he said, “Rutledge,” and waited for Gibson to speak.

The voice traveling down the line was Gibson’s. He said, without preamble, “It’s Lancashire, sir. You’re to go there at once. If you need someone in Essex to deal with the situation there, the Chief Superintendent will send someone else from the Yard.”

“It’s stable at the moment,” Rutledge answered, unwilling to turn the inquiry into Peter Teller’s death over to anyone else at this stage. There were secrets here that he would have to get to the bottom of before the final verdict on Peter Teller’s fall was handed down. And he wasn’t prepared for anyone else to muddy the waters.

“That’s good news, sir. You’ll be leaving from there?”

“As soon as I speak to Inspector Jessup, the local man.”

“To be sure,” Gibson agreed. “A very wise decision, if I may say so, sir.”

Rutledge swiftly translated that to mean that avoiding London at the moment was a good thing.

“And Mr. Rutledge, sir?” Gibson was saying, his voice lowered and barely audible.

“Yes? What is it, Gibson?”

“Inspector Mickelson has just informed the Chief Superintendent that he feels the trap cannot be sprung by anyone else. Just a friendly warning, sir.”

Chapter 27

Sunday evening had been nearly insupportable. Leticia, complaining of a headache, had excused herself early and gone up to bed. But not to sleep.

She lay awake, her windows open, the cries of an owl in the distance loud in her ears. She had always disliked owls. Their haunting calls spoke to her of grief and sadness and something to be feared. As a child, she’d run to her nanny’s bed and flung herself under the covers, to shut out the sound.

Her mother had always maintained that Leticia must have overheard one of the servants claiming that owls were omens of ill fortune. Leticia herself didn’t know if it was true or not. She just knew she had always felt that way.

And, of course, with Peter only newly dead, the cries of the owl were particularly appropriate. She got up once to close the windows, but the room still held the heavy closeness of the day and she could hardly breathe in the resulting stuffiness.

She couldn’t stop herself from thinking about her brothers. They had always been a close family. Edwin’s illness had brought them all together in a pact to keep him safe. When their parents died, it had fallen to her lot to watch over Edwin while Peter went off to the Army and Walter had gone into the mission field.

Now Peter was accused of cold-blooded murder, Walter had been different ever since his mysterious disappearance, never satisfactorily explaining it to anyone except perhaps to Jenny. And Edwin was withdrawing even from her.

She turned to one side, trying to shut out the sounds from the wood in the distance.

It was odd that now there was still a conspiracy to protect Jenny. The mother of the heir. The youngest of them. They hadn’t told her about Florence Teller. It had seemed the right thing to do. But it would all come out at the inquest anyway. Someone would have to tell her before the questions of the police aroused her suspicions, before she found herself hearing in public what Peter had been accused of and why.

And there was Susannah as well. Something would have to be done about her. Her distress and anger were understandable—natural. But she couldn’t be allowed to upset everyone by involving the Yard and trying to clear Peter’s name. She’d stood by him, even when Leticia had told her what the man from London had said about the evidence. All the same, Leticia had had the sneaking suspicion that Susannah was already worried about Peter. Something in her eyes . . .

She sighed, and turned over again, and finally got up to walk to the window, defying the owls.

She was the eldest. It was up to her to straighten out this tangle. Damn Edwin for going to the funeral. Damn Peter for losing his head. Damn Susannah for not keeping her mouth shut so that all this could be smoothed away. And damn Jenny, for being naïve and for walking into rooms at just the wrong moment, never mind that it was her house. Every time the rest of them had tried to confront Peter, he was either drunk or he was protected, unwittingly, by Jenny’s presence.

She had another thought. If it hadn’t been for Jenny, Peter might not have died. They could have cleared the air, got through to whatever