “I left here with every intention of drowning myself. But when I got to the river, the water was filthy. Oily and with things floating in it. Paper and feathers and the odd tin. I even saw a dead seagull some twenty yards away, feathers a dirty gray, and I thought I couldn’t let them find me like that. So I began walking. My God, I don’t know how far I walked. Halfway to France, it seemed. At night I slept in churches. I know churches, I felt safe there. I’d wait until nearly dark, and then slip inside. There are places in the organ