Inspector Hathaway

by CharlotteBlackwood

A life left behind becomes a life let go of as James Hathaway has to face what he sees as his greatest regret. With Robbie and Laura back from New Zealand and a hideous case of a sexual predator on their hands, the concept of blame is brought under a light for scrutiny, and James has to decide if he can face that light or turn away.

1. A Kingdom By the Sea

A/N: So, this may well be a series of episodes, but at present this is the only one fully realized. It will be continued, but do not expect regular updates. Among life and other such things, I already have a lot of stories going, and chapters this size take time to write and edit. Cheers!

C

To call it morning, even early morning, would have been generous. James Hathaway rammed his hands into the warmth of his coat pockets and approached the cordoned off scene. Robbie Lewis had also just arrived at the scene, directly behind the Covered Market, where a worker had been pulling out the bins for the morning, and found something more than unexpected.

"What have we got?" James asked DS Lizzie Maddox, who was approaching from where she'd been crouching with Laura Hobson, over the body.

"Katie Davies, age twelve," Maddox said to both men, frowning. "Parents reported her missing when she wasn't home for dinner. She usually gets a lift from a friend's mum from school to riding lessons, then walks home after the lessons. There's two fields between the stables and her house. We used the papers and cell phone in her bag for preliminary I.D."

"Killer wanted her to be found and identified," Robbie said darkly. "Probably got in a car, so someone she trusted."

"Definitely a sexual motive," Maddox added quickly. "Strangulation marks and a blow to the back of the head, so Dr. Hobson says we'll have to wait for the postmortem for cause of death. Time of death, between four and six yesterday evening."

James frowned at the thin body of the brunette and whispered, "She was moved." Her hair reminded him of something, someone, but he couldn't put a finger on who. Even the way it splayed around her head on the ground caused small flashes of memories, not long enough to place.

Maddox held up an evidence bag containing a crumpled receipt.

"Found on her stomach," Maddox said, frowning at the bag. "Scene's been staged, from her bag to her hair to the receipt on her body. SOCO's logging everything, and we're trying to get a timeline on when it could have been done unseen."

What none of them wanted to say, but all were thinking as Robbie took the evidence bag for a closer look, was they'd have to put out a bulletin to the press for information requests to the public. Never pleasant with crimes against children.

"Bookshop on Canal Street," Robbie said. "Time and date stamp, product code, but no title. Twelve pound fifty, whatever it was."

"Right," James said, checking his watch. "Right, let's organize evidence. I'll tell the parents, get someone in for formal identification. Lizzie, take statements here and organize a timeline. I'll meet you at the bookshop, Robbie, around lunchtime. I'm supposed to check in with Nell. What's the shop called?"

"Tome," Robbie read off the receipt. "You get on; we have it covered here."

/-/

In decades of police work, sexual crimes against children were one thing Robbie didn't think he'd ever get used to seeing. First crime back from New Zealand, and he looked at the half-stripped body of Katie Davies, with her pale legs bruised and her fine, chestnut brown hair splayed about her head like a halo in a medieval painting.

"I'm moving the body," Laura said softly. "The Market need their alley back, and SOCO's done all the photographs and measurements. Anything you need from me?"

"Lizzie said sexual motive," Robbie said, quirking his eyebrows as a prompt.

Laura hummed, then said, "Blood from the ruptured hymen and torn walls congealed on ripped panties. Clear vaginal trauma before death, but you'll have to wait for more. James has gone to the parents?"

Robbie nodded, glancing at the body one last time. He decided to head back to the station, accomplish some organization before he went to the bookshop. He told Maddox where he'd be before going in, and he drove back to the station, getting coffee on the way.

Everything was as he remembered, from the car park to the faces in the corridor, from the incident board to the slightly creaky chair at his desk. He started organizing CCTV requests and chasing down statements from preliminary questioning when the missing child report was filed the night before. Lizzie came in to help with the organizing of statements, adding in the ones she'd gathered that morning, and they were just getting a sense of Katie's week before the disappearance, when Lizzie pointed out the time. Realizing he was meant to be meeting James at the bookshop, he dropped the photograph of the victim and said he'd be back in a tick, and to keep on the CCTV requests.

/-/

Tome was so packed with books, one might think the owner never sold a one. In truth, for every book sold, she acquired three for sale, and rather than stacking them in inventory, she tried to cram in every book she could on the sales shelves, passionate about every customer finding just the right book for their needs.

The sign was turned to closed, although she never locked it until she left the shop area for either outside or upstairs, so the tinkle of the bell on the door did not startle her.

"Closed for lunch break," she called from behind the till, looking for a note from a customer who called in looking for a used copy of Dubliners for his daughter.

"Ms. Moore?"

She perked up, frowning. The voice was kind, but firm, clearly on business, but not pushy or demanding.

"Yes," she said, standing straight and looking about for the owner of the voice. "Who's asking?"

An older man rounded the corner and said, "DI Lewis, Oxfordshire Police." He showed his credentials and she nodded. "Do you have a minute?"

"Yes," she said, blinking at him. "How can I help you?"

"It's in connection with a murder case," he said, checking his watch. "Is there somewhere we could talk? I have a colleague coming soon."

She checked the clock and said, "Tell you what, let's go up to my flat. Write a note for your colleague to buzz. I can temporarily unlock this door from up there."

She passed Lewis a pen and pad of paper, and he snagged a piece of binding tape to stick it up with. She locked the door and led the kindly policeman upstairs, offering him a cup of tea, which he accepted. She prepared the tea as he glanced around her cozy flat, almost as stuffed with books as the shop was, with a few overstuffed bits of furniture for her needs, less than she could have got on her budget, but more than enough for her tastes and requirements.

"At a crime scene," he said, "a staged one, we found a receipt for this shop."

"What, like on the ground or something?" she asked, tucking a strand of chestnut brown hair behind her ear as she passed him the cup of tea.

"Actually, it was crumpled and placed on the victim's stomach. Right centered, so we know it was meant to be there."

She winced. He pulled out an evidence bag with the receipt carefully smoothed, although still with evidence of crumpling. It was certainly one of her receipts, time and date stamped, with the product code and price clearly printed. She asked if she could hold the bag and he handed it to her for a closer look.

"Thursday," she muttered. "Erm, I had a late lunch Thursday, so this would have been…just before that. There were two sales, a very chatty, needy sort of young woman, and a man…." She closed her eyes, wincing, trying to remember. There was a buzz and she thought it must be DI Lewis's colleague, so she let him in, sitting again and frowning at the receipt.

"I could give a passable visual description of the woman, she took so much of my time. She's why I had to take such a late lunch, wouldn't make up her mind. The man, though…." She tried to picture his face and came up blank. "I don't know why I can't remember. He…was older. No younger than late forties, I would say. Possibly much older, but when men hit fifty, it gets so hard to say with some of them. Very assured posture, I remember that. Some sort of spectacles. Can't remember if they were sunnies or clear glass, but I do know there was something around the eyes. And…he must have been wearing a scarf or something. I have no memory at all of his chin, or even if he had facial hair."

Lewis nodded, and was about to ask something else when a firm knock on the door announced that his colleague had found her flat. She told the colleague to come in, and she felt her stomach drop when she saw a familiar tall, thin, blond man enter. His eyes widened at the sight of her, and she felt dizzy sitting down.

"Sara," he said, astonished to see her as she was to see him.

"James," she said, quickly preparing his tea so as not to look at him.

James Hathaway, a police officer. In many ways, it suited him, and she had no doubt he was brilliant at his work, but Sara felt a kind of pain, seeing him after so many years, and not in a church. It felt like a personal slight, although she knew it probably wasn't.

"You could try the bank across the way for CCTV," she said warmly to Lewis, not glancing at James as she passed him his tea, but well aware he was still staring at her. "The manager when I moved in let me know they had it, in case I ever needed it for any reason. It faces out and catches the façade of my shop. And the manager who took over after him confirmed he was keeping it up. Dunno how good the quality is, but it's better than my vague description, I'm afraid. I imagine it was the man. Most murderers are men, aren't they?"

"We have reason to believe it was a man, yes," Lewis said, frowning at her slightly, obviously curious how she and James knew each other, but she wasn't biting. She'd finally picked her life back up, and she wasn't falling down the hole again. It wasn't James's fault, she knew, but she blamed him, anyway. And seeing him as a police officer, it made him so much easier to blame. "Do you know what he bought?"

"Erm…"

She looked at the product code, but it didn't jog her memory straight off. She held up a finger and retreated to her filing cabinet, pulling out the product code inventory, which she kept in a binder. She flipped through for the right section, and it only took a quick glance at the middle of the page to recall the small, frustrating tiff she'd had with the customer. He was a man of few words, but of very firm ideas.

Sara dropped the binder as though it were a snake trying to bite her, and both men looked at her with astonishment and confusion. She felt her hands begin to tremble, staring down at the book.

"This is about the little girl," she whispered. "On the radio, they said a little girl had been found dead behind the Covered Market, and had anyone seen anything between certain hours. Someone must have raped and killed her and left the receipt, mustn't they?"

The men were silent, but she knew. Otherwise, why leave the receipt?

"What makes you say so, Sara?" James asked, his voice soft, gentle, warm. He was concerned about her, and she was too shaken to be angry at him for it.

Sara rubbed the back of her neck with trembling hands, trying to hide them from view, but she imagined the rest of her was trembling, too. She looked at Lewis and said, "He bought a book…a rather poor annotation of a famous work of literature. I recall which edition because he bought it new. I only carry the book because it was annotated by a stuffed shirt at Merton College and he requires it of his undergrads every term. Not even his area of study, he just loved the book. Anyway, it's so poor, it's my most popular book for the…student plan I offer."

"Student plan?" Lewis prompted, and Sara smiled weakly, sitting down before she did something stupid like keeling over.

"Students are often poor, Inspector. Many have limited space, and don't want to house years' worth of books in their digs. So, if it's not something they want to keep, they can sell it back, whatever the condition. I give them a fair price for their re-sale, and some books are in good enough condition, I can sell them again. If not, I donate them or keep them for my personal library. Anyway, this book is so commonly sold back, that since the first time I sold them, people only buy the used copies, and I put every copy on the shelf again. They fill them with lecture notes, hints for how to handle the tutor, snarky remarks about the text or the annotations of their tutor. At the least, it's entertaining, and sometimes they're quite helpful to future students. I haven't moved a new copy of that book in years, and whenever someone comes in to buy it, student or otherwise, I direct them to the used copies. But this man, he insisted. Wouldn't hear of anything else, wouldn't take a different edition, and certainly wouldn't have it used."

"The book?" James asked. "What's the book?"

Sara closed her eyes.

"Nabokov," she said derisively. "Lolita."

The silence was solemn, but when she opened her eyes again, she saw Lewis looked confused, like he was trying to place the title.

"It's about a pedophile," James said softly, "who falls in love with a young girl of twelve, marries her mother, and when her mother dies, carries on a relationship with the daughter."

"It's a bit more complicated than that," Sara said coldly, "but yes, that's the general idea. A story of a man sexually obsessed with youth. There's a blow-by-blow of his plans of drugging her up so she doesn't notice a thing, so he can maintain her purity, but the drugs aren't what he thinks. He thinks they're supposed to be barbiturates, but the doctor must have thought he was neurotic, because they were hardly anything at all."

Both men thanked her, Lewis gave her his card if she remembered anything else, and he said he'd talk to the bank before going back to the station, and he'd meet James there. James lingered – of course he lingered – and Sara persisted in not looking at him. After what seemed like the longest silence there had ever been between them, he finally spoke.

"You're not in academia, I see."

"You're not in the church," she said sharply.

Another silence, and she didn't look at him, but she hoped he was at least mildly ashamed of himself. She hoped he understood how furious she was, even if he didn't know all of why.

"How long?" she snapped.

"Sorry?"

"How long did you go that path before deciding to swap careers?"

She heard him inhale deeply, and on the exhale, he said, "I stayed in seminary for a year."

"One year?" she whispered, trying to understand the words. One year. What could that mean?

"Your doctorate?" he asked.

"One year?" she repeated, finally looking up at him.

James blinked at her, as though in turning to face him, the room had gone brighter and his eyes were adjusting.

"Did you finish it?" he asked, his pale eyes searching her face.

"No," she said coolly. "No, I was about a week from finishing when I gave it up. One bloody year?" She inhaled a shaking breath and closed her eyes. Before he could speak again, she quickly said, "Get out of my flat, James." He hesitated, not moving. "Go."

He did leave her, without another word, without anything in parting. But when she opened her eyes, she saw he'd left his card on her table, with his contact details, information she'd wished for all those years when she'd cried herself to sleep for weeks in a row.

She pulled out her lighter, lit the edge of his card, and watched the flame as the edges melted, the words and numbers disappearing under the glow.

/-/

James stared at a box on his bedroom shelf, a very basic shoebox he'd had for years now, nearly sixteen years. He rubbed his forehead, the memories now unfolding easily, where that morning they'd been inaccessible. Sara, laughing and laying back on fresh-mown grass with her chestnut-brown hair splayed about her head, sun dancing on her skin and hair and teeth and eyes. Sara, laying on the library floor an hour from closing, staring at the ceiling with her hair splayed out about her head, all around the dark carpeting, softly reciting Milton for his approval. Sara, on a cream-colored bed in naught but skin, face flushed and hair splayed over the sheets as she reached up to pull him closer, into another kiss….

He gasped, trying to focus on anything in the present, to forget, to remind himself it had all been years ago, and she clearly hated him now. He couldn't understand why she hated him so much, as he thought they'd parted on good terms, but she seemed terribly bitter he was a policeman and not a priest.

James wondered why she hadn't finished her doctorate when it had been her most passionate wish in the world, especially if she'd truly come so close. A bookshop, though, especially the one he'd walked through to reach the stairs to her flat…. It suited her.

His phone rang, and he half-wished it was her, telling him she wasn't angry, and she wanted to talk, and explain why she'd been ice with him that afternoon. He reached up to let his fingers graze the corner of the old shoebox before he glanced at his phone.

Lizzie.

"Hello?" he said, answering.

"Hey, we've got another body found. They would have given it to someone else, but there's a highly probable connection."

James winced, checking his watch. It was late, but he took down the address and said he'd be there shortly.

It was a short drive, not ten minutes, and he looked around the street just outside Merton College, frowning at the body.

"Margaret Tresdale," Lizzie said when James arrived, Robbie already there, probably coming in with Laura when they got the call. "Age twenty. A classmate found her, coming in from a meeting with a tutor. Said she would have been coming back from volunteering her shift at a women's clinic. It's walking distance, she probably did it all the time."

James frowned. Apart from the hair color, which looked similar in this light, he couldn't see any connection between Margaret Tresdale and Katie Davies. The bodies both had ripped clothing and he thought he could see signs of strangulation. But what was the highly probably connection?

"Both strangulation," Laura said, standing and stepping over the body to chat with them. "Exterior signs of sexual trauma, but not as obvious. Torn panties, but no blood or other obvious fluids. It will take a postmortem to know much more on that. I've ordered a tox screen on the girl, and I'll get one for Margaret as well. But as this was on her route, and as she couldn't have been dead more than an hour, I expect there won't be anything on her, where there might have been with the girl."

James took the evidence bag from Lizzie, shining his torch on it, the page of a book, chapter six, about a young-looking whore named Monique. Notes all along the side, including a few deriding the annotations at the bottom.

Lolita. One of Sara's student copies, it would seem.

"The rest of the book's in her bag," Lizzie said. "The killer must have torn a page, crumpled it. Classmate confirms it's one of their required texts for a Professor Charles Dowler, the editor of the edition. Said Maggie was a favorite of Dowler, but hated the book. They all hated it, apparently."

"You won't find barbiturates in Maggie," James said softly. "Lolita was a twelve-year-old child the narrator tried to drug so he could touch her. Katie Davies was twelve. Monique, the prostitute on these pages, is an eighteen-year-old whore who willingly tried to be younger for the narrator, for money. Maggie is twenty, you said. I would propose the allusion is Maggie came willingly, and he had and killed her without the use of drugs. The women's clinic?"

"Twenty-four hour," Lizzie said. "A lot of female students volunteer there."

"Get a statement, and see if her classmate can give you Maggie's schedule, talk to the porter, get a list of friends and classmates. Robbie and I are going to check in on this clinic."

It was a nice night and a relatively short walk, and both men agreed it would be useful to take the route Maggie Tresdale probably took. James supposed he would send Robbie to ask Sara about Maggie, in the morning. She'd made it quite clear she didn't want to see James again, and as strange and painful as it felt, he would try to respect her wishes.

The clinic was a surprisingly upscale building, and he supposed they'd got money from a wealthy donor or two. It didn't seem to be a medical clinic, strictly, and he stopped in his tracks before he'd even gone halfway from the front door to the front desk.

"Gentlemen," Sara said, looking at them, wide-eyed, from the other side of the desk. "Well, I'm not quite sure how you knew to find me here, but…was there something else?"

"In a manner of speaking," Robbie said, and James forced his feet forward, his eyes glued to her, his heart pounding in his throat, in his ears, in his fingertips. "We're actually here on another case, possibly connected. Seeing you again is just a pleasant surprise, Ms. Moore."

"I see," she said, her marbled green eyes meeting his gaze for a small moment. They were darker than he'd remembered, without the laughter and the confidence, the sparkle of someone self-assured and alive. Instead, they were covered with a veil, closed away, and he could almost feel their pain in the base of his throat.

What had happened to her?

"Margaret Tresdale," James said softly, and she frowned, meeting his gaze again.

"What about her?"

"She's been found murdered," Robbie said, "just outside her college. Dead no more than an hour."

Sara stared at them, between them, and rubbed the back of her neck for a moment before she said, to a girl coming out of an office, "Missy, take the desk, will you? I need to talk with these gentlemen privately. Tea, either of you?"

They both nodded, and she led them to a conference room, popping out for a moment and returning with a tea tray.

"We keep the kettle hot," she said, pouring and preparing with her exquisite memory, not having to ask even Robbie how he took his tea. "One never knows, here, who we'll get and when. The other day, we had a whole battered family, sans father, six people. Ate us clean out of biscuits, had to send Maggie to my flat for more. It was the only thing I could think of. Erm, right, tea. Biscuits? No, right. Sorry, this isn't Maggie's usual shift, but as a shift manager, I knew her pretty well. She would take different shifts different terms, as her schedule demanded. It's not uncommon with students."

"She'd been here tonight?" Robbie asked.

"Yes," Sara said, rubbing her eyes. "Erm, I didn't see her. I just got in half an hour ago. Jenna, the last manager, let her leave early. Probably has an early tutorial. It's not uncommon. We're having a mercifully slow night. Missy will have her clock-out time in the log book. I can have her copy the page for you before you go, if you'd like."

They said they would, and James asked what other information they had on Maggie Tresdale at the clinic, and what sort of work did she do.

Sara looked at him, silent, pursed lips, for a very long moment, before she looked down at her hands.

"She's a liaison," Sara said. "The clinic works with battered women and their children, assaulted women and children, molested and raped women and children. Many of the volunteers work here because they've been a victim, or someone in their family has, and so we require all volunteers to undergo counseling on site with our pro bono psychologists. We have the option of group therapy and individual. Individual records aren't in the files, but psychologist notes are in files of girls who undergo group therapy. We can check Maggie's file. I think she was in group therapy. If she was, it'll have the list of girls in her group, and any notes her psychologist made."

"Your file is…?" Robbie asked, half-smiling.

James was grateful Robbie asked, because he'd been curious, and he didn't know how she'd react, had he asked.

Sara rubbed her eyes again and said, "Very bare-bones. I do individual sessions. Students are usually the ones who opt for group therapy. And just because we all must do therapy to work here, Inspector, does not mean we all have something to say to a therapist."

He might have believed her, had James not seen the change in her eyes from when they were younger. Whatever it was, she had something to say to a therapist, and he found he was annoyed she didn't have psychologist notes in her file, as she didn't seem likely to tell him what happened to her.

"What sort of person was Maggie?" James asked.

"Oh, I didn't know her as well as Jenna did," Sara said, rubbing her temples. "I can give you Jenna's card as well. Erm, not a local girl. From somewhere around Brighton, I think. Studying literature. Lots of literature students here. Don't ask me to speculate why – I've tried, but I can't begin to guess." James recognized a lie from her, but he said nothing. "Vibrant sort of girl. Young for her age. Very good with children. That woman who came in with five children, they were all quite, quite young. And when I was getting the mother situated, she brought in the extra biscuits and played with them, managed them so easily. Athletic. She…. She'd been involved with something at a very high level of competition. I don't remember if it was swimming or athletics, but I think she was even at the Commonwealth Games. Erm…she'd done something else as a child, wanted to go to the Olympics in it, but I can't remember…. Cycling, maybe, or equestrian. She got weeded out young, though, and changed. I think she's a swimmer. Lord, Missy might remember. They're both at Merton College. Might even be in the same group therapy."

Sara couldn't think of anything else she knew about Maggie Tresdale, but assured Robbie she'd call him if she thought of more. Copies were made of the log book back two weeks, as well as everything in Maggie's file. They thanked her, and James lingered again, trying to decide whether to mention the book page to her, but she stared back at him and he thought of the shoebox, of the way she'd felt beneath him on that cream-colored bed as she pulled him closer for a kiss. His insides seemed to squirm and seize, and yet the look she gave him now, in the clinic lobby, was cold and empty.

Not Sara. Not his Sara.

He said goodnight and she said nothing back as he walked away.

/-/

Robbie sat down with Jenna, the shift manager, the following morning over a cup of tea at her farmhouse. She was a stern woman in her forties, childless and widowed, but without the look of someone with regrets. She told him how Maggie had been on her latest shift, how long she'd known Maggie, who some of her friends were at the clinic, and all about her studies.

"Her tutor was someone called…. Professor Charles Dowler?" Robbie said, glancing back over his notes.

Jenna hummed, frowning at her own cup of tea.

"Yes, at Merton. Anthony Graves, the Warden of Merton, he has been instrumental in keeping Dowler at the college."

Robbie frowned at the bitterness in her voice and asked what she meant.

Jenna explained that Dowler was a well-known womanizer, and many of the girls at the clinic were his purported victims.

"Trouble is," she said, "we've never had a solid enough case to prove anything, and he's so brilliant, Graves thinks the sun shines out of his every orifice. We had Sara and Maggie handle him whenever we had complaints. Maggie was a favorite of his, and of Dowler's, and Graves is so pomp. One of those equestrian types, wants so bad to be posh. Never misses a chance to exchange correspondence with Sara. And she was a former of his. No, wait, of Dowler's."

He sat up straighter, stunned.

"Dowler?" he said. "She studied under Dowler?"

"Well, she did her undergraduate work at Cambridge," Jenna said with a smirk. "Triple starred first with bells on." Robbie nodded. That must have been how she and James knew each other, as they looked about the same age. "I don't remember what college. Anyway, she did her graduate work at Oxford. Did her Master of Studies in English, and nearly finished her Doctorate under Dowler, when she left off. She doesn't talk about it, but I'm sure she'd have discussed it with her psychologist. She does the individual sessions. Got the bookshop eleven years gone, and has been serving all sorts – with special student arrangements – ever since. Has worked at the clinic since then, too."

Robbie took notes, looking them over, thanking Jenna for all her helpfulness, leaving his card. He had words to have with the Chief Super.

/-/

Sara turned over on her bed and looked at her bookshelf just above it, a line of blue books – the complete works of Milton, and staring at the empty space in the middle before rolling back over to her nightstand and letting her fingers trace on the spine of her favorite volume – De doctrina christiana, On Christian Doctrine. Over £300 for just this volume, a graduation present. The inscription on the inside cover said there was one hundred for each first, and that her father had allowed him to get her this one, as her father had bought the rest of the set for the graduation present.

She had the inscription memorized, ever curve and cross of every letter, but especially the words "All my love, always," at the bottom, and James's sloping signature. Those words had been a torture and a comfort for sixteen years, and now she didn't know what they meant. When she could imagine him as a priest somewhere, leading lost souls to his god, the words had meaning. She didn't always like the meaning, but it existed as a fixed reality. Now she knew he'd been a policeman for most of that time, she didn't know what they were, what they'd meant then or what they could possibly mean now.

Sara had thrown many things in anger, but never a book. Pillows, glasses, a skillet, even one of James's shoes, once. He'd laughed at her, and then she'd laughed, and to this day she couldn't remember what she'd been so angry about. But never a book.

Now, staring at the volume, she had an almost overwhelming urge to hurl the book across her small bedroom, to make it feel a fraction of the pain she'd suffered, to have the signature be less than perfect when she opened it up again, to have the letters on the inscription be knocked about so they formed different words, words she could understand.

But she knew those words would not change, and the signature was fixed, and potentially damaging her favorite book would not change the way she felt, or the impossible words he'd written sixteen years gone.

"All my love, always."

/-/

As soon as Robbie explained where they were with the cases to CS Moody, as soon as he said their bookshop owner worked with the second dead girl, and the author of this book was both women's tutor, Moody instructed him to have Lizzie bring in Ms. Sara Moore for questioning. She was put in the interview room, and Robbie was just about to go in when James stopped him in the corridor.

"You're going to interrogate Sara?" he said, his voice tight, almost urgent. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You knew her at school," Robbie said. "It's a conflict of interest. It's probably nothing, James, but if it's not, Moody wants your nose clean. You can watch. You know her better than the rest of us. Watch on the other side of the glass, see what you make of her answers. Besides, she doesn't seem to like you right now, does she?" James flinched. "She may say more to someone else."

James said nothing, but he went to the observation room and Robbie sighed, wondering what had gone on between those two causing so much negative emotion, seemingly on both parts. He sat down across from Sara Moore, turning on the tape and opening his notes.

"Interview conducted at 12:32 by DI Robbie Lewis," he said. "Please state your name for the record."

She stared at the tape for a long moment before he nodded her on. She swallowed visibly before she said, "Lady Adabelle Camellia Sarika Mellor-Potts, Countess Matsbury."

Robbie blinked, puzzled. Everybody involved in the case, including James, had called her Sara, Sara Moore. It said Sara Moore on her business cards, and mentioned nothing about her being a countess. She folded her hands and looked up at him.

"Right," he said softly. "Let's…start at the beginning, then, shall we?"

"The beginning?" she whispered. "How far back is the beginning, Inspector? When you showed up in my bookshop the other day? When I first met Margaret Tresdale?"

"Further back," Robbie said. "I want to start with Professor Charles Dowler."

She whimpered, rubbing her eyes, looking so in pain. It only lasted a matter of moments before she took a deep breath, sat up straighter, and said, "Right, we have to go further back than that, then," she sighed. "If it's going to make any sense, how any of it happened, we have to go back before I knew him." Robbie nodded, scratching his jaw.

"My father introduced me to literature young," she said. "He was obsessed, particularly, with Milton, and he passed this on to me. Doctrinally. The living on our land, Inspector, had been Anglican from time immemorial. Well, since the beginning of the Anglican church, anyway. Probably Roman Catholic, prior. He…made it Methodist, following his interpretation of Milton. Anyway, it was my lifelong dream to earn my doctorate in English, dedicating my life to the study of Milton, maybe become a professor."

"Why didn't you?" he asked. "And what do I call you, Countess?"

She cleared her throat and said, "Just Sara. Everybody calls me Sara, always have. A few stuffy people, and my mother, called me Adabelle, and a few very dear people, like…like my father, called me Ada." She glanced at the recording and frowned. "But everybody else calls me Sara. And Moore is my mother's maiden name, before you ask. Always liked it better than Mellor-Potts. Anyway, I was well on my way. I'd earned a place at Cambridge, studied English Literature."

"Triple starred first with bells on," Robbie said, recalling Jenna's words, and Sara hummed.

"I took a philosophy course – philosophy of Protestantism or something like that. It was cross-listed with Theology and I met this boy…my very first term." She closed her eyes. "He was brilliant. Dreamed of being a priest the way I dreamed of being an academic."

Robbie shifted, realizing she was talking of James. Apparently, he was going to get the story after all.

"Three years at Cambridge, and we were inseparable," she said, eyes still closed, her voice tightening. "I don't quite know how it happened, but I fell in love with him. I thought…. Well, at the time, I might have said we fell in love with each other. But you see, god played a very cruel trick on me. I would have followed James anywhere, given up anything and everything to follow him anywhere. But he went to seminary – the one place I could never follow. And he could have easily followed me, joined me in my life, my postgraduate studies at Oxford, but he never would have given up his dream. So, I told myself that was just the way it had to be, and I tried not to be bitter about it. Did my Master of Studies in English from 1550 to 1700, went straight into the Doctorate under the very smarmy but admittedly brilliant Professor Dowler.

"I lived in this student house in Oxford. I hate Belleperenne Manor, always have, and I could afford to pay my share in a student house, easily. Shared it with a girl who never spoke to anyone and these two very kind blokes studying Classics. They did some of my Greek translation editing for me. I never mastered Greek.

"I was already what one might call depressed, but I told myself James was happier at seminary than I could ever make him, that we were both following our dreams, and everything was fine. And then my parents died in a boating accident and I became a bloody countess and I took to drink. Just a little at first, but…. Well, I've never been very good at doing things by halves.

"Most nights, I don't remember. I would go out, get wasted, black out, often pass out somewhere along the way back to the house. The blokes, Christopher and Simon, they usually found me on their way in for the night, and they'd carry me back in, unlock my room, tuck me in, leave the key on the bedside, and not mention it. Our little routine, for almost three years. And then I was…I was almost two weeks away from finishing. Everything was done, it just had to be approved by my tutor and then defended."

She began to tremble, looking at everything in the room but Robbie for about three seconds at a time, unable to settle on anything. Her voice grew tighter and tighter as she spoke.

"I don't remember anything," she finally choked out. "I just…woke up one morning, and I was in my bed, but I wasn't tucked in. And the key wasn't on the table, but in my hand. And I asked Christopher at breakfast why the change, and he said he didn't know what I was talking about, that when they came home the night before, I'd already been in bed. I realized someone else must have found me, someone who knew where I lived, maybe even knew which room was mine, and I thought the best. I really tried.

"But in my class, I…. Dowler was being his usually inappropriate, flirtatious self. And I ignored it, until he…started dropping these heavy hints, things about what I could do for him to ensure a position at the university when I finished. It wasn't hard to get the picture, sexual favors, but then he started hinting at…at marriage. Lots of people fancy themselves earls, as though it's something glamorous." Her face twitched. "I knew he must have…. The hints were too strong, too much, more than anything he'd tried on before and I was a mess. I thought about reporting him, but who would listen? Dowler's always had Professor Graves in his pocket, and I had no proof. I couldn't just give him what he wanted, and I couldn't guarantee what would happen with my degree if I tried to go forward without giving in, so I…I left. One week out from my defense, I left the university, bought the bookshop from a man who was retiring, moved into the flat, started working at the clinic, and my sessions have been focused on quitting drinking. It's hard, but I've gone three months now without a drop."

Robbie nodded, feeling a heaviness in his chest. She talked through meeting Maggie a year ago, and her movements since he and James came to the shop. She accounted for her whereabouts – without extremely solid alibis for either murder – and she said softly, "Apologise to James for me, will you?"

"What for?" he asked.

Sara rubbed her arms and frowned at the recorder, but didn't ask him to turn it off.

"I was beastly to him. I'm still angry, but…. I know it's not rational. You see, even though I know it's ridiculous, I keep telling myself if he'd just called me when he left seminary, if we could have at least stayed friends, maybe I never would have started drinking, or maybe he would have found an answer and kept me in my degree. They were my choices, I know. I ruined my own life, but it doesn't change the feeling it's his fault, that he should have…should have just…done something." She hesitated. "Why did he leave seminary?"

Robbie inhaled, thinking of the case with the young man who killed himself to expose the pious, anti-homosexual group that had ruined his life. James's friend. And now another friend – maybe more than a friend – had spiraled and blamed him. Would James blame himself? Was he still watching?

"You'll have to ask him that yourself," he said softly. "Interview terminated at 1:26."

/-/

James clenched his hands into fists, standing in the observation room, wondering why his pulse wouldn't slow. Sara even said, she knew what happened to her wasn't his fault, and yet here he stood, thinking of all the things he could have done. If he'd called her when he left the seminary…. But then, he couldn't have possibly done right away, and by the time he read of her parents dying, it hadn't occurred to him. He was already on his training course, too busy, and assumed she would be busy as well.

If he'd called, if he'd found a way to go to the funeral or drop by the manor or something….

He closed his eyes and could so easily picture her beneath him on the cream-colored sheets, reaching up to pull him closer. If she'd told him sixteen years ago, if she'd told him how badly she wanted him to go with her to Oxford, maybe he would have considered it longer, put off going to seminary….

But those were mistakes he had to make, and it might have hurt her more if she'd said and he left anyway. As much as James knew there was no point running back over the past, looking for an answer that would have spared her, he couldn't seem to stop.

Robbie came in, patted his shoulder.

"You okay?" he asked.

But James couldn't answer, because he didn't know.

/-/

Robbie and James went into the corridor and nearly plowed into Lizzie, who was hurrying their way with a note.

"Sorry," James said, helping her catch her balance. "What's that?"

"Another death," she said darkly. "Definitely connected somehow. Merton College."

"Another student?" Robbie asked.

"Professor," she read off the paper. "Professor Charles Dowler."

Robbie raised his eyebrows at James who inhaled a deep, shaking breath.

"Have the Custody Sergeant delay her," he said to Lizzie. "Keep her here until we know what we're dealing with."

/-/

James took in the office of a man whose name had taken on a mythic, villainous quality over the past few days, mildly surprised to see it as an office typical of an Oxford professor, stuffed with books and trinkets, with a wholly disorganized desk and ridiculously expensive furniture. He walked through from the front to an attached sitting room, where Charles Dowler was sprawled on the floor. Some disorganization of books, perhaps someone searching and perhaps a struggle. Lizzie was talking with the man who found him – the college warden, Professor Anthony Graves.

Graves was a typical elderly, talkative man, probably in his seventies, maybe late sixties. Active, in good shape, but wearing the tweeds and all. While Charles Dowler might have been somewhere between fifty and fifty-five, he was young-looking, young-dressing, even young-grooming – his hair styled not dissimilarly to James's.

"The others were staged, but this certainly seems to be a crime of passion," Laura said from the floor beside the corpse. "Bludgeoned to death, possibly after a few drinks. He put up a fight, but not a very good one. Caught off guard, and possibly intoxicated. I'll know more later."

"Could it have been a woman?" James asked softly, thinking of Sara's story.

"If he was drunk and she was strong, yes," Laura said. "And before you ask, No more than half an hour ago. Body's very fresh."

"Can't have been Sara, then," Robbie said. "She was talking to me at the time, she's been at the station."

"Have Lizzie call back to the station," James said softly. "Sara Moore is free to go."

He looked about the room, checking the bookshelves, frowning at a copy of Milton's De doctrina christiana, the same blue cover of the one James had bought for Sara all those years ago. He still remembered every word he wrote, a brief explanation of why he bought her something so expensive, and a sign off, the only thing he left her when he went to seminary.

All my love, always.

Even as he thought he'd never touch her again, as he thought he was putting aside all future worldly pleasures, he'd meant each word and considered staying.

He turned away from the book, focusing on the desk. Essays, paperwork, a letter from someone in the physics department about college business. A few books. Countless pointless trinkets, a copy of his edition of Lolita.

He opened a drawer and found basic office supplies, a set of hideously expensive pen, a few signed copies of his book. The next drawer down had his diary, a very thick appointment book, lecture notes for the following week he seemed to be reviewing, and a small, old black journal. He pulled it out, flipping through the pages.

Initials, dates going back almost twenty years, places in and around the university, numbers up to about fifty and fractioned out to the tenths place. With a shaking hand, he went back about eleven years, and it did not take him long to find an entry:

La. A. C. S. M. P.; 5.15.2006; Ship St.; 48.7

James shivered and found an entry that could have been Margaret Tresdale, and another corresponding to Katie Davies. The place for Katie's entry was just "van."

He showed the book to Robbie, whose eyes widened at how full the thing was, and how obscure.

"Good God," Robbie said. "There must be hundreds of entries here. Sara wasn't kidding."

"Sara?" Professor Graves said, brightening. "Forgive me, do you speak of Countess Matsbury?"

The old man had the doting posture of an old uncle, or even a grandfather, and James almost laughed. He couldn't imagine how much she hated being called Countess Matsbury, after how much she detested being called Adabelle Mellor-Potts every time a teacher called roll.

"Yes," Robbie said, showing the professor the book. The man's eyes darkened knowingly. "She and some others at the women's clinic suggested you might be sheltering the man from justice and scandal. Good of the college?"

"In a way," Professor Graves said, glancing at the other room, where Dowler was on the floor. "He…. Oh, forgive me, I'm not wearing gloves."

"We'll take your prints for elimination anyway," Robbie said, nodding him on.

"Well, truth is, Charles was brilliant. Bit of an arse at times, you know, but it can't be helped in this business. And most of the students he became…involved with were largely willing. Especially when he started out, Inspector, Charles cut a dashing figure, and could be quite charming. I spoke with Lady Adabelle, but she had no proof, you know. Never did."

"His fascination with Nabokov?" James said, raising his eyebrows. "That didn't trouble you?"

"Why is that?" Graves asked, puzzled. "Even the most focused of academics have their side-projects, and really, it isn't as though it were some…modern author. Nabokov is highly celebrated. It's part of why I liked Charles. Nabokov comes into my purview, you see."

"Did you assign his edition?" Robbie asked, eyebrows up. "Only Sara Moore mentioned it wasn't a very well-regarded edition."

Graves grinned and said, "Beautiful and brilliant, Countess Matsbury. She's quite right, of course. Oh, it's passable, but not really up to his usual standard. But we didn't take it too hard. Every academic has a flop. That it was outside his usual field helps excuse it more readily than someone having a flop in their specialty. You know, he was a Milton expert, like Lady Adabelle. I so looked forward to her dissertation, to see what beautiful work she could have produced. A truly exceptional mind."

James frowned, thinking of all the afternoons they'd spent in her room, or in his, or on the lawn, or by the river, or even at the manor. He would meet with her on Saturdays after his rowing practice and they would rest by the river, her scrutinizing his essays for philosophical flaws, him checking her translations of Milton's Latin for errors. When they finished, or grew bored or distracted they would stop, and she would sit on his lap, or between his legs, and he would surrender to the comforting warmth of her body resting against his, the way her hair smelled of old books and roses, the impossible burning that followed everywhere her lips trailed on his face and neck.

To say she was an exceptional mind did not begin to cover her best attributes, and James hated that everywhere he turned in this case, that shoebox seemed to be, taunting him in ways it had not for some years now.

"Thank you, Professor Graves," Robbie said. "Let us know if you think of anything else, will you? Where can we reach you if you're not in college?"

"Oh, my wife and I have a farm," he said brightly, giving the address. "She runs stables out of it. Never content to be an academic's wife, always had to push herself to new heights. She was a champion rider, in her day."

James had stopped listening, looking instead at the little black book in his hands. The proof Sara had lacked, the clinic had lacked, for years, in his hands. If there were some way….

He slipped it in an evidence bag and wondered how he would face her, when this was all over, to try to apologise. It was the least he could do.

/-/

Sara curled up on her bed, hugging her knees to her chest and closing her eyes. They hadn't described the scene where Dowler had been found, but she knew his office, and she knew him, and the words Blunt Force Trauma were enough to give her an idea. Inspector Lewis told her they suspected he may have killed the other two girls and had been then killed by a potential victim. As she'd considered it a few times after her incident, it wouldn't surprise her if this scenario turned out true.

She stretched out again, stretching her arms and touching the book on her bedside table, opening the front cover just enough to see the inscription. She'd given him a complete collection of John Donne, written her inscription on the bookmark, in case he didn't want to bring a loving inscription with him to seminary. He probably hadn't even kept it, or had lost it somewhere along the years.

The way he'd kissed her when she gave him that book, she half-thought he would stay with her. He had stayed the night, one last night before he left, and every time he inhaled she hoped the exhale would bring good news – that he loved her too much to leave. She hoped Inspector Lewis had passed along her apology, as Sara was almost certain James would never speak to her again.

/-/

James walked with Robbie along the streets, between the crime scenes, trying to find some way to fit the routes of the killer with the diary of Charles Dowler, but it was going poorly. And even more stressful was Robbie kept bringing up Sara.

"Are you going to accept her apology?" Robbie asked.

"It would have been easier if she'd said it to my face," James said stiffly, not sure what he would have said, had she done such a thing. "Hard to talk through things when one person isn't even willing to speak with you."

"Did you love her?"

James paused, looking up at the moon. He thought of the shoebox, of her fingers in his hair, of how much his father adored her, of how much he respected her father. Nell had said at the time, it should have been simple. Somehow, James had a way of complicating things everybody else thought were simple.

"I still do," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Told her I always would. Doubt she believes me, even if she did then."

Robbie looked frustrated as he said, "Well, why didn't you give up the church then? You gave it up anyway. Seems to me, she was worth fighting for if you loved her that much."

"Seems to everybody," James said, rubbing his jaw. "Most difficult choice I ever had to make. I regretted not going to her father's funeral. He was a great man, if a bit…eccentric."

Robbie's phone went off and James paused, and somehow from the increasingly alarmed look on Robbie's face, he knew something was terribly wrong.

"At the shop?" Robbie asked.

James took off running, without a second thought, as fast as his legs could carry him.

She couldn't be dead. Not now, not after…. She couldn't.

/-/

Sara coughed, trying to cover her mouth and nose with her sleeve as she searched for the source of the flames. She knew she was supposed to leave the building with a fire, especially one this size, but she couldn't stand the thought of leaving without trying to put it out herself. How many books would she lose if she didn't make her best effort?

She turned a corner in the stacks and found a flare of heat like a wall, taking a stumbling step backward as she tried to see a good way to combat it. The flames were higher on the shelf than she was tall, seeming to arc between the shelves like serpent's tongues darting out in a kind of kiss. Before she decided what to do, as the smoke stung her eyes, she heard breaking glass, and the door to the shop opened.

"Ada!" James was crying out over the roaring of the flames. "Ada!"

She opened her mouth to answer but only coughing came out as she tried to find something to at least smother some of the flames with. If she could save just one book….

He must have followed the sound of her coughing, because she could see him approaching as she looked for a blanket or tarp she could use, finding nothing.

"What are you doing?" he cried.

"The books," she said, "I have to save the books."

"Ada, leave it! The firemen are on their way!"

"James, I need to save the books!"

She was crying, and he must understand how important this was, but instead of helping her put out the flames, he wrapped his arms around her, steady and strong as she remembered, and tried to pull her out of the shop.

"No," she whimpered. "No, the books."

"I'm not letting you die," he yelled, and in a fit of frustration, he lifted her off her feet, despite her struggles, and carried her awkwardly out of the shop, holding her back when he got her out to the street as she tried to make a dash for the shop again.

"No," he said sternly, holding her tight until she stopped fighting, resting her head on his chest and crying. Inspector Lewis was approaching on foot. "It's alright. It's going to be alright."

"The books," she whimpered, trembling.

"Can be replaced," he whispered back. "You can't."

Perhaps it was the smoke inhalation, but Sara thought, for a moment, he'd spoken to her the way he had when they were young, when she never doubted he loved her. The world seemed to move in slow motion as the firemen came, put out the flames, told Inspector Lewis it was certainly arson and they managed to save about three-quarters of the books. The upstairs was not impacted.

As all this blended together in a blur of time and space, James continued to hold her tightly to his chest, smoothing her hair. After a long, long time, she pressed her hands against his chest and began to cry.

/-/

James took Sara to a hotel using Lizzie's car, which Lizzie said not to worry about, as Laura was coming to pick up Robbie and could drop her off on the way back.

"I don't want to go to a hotel," Sara said softly, staring blankly out the windscreen.

"You don't want to go to Belleperenne, either," he said, rubbing at a warm spot on his cheek. He knew it was in his head, but it wouldn't seem to go cool again. "It's just for a night, until the scene can be processed. I'll be right next door, the hotel promised. Did you check the bag?"

The firemen were kind enough to send someone up to the flat and get a bag of things she requested, as she hadn't thought of grabbing when she was too busy trying to save her books.

"Yeah, it's all there," she said. The sigh escaping her lips spoke of regret she couldn't pack seventy-five percent of a bookshop in an overnight bag.

"Looks heavy," he said when they pulled into the car park and she heaved it onto her lap.

"It's nothing," she said a bit too quickly, and he tried to sneak a look in the bag when they got out of the car. A book, he would guess from size and shape of the lump in the end of the holdall.

They checked in and got their keys, and walked upstairs to their rooms. James lingered and ran through a list of things he thought would be excusable to ask about, until she became a bit testy and opened her bag to show him what she had. He felt his heart jump into his throat when he saw what was so heavy – De doctrina christiana.

He told himself it meant nothing, that it was simply a book she had studied so extensively for so many years and of course she would want it with her in a time of flux in her life. But the words of his inscription screamed out in his mind as though he'd just written them, and he pulled a small black book out of his pocket.

"What's that?" she asked, leaning closer to him. Even through the lingering scent of smoke, he could smell the roses in her hair.

"For you," he said softly. "We've made copies for evidence, done all the fingerprinting. It might prove…useful."

She opened the book, frowning as she tried to work through the code. Once she realized what she was holding her chapped lips formed an 'o' and she looked up at him. A question was in them, but he didn't know what it was, and she didn't speak it. Instead, she told him goodnight without a word of thanks, and he retreated to his own room, feeling a familiar ache in his chest and wishing he could make it go away, because she couldn't possibly feel what he was feeling.

/-/

Sara closed the door to her car. She hated hotel beds – still had a crick in her neck – but James was right, as usual. The last thing she wanted was to spend the night at the manor after so many years away from it. She wished she'd gone back to get her wellies as she stepped into the mud of the drive, but she ignored it. The shoes were old, serviceable shoes, easily replaced. This was more important.

Leave it to James, after how beastly she'd been, to put in her hands the one thing that could salvage her lifelong dream. It would always be tainted, now, but after all the years her father told her it was a good dream, after their last conversation being his saying how proud he was that she was in the program…

"Countess Matsbury?"

Sara gritted her teeth, forcing a smile at Professor Graves. She hated how he insisted on fawning over her title, but if it helped her position, at the moment, she would take it.

"Professor," she said brightly, as though nothing in the world was wrong. She followed him toward the stables. "I, erm, have recently come into possession of something, and I wondered whether we might discuss…reopening my Doctorate, just 'til I can finish the dissertation. It would only be a couple of weeks, long enough for someone to give it a final review and my defending it."

He smiled at her with child-like eagerness and said, "Well, my dear, let's discuss your case."

/-/

Robbie was just finishing reading the report on the fire – arson, but the CCTV from the bank was inconclusive about the person who started it, just the time – when Lizzie knocked on the office door.

"Where's DI Hathaway?" she asked, frowning at the empty desk.

"Sleeping in at the hotel, I imagine," Robbie said, motioning her in. "He wore himself out dragging the countess from her books. She was ready to die trying to save those books, it was really something."

"Yeah," Lizzie said slowly, narrowing her eyes. "We'll want to call him. Positive on the barbiturates in Katie Davies, negative on drugs in Maggie Tresdale. Very high blood alcohol levels for Charles Dowler, but Dowler wasn't our killer, or our rapist."

Robbie dropped the report and sat up straighter.

"What d'you mean?" he demanded. "He had to be, he had a catalogue of the incidents in his desk drawer!"

"Yeah," she said, frowning at the papers she was holding, "but the handwriting analysts are going over the papers, and they said conclusively the handwriting in the black book was not written by Dowler. They did find a match, though, in other papers on his desk."

"Who?" Robbie demanded, already on his feet.

Because whoever else could have written it had to be the killer. It was the only thing that made sense.

/-/

As Graves examined the book, Sara held her breath. If she had Graves's approval, even if she never made the book public (because who could Dowler hurt, now?) but agreed to destroy it as soon as she had her degree in hand, she knew it would happen and the nightmare would mostly be over. That was all she needed.

"Well, it's possible we could come to an arrangement," Graves said solemnly, "but this is not going to be your bargaining chip, Lady Adabelle."

She felt her chest tighten and she frowned, looking down at the book.

"Why not?"

"There is nothing in this book that can be linked definitively to him."

"But it was in his desk."

"And it could just as easily be collection of coded observations as what you have suggested. But we could certainly reach an arrangement, privately, and no one would question your return if I sponsored it. I would certainly be pleased to spend time with you, polishing your dissertation." She took a small step back, realizing he was moving closer, but the stable wall was behind her, and there was no easy way to get away without appearing rude. "And it wouldn't be so bad, really. Just a favor here and there."

"Favor?" she said, feeling her throat tighten. She had a feeling it wasn't the pleasure of inviting someone of her standing to college events, but more the pleasure of inviting her to his bed. She'd seen too many men look at her like that, heard too many stories at the clinic.

He wanted to give her a degree for the price of sex, perhaps forever if he decided on blackmail. Just like Dowler.

"No, thank you," she said tightly, discouraged at the failure after she had so much hope. She wished James hadn't given her the book, wished she'd just believed it impossible. "I'm afraid the price is too steep."

"We could negotiate," he said, coming closer, backing her into the stable. "Although I must warn you, I'm a very stern negotiator. And who knows, you may find the terms more pleasant than you anticipate."

Sara found it difficult to breathe, pushing him back as he approached her, but Graves was stronger than he looked, clearly still in good shape. He put a hand to her throat until she panicked and stopped struggling, and when he let go she collapsed to the ground. He was saying something – unimportant words, and she tried to scramble to her feet, but he kicked her to the ground again, hard, still talking as he unbuckled his trousers.

She reached for the closest thing she could find, something to thrust or swing at him. She heard someone crying out from the drive, a familiar voice but one she couldn't place. Anyway, it was too late.

She saw the surprise on Graves's face as blood trickled from his mouth, the pitchfork she jammed into him going straight through to the other side. He was beginning to collapse when she fell back onto the straw and lost consciousness.

/-/

Robbie and Lizzie called James, told him to find Professor Graves for questioning, and they got a quick warrant from an old friend, took SOCO down to Graves's office to process it, looking for signs of why he would have such a book, and how he'd put it in Dowler's office without them noticing.

"His fingerprints were all over it," she said.

"Yeah," Robbie said bitterly, recalling how the man had accidentally grabbed the book at the crime scene, and then claimed he hadn't meant to. Surely, he must have realized they would have tied a hand-written book to someone other than Dowler. They both had compact writing, but the experts said it wasn't even close as far as letter shaping and formation. "Graves is a good deal older than Dowler. Let's see if there's another volume. And look for a shiny, fresh copy of Lolita, sleeping pills, anything we might match to the other scenes. A diary would be nice, too. When SOCO's done here, let's take them to his house. I've got the address, a farm."

"A horse stables," Lizzie said, checking her notes. "His wife runs a stables. Only I did a check, sir. His wife's been dead for over ten years. He hires in help to run the stables from scholarship students with equestrian experience, like Maggie Tresdale."

"Lemme guess," Robbie said darkly, "all women, and one of his customers was Katie Davies. But this isn't about horses. This all seems to come back to our Countess Matsbury. So, what is his interest in her?"

"She was in the book, sir," Lizzie reminded him.

Robbie felt sick to his stomach as he recalled seeing the more recent pages. James hadn't showed him that bit, but if she was there…. She had no idea her rapist wasn't dead.

/-/

Sara stared blankly ahead of herself, in the interview room again, this time with James. The recording was running, a uniformed copper was by the door, and she supposed someone was watching from the interview window again, but James hadn't even given her time to properly clean her hands, just rinsed a bit of blood off them with a water bottle once her hands had been swabbed and took her straight to the interview room. All she wanted was to go home. What was there left?

Her dream was over. James clearly thought she was an awful person.

She just felt sick and tired.

"Let me tell you how I think it happened," James said coldly. "Maybe Dowler does the first murder, the little girl. We consult you, you find he'd been there, in your shop, that he'd used your shop to maybe draw attention away from himself, or onto you. But you take advantage of the situation."

"No," she said, confused. She's not sure what he's suggesting, but she knew she didn't take advantage of anything.

"Maybe you and Maggie had a row. Maybe you were jealous of her standing with Merton, even after she'd cried rape. Maybe she was changing her tune, and you couldn't stand the thought. Jenna told us you would linger around Merton, introducing yourself to Dowler's students, giving them the information of the clinic to recruit them. How many were really raped, Lady Adabelle?"

"Stop it," she said, feeling a wave of nausea as he called her that. "James, stop it!"

"You couldn't have killed Dowler, you were in here at the time, being questioned, putting on a right show," he said almost spitting in his anger, and she realized he must have been standing on the other side of the window, he must have heard everything she'd said. Another wave of nausea, but he continued to speak even as she felt the room begin to melt and sway and muddle. "You must have had an accomplice, another of his students, or former students you'd coaxed to the clinic, no doubt."

"No," she whispered, rubbing at her eyes.

This wasn't James. This wasn't her James. He'd never raised his voice, not around her and certainly not at her. He'd always been kind and gentle and loving, even when they were fighting about something. Or had she ever known him at all?

"And once you were let out, you set fire to your shop to throw us further off the scent, perhaps rid yourself of some evidence."

At this, she looked at him in astonishment and said through tears, "You're mad! Those books are everything, James! They're all I have left. You know I would never…. I never could…."

She rubbed at her eyes again, but he ignored her words again, ploughing forward.

"But Graves knew too much, didn't he? Knew you from your postgraduate days, knew about your complaints, had followed your progress at the clinic, maybe even had a chat with Maggie about whatever caused you to kill her. So, he had to go, didn't he? You used what I gave you as a pretext to talk to him, maybe offered to sell it back to him to keep safe at a price of getting his silence on your behavior, or even your degree after all these years, and then when he thinks you're bargaining…."

He mimed what she'd done, the ramming through with the pitchfork and Sara gripped at the cold, sterile table, afraid she might keel over again. It felt as though he hadn't just mimed, but that James had really run her through with something. All the things he said, they sounded so horrifically plausible. Especially toward the end, because she had gone to make a deal, an offer of silence about the book if she could just have her doctorate that she'd worked so hard for, so long.

"You really believe I would do that?" she asked softly, looking at his pale eyes. "James, he was hurting me, I didn't know what else to do. I wasn't even fully sure what I'd done until he was dead."

His nostrils flared and she wished he would speak, say something of what was on his mind.

Except when he finally did speak, the words that came out were, "Tell me, was it really a boating accident?"

Sara stood, horrified, and stumbled back toward the wall, ignoring the uniformed copper who moved toward her.

"Oh, go get a bloody glass of water," she snapped at the man, and he hesitated before glancing at James, who paused the interview while the man was gone. But she wasn't done with James just because he put it on pause. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" she hissed. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"If you did it," he said softly, "it's my job to break you."

"No," she said, laughing bitterly. "No, I don't believe you. Because you saw, you know it was self-defense. Would you like to see the bruise again, from where he kicked me?" James flinched, but said nothing. "No, you're looking for an excuse for me to hate you, maybe an excuse for why we can never make up after all this is over, so you don't have to talk to me when I'm cleared and the cases are shut. Do you really hate me so much?"

"I don't hate you," he said softly, rubbing his eyes. "I could never hate you, Sara."

"Then why?"

"It's my job."

"Not this," she snapped, and he looked at her again, frowning. "Not now. Not what we're standing here doing. Why did you leave me? You told me you loved me, but you left, and when you could come back, you didn't. Were you lying?"

"No," he said firmly, no hesitation. God, she wanted to believe him.

"So, why?"

His mouth worked for a moment before he said softly, "We were from different worlds, Sara. We wanted different things. I thought it was for the best."

"How pious of you," she spat, crossing her arms over her chest and hugging herself tightly. "Always doing what you think is best. All that pipeline from god rubbish. You do remember you're not a priest, don't you? Or did my father's treatises on Protestantism sink in somehow?"

The door had a person in it, and they both expected it to be the uniformed copper with her water, but instead Inspector Lewis entered, putting a whole file down on the table between them.

"Self-defense," he said firmly, clearly angry, and she supposed it had to be with James. "Warden Graves has been systematically raping and abusing students for the past thirty-five years. We found his earlier black book. Only once his wife died eleven years ago, two things happened. He started abusing the students of the stables at his house, and he fancied himself a new wife – Charles Dowler's favorite student, Lady Adabelle."

Sara swallowed, not understanding.

"Your statement said he told you the book wasn't proof," he said, looking at her, and she nodded. "That's because it wasn't in Dowler's handwriting. Our experts discovered, and he knew they would. He had an inkling it might get passed to you or the clinic, and your desperation for completing your degree would bring you to his door, especially after he set fire to your bookshop, although it didn't destroy as much as he'd hoped. So, he offered other favors to earn your degree, knowing the book would never hold up as leverage, but expecting it would give him the opportunity to sexually use you, maybe eventually blackmail you into marriage. Dowler wasn't teasing you because of what he'd done, he was teasing you because of what he knew Graves had done to you. He probably thought he was being kind, offering you an out if you wound up pregnant by Graves, that he would marry you and claim the child as his own. He had a reputation for relationships with students.

"But they were consensual, harmless. The ones who were raped never had evidence, never had a case, because they never remembered. That's because he didn't do it, but Graves took advantage of Dowler's nature to select his victims, drugged them with barbiturates used at the stables if he couldn't find them already drunk and vulnerable. Maggie figured it out, which was why she had to die. She worked at his stables for extra cash, and she'd seen him steal the drugs he'd used on Katie Davies. And he killed Katie because the dosing was wrong. She was unusually resistant to the drug, and between her struggling back and the extra dose, the injuries and drugs shut down her system. But he took the opportunity to draw you into the fray, to try his luck again at the marriage he so wanted, whether you wanted it or not."

Sara sank to the floor, pulling her knees to her chest as she listened. Inspector Lewis explained she would be charged with manslaughter, but any jury worth their salt would happily give her the plea of self-defense, with not a blot on her record. James was silent, as Sara was silent, and she realized this rewrote everything she'd thought of about her life for the past eleven years. No wonder Graves waved off the clinic's accusations against Dowler. How he must have laughed at her!

She rubbed at her cheeks, and when Inspector Lewis asked if she had a solicitor they should call she just nodded, unable to answer. She just stared up at James, expecting his lips to say the apology she saw in his eyes. But he was as silent as she, just staring back at her.

/-/

James couldn't stand going to the courtroom for the sentencing. He sat outside the courthouse with the shoebox on his knees. He had every belief she would get off. The jurors seemed sympathetic to the case, and Robbie had laid down quite a sob story. Her family solicitor was solid gold, and it seemed the prosecution wasn't really trying.

But he couldn't stop feeling anxious. It wasn't really about the case, but about the way he'd spoken to her, the fight they'd had, the things she'd suffered because he'd been too stupid to pick up a phone after he'd left seminary. Pride, plain and simple, not wanting to see her soar while he failed. His pride hadn't healed by the time her parents died, and while he'd been torn in two between knowing she was suffering and his own pride, he made the bad choice.

The doors opened, and people milled out in good spirits. She came out thanking Robbie, and when he caught Robbie's eye, he was relieved to see the other man gesture toward James. Sara turned, her eyes scanning James for a moment but he stood, staring back at her, feeling suddenly transported back to Cambridge. She'd just routed him in a debate in their philosophy course, although he'd officially won – biased professor and the easier argument – and instead of one or the other gloating, she suggested they read each other's essays for errors before submission. He'd no idea, then, that an academic arrangement would lead to long hours in her company, discussing philosophy and religion, celibacy and desire, until the first time she kissed him, he was so attracted and intrigued, it never occurred to him to pull away. From kisses to nights spent tangled in the sheets of whatever bed they settled in, James spent three years in freefall.

And those three years flashed before him as she slowly crossed the milling people who had exited the courthouse. She looked up at him and his throat tightened.

"Congratulations," he managed to choke out. "You got off, I see."

"Yes," she said, smiling tightly. "Lizzie gave me the listing you found. I've bought the shop. The one on the High Street. No attached flat, so I'll probably have to move in to the manor, but there are worse things, I suppose."

He nodded, and when she sat on the short wall, he sat beside her.

"What's the box?" she asked, glancing at the old shoebox. He ran his finger along the edge of the box and smiled.

"When we went to seminary," he said softly, "they told us to find a box – any size, any shape – and put in it all the things we thought would keep us from finishing, all the worldly things tying us to our sin, to our old selves. Or symbols, depending on the worldly things. Some people chose boxes that were also symbols of those things, but I just picked one the right size. When people finished, they were given the box, and usually they burned them, or gave things to charity, but the idea was they were meant to get rid of the things, which should no longer matter to them. If we left early – like I did…they just gave us back the box, our chains holding us to the world."

She frowned slightly as he slid the box onto her lap, but he nodded for her to open it, and she slowly lifted the lid, as though she expected the contents to jump at her.

Inside, on the top, was the inscription she wrote on a bookmark, the bookmark expressing her love that she'd stuck in the John Donne book she'd given him, on the page between "The Flea" and "The Good-Morrow," the sweet words saying how she loved him and wished only the best for him in everything in life. He knew the placement wasn't just random – she'd picked two poems to remind him forever of their sexual relationship, of the beautiful sensations of holding her, of being inside of her, of waking up with his arms around her, smelling the roses in her hair.

She smiled a little and said, "You kept it."

"Of course I did," he whispered as she moved it aside to see what else was in the box.

James closed his eyes, knowing what she would find. A few trinkets she'd given him. Ticket stubs from shows they'd seen, concerts they'd gone to, movies he'd taken her to, even receipts of gifts he'd given her and dinners they'd gone to. A few letters she'd written him while he was away doing missions work. And at the bottom….

She gasped, and he knew she'd found the drafts of proposals he'd written in a frenzy in the month before they graduated. He'd worked and he'd worked, trying to think of the right words, and then he'd given up. And then the next day, he'd start over again, still not sure he wasn't going to marry her until the day he left for the seminary. And beside the proposals….

He opened his eyes to see her looking at the little box with the ring, a perfect ring, simple and understated, but with an unusually cut diamond. She had jewels far more beautiful in her family collection, but she never wore jewelry, so James had known the moment he saw this ring, it was for her. Before he even had the thought to marry her, he'd seen it while he was trying to decide what to get her for a Christmas present, and he'd bought it, holding on to it, until he started writing proposals he never used.

"I was a coward," he said softly when she looked at him with beseeching, puzzled eyes. "I guess I still am." He rubbed his jaw. "I tried to put you in this box, the one thing holding me back from my supposed destiny. But I could never stop loving you, couldn't contain you in the box. I left the seminary, and for years it seemed my mistakes piled on me, and I was too proud to reach out, to find you, to give you that ring. To give you that box. It never occurred to me you weren't okay, that you weren't doing brilliantly with your degree and your Milton and your beauty and your charm. I assumed you'd married someone else, had children, moved on with your life and by reaching out to you, I'd just dig up a past only I was clinging to. So, I tried to move on, focused on my work."

He licked his lips and rubbed his eyes.

"I'm sorry I never called," he said. "It might not have made a difference, but…. It was too hard for me to accept that I didn't lose you, I gave you up."

She closed the box and he shook his head as she moved to slide it back onto his lap.

"No, no," he said. "No, you keep it. It was always yours, anyway."

"But these things matter to you," she said softly, and he saw her eyes were glistening with unshed tears.

"Yeah," he said, smiling. "So do you."

"What does the ring mean, now?" she asked, tracing her finger in a patter along the lid of the box.

James rubbed his neck and glanced over to Robbie and Laura, who were walking away on the other side of the street, headed for the car park. He sighed.

"I suppose it means…I'm sorry, I was stupid, and I still love you. And if we could…I'd like to get to know you again. Catch up on the years I've missed."

Sara looked down at the box and he held his breath, not fully sure what he was offering, but praying she would agree. Slowly she nodded, told him she'd like that, and he sighed, relieved.

"You know," he said as they stood, walking toward the car park together, "you could rent a room. You don't have to go back to the manor." She hummed, obviously considering the idea. "In fact, I've got a room. I'll give you a good going rate."

"What, like a guest room?" she teased.

"Of course," he said, feeling his neck go hot. It was too soon to even suggest they share a room, as much as the thought of sleeping beside her again made his chest expand and his pulse race.

"I dunno if that's a good idea, James."

"You don't want to go back to the manor tonight, do you?"

She sighed, rubbing her neck frowning at him, and he gave her his most winning smile. He could see her melting as he raised his eyebrows, and when she began to purse her lips, he pressed his advantage.

"One night," he said, raising a finger. "If you hate it, you never have to come back, but give it a shot, Sara."

"I'll pay rent," she said firmly.

"Of course."

"And my share of food expenses."

"Naturally."

She nodded stiffly, and then her shoulders relaxed and she said, "So, where do we go, then?"

He took her hand on a whim, kissed it, and gave her his address. For the first time since he saw her in the flat above Tome, James felt hopeful. Nothing specific, just a general, uplifting hope.

A/N: So, James and Sara are back in each other's lives, the darkest part of her history is put to rest, and the future is an open slate.

Review Prompt: Thoughts on the start?

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Cheers!

C