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“I’ve come to believe that Inspector Blevins has found the man who did this terrible murder. He told me himself that the proof was clear, and I’ve had time now to think about it a little. I ought to admit that I was wrong about the revenge; it’s just prolonging the pain, and taking me nowhere. And so I’ve begun to box up Father James’s belongings, to send to his sister. If the Bishop names a new priest soon, the rectory should be ready for him. It’s my duty!”

Rutledge glanced around the parlor. It seemed unchanged from his last visit. “What have you removed?”

She looked down at her hands, her face torn. “I started with his old things in the garden shed, and then the kitchen entry. I find it hard to think about touching this parlor—or facing the upstairs—but I’ll manage. It’s the last task I’ll ever perform for him, you know. And I want to do it right.”

“I do understand, Mrs. Wainer. I shan’t keep you long. I’d like to have a look at the framed photographs if I may, and I need to ask you if Father James stored any of his private papers in some other room of the house.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” she answered doubtfully. “There’s the study and the bedroom, and a room just down the passage that’s always been used to hold parish books and the like. Accounts, for one thing, and the church records—baptisms, deaths, marriages. There’s a grand number of them now; the books fill two shelves.” It was said with pride.

But these would be passed on to the incoming man. The public duty, and not the private life. “I’m sure they do. Can we begin with the parlor, perhaps? Show me, if you will, what belonged to Father James personally.”

She began by the windows, picking up each photograph. “That’s the little house in Cumberland, over near Keswick, where he spent an entire week just before the War. It poured cats and ducks, and he couldn’t set foot out the door without a thorough drenching. He played backgammon until he was blind, he said. And here’s the young priest who was ordained with him. Father Austin. He died of the gassing in the War, poor soul . . .”

Each of the photographs had a story, but none of them appeared to have special significance. Mrs. Wainer moved on to the small treasures. “He liked pipes, although he never smoked, and he collected more than a dozen,” she reminisced as she touched each one. “And over there is the walking stick, in that Chinese umbrella stand, that he carried with him to Wales and the Lake District. Westmorland. The stand belonged to a great-aunt, it was a wedding gift to her, and I’ll be shipping that along to his sister. And the clock on the mantel there—”

There were books on the shelves that were Father James’s, his name inscribed in a fine copperplate hand, mixed among others that belonged in the rectory. Rutledge turned the pages briefly, but found nothing of interest tucked between the leaves.

“Hardly secret vices and dark crimes,” Hamish mocked.

When Rutledge turned to the stairs, the housekeeper said, as she had before, “Go on then. I’ll have a cup of tea ready, when you’ve done your work.” She had returned to the kitchen before he had reached the top step.

He went first to the small room where the ledgers of church and rectory business transactions were kept, and where the heavy, bound books with Church Records on their spines stood on a separate pair of shelves.

Looking through the ledgers first, Rutledge found, in various hands, the long list of repairs and improvements, wages and offerings that represented decades of activity. The roof of the rectory had been repaired after a storm in 1903, and there was a faded receipt in the rough, untutored hand of the man who had done the work. You could, Rutledge thought, identify with certainty every expenditure: when it was made, to whom, and for what purpose. And the name of the priest incumbent at the time. Every penny of income was noted, every payment of wages due. He found the entry, scrupulously made in Father James’s hand, of the sum earned at the bazaar: eleven pounds,