“I carry out clerical work for lawyers,” she said, and looked from one man to the other. “Forgive me. There seems to be something I don’t understand here. Are you also a policeman, Mister Becker?”

“A servant of the Crown,” Sebastian said, “with an interest in this case. I’d intended to seek you out in London, but instead I find you here. You came because you see a parallel with your own history. Am I right?”

“It’s a shocking crime, Mister Becker,” she protested.

“I know,” he said. “And I know your own experience had a happier outcome. But there may be something we can learn from whatever you may remember.”

Evangeline looked unsettled and uncertain. Then she looked back toward the library, as if half inclined to retreat to it.

“A happier outcome,” she said, and there was no color at all in her tone.

Stephen Reed spoke then.

“Please, Evangeline,” he said. “Trust us.”

“Walk me to my mother’s house,” she said.

THEY FOLLOWED the shore road away from the harbor, overlooking the dunes and the empty beach beyond them. In the dunes stood posts where cork life preservers hung on weathered boards. The cork in the rings was old and splitting, but appeared to have been freshly painted for the season.

Stephen Reed continued to carry Evangeline’s weekend bag. Sebastian held back and let him do the talking.

“Evangeline,” Stephen Reed began, “forgive me. But for a moment I have to be a professional man and not your childhood friend. This may cause you some personal distress. But strictly in that professional capacity, I’ve had sight of the case notes from the time that you and Grace Eccles went missing. They tell a different story from the one in the newspapers. I wish I could spare your blushes, but there it is.”

“I’m not blushing,” she said, though she was. And so, for that matter, was he.

“This is very awkward,” he said. “If you want me to stop, I will.”

“No,” Evangeline said, betraying that she was aware of Sebastian without quite looking at him. He felt that his presence was that of part intruder, part chaperone. “Forget my embarrassment,” she said. “This is important.”

“We need to know what you remember of that night.”

The road made a steep and sandy turn and they began to climb away from the beach, toward a part of town where modest houses competed for hillside space.

Evangeline said, “That’s very easy to answer. I remember nothing.”

Stephen Reed said, “The doctor’s notes are in the file. Please be assured, I didn’t look at the medical details. But when he asked the two of you to explain what happened, he wrote that he saw a look pass between you. Evangeline, if there’s something you know that you have never spoken of, I urge you to tell it to us now.”

“With all honesty,” she said, “I have no memory of anything that took place. Or even of the exchange of looks that he describes. I can’t imagine what it may have meant. If it happened at all. Stephen, I’m concealing nothing from you. I’ve written to Grace several times over the years. She wrote back to me only once, to tell me that she’d taken over her father’s business and to ask if I’d send her notices for London horse traders’ sales. I imagine that in the usual run of things, we’d be strangers by now. I’ve done my best to keep our association alive, even though we’ve only the past in common.”

“Then why persist?”

“Because I think Grace remembers more than I do. I’m sure of it. I’ve been hoping that one day I can persuade her to share what she knows.”

“Mister Becker’s been out to speak to her,” Stephen Reed said.

“I had to dodge a rock for my trouble,” Sebastian said.

Though she’d been serious to the point of a frown until this point, this news transformed the young woman’s expression. Her face lit up, and she let out a laugh that she quickly tried to cover with an apology.

“Grace is a tricky one,” Evangeline said. “She always has been.”

“Perhaps you can talk to her,” Stephen Reed said.

“I will.” She stopped and took the weekend bag from his hand.

“I’ll walk on from here,” she said. “I’d like some time to think.”

AS THE two men walked away, Sebastian said, “The medical details?”

“Both girls were violated.”

Sebastian looked back, but Evangeline was already gone from sight. “Does she know that?”

“I imagine it won’t have escaped her, Mister Becker, memory or no memory. How does such an act fit in with your picture of Sir Owain’s madness?”

On the walk up from the beach, they’d passed a board fence that had been set up to hold back the gorse and sand from the road. Its timbers had all but disappeared behind a pasted mass of notices and handbills for pier-end shows, political meetings, temperance rallies, Fry’s chocolate, traveling circuses, and the Judgment of the Lord. They were passing it again now. The freshest, cleanest addition among the posted bills was the notice of the forthcoming inquest, placed within the last hour or two. The paste was still wet.

Sebastian said, “I don’t have an answer for you. But let me take the machine.”

“What machine?”

“The camera, if it won’t be missed for a few hours. I think I may know where to track down someone with the expertise we need.”

THE NAMES OF THE HOUSES ALWAYS CHARMED HER. THEY hadn’t when she’d lived here, but they charmed her whenever she returned. Prospect Place. St Cuthbert’s. Puffin. St Elmo’s. Evangeline was a city dweller now, a grown woman, and these names were her childhood. She wished that she could revisit them with simple pleasure. But between her childhood and the present stood a short passageway of lost time, where there was only uncertainty and pain. Something within her, some natural custodian whose name she did not know, had elected to close the door on that darkness.

As a result, she remembered nothing of her lowest hour. It was an act of consideration that she had not consciously authorized and did not appreciate. In speaking of the doctor, Stephen Reed had avoided mention of any results of the doctor’s examination. Perhaps the doctor had been discreet in his notes. For that, at least, she could be grateful.

As she climbed the last few yards, the sun broke out for a moment. She remembered the summers here. They were endless. And summer society was always strictly divided according to class, position, and propriety. A widow and a widow’s child had never quite fitted in. Which had brought freedom, of a kind. Her friendship with Grace Eccles would have been impossible otherwise.

Here was her mother’s house. Right up at the back of town with steps up to the front door, a view mostly of rooftops, and a side garden that was just about big enough to put a shed on. The brickwork was neat and the paintwork was green. Lydia paid a man to keep it spruced, every other year. The front door was a heavy showpiece with two panels of etched glass like a funeral parlor or a public house, and was rarely used. Evangeline let herself through the side gate and entered through the kitchen door, which, as ever, was unlocked.

Lydia Bancroft’s supper place was laid on the table, ready for her return. Supper for one. The house was silent, and Evangeline felt like an intruder.

But when she took her weekend bag up to her old room, she was surprised to find the bed already made up, and with fresh-smelling linen. She’d given her mother no warning of this visit, so Evangeline could only conclude that this was how she always kept it.

She laid out her nightdress on the bed, but otherwise she didn’t unpack. She went downstairs and out to the garden shed, which was no more secure than the house; its door didn’t even have a lock, but a small toggle of wood that turned on the frame to hold it.