The rain fell harder outside, as though answering with cruel applause.
I lay on the narrow hotel bed for a long time, unable to sleep, listening to the rain hammer the window. The maid's description from Brussels sat on the desk beside the single red-orange hair strand. I had read it so many times the words were starting to blur together. Tall. Broad shoulders. Dark charcoal coat with crimson lining. Burning red hair shot through with orange. A face that made people relax the moment they saw it.
I kept turning the details over in my mind, looking for something solid I could hold onto. Something that would prove this man was real and not just a story pieced together from frightened servants and washed-away evidence.
Morning came grey and heavy. I dressed quickly and went back to the Hawthorne house for the fourth time that week. The garden path was still perfectly clean. The rain had done its work again, leaving the gravel smooth and unmarked. I walked the route the stranger was supposed to have taken, step by step, searching for anything the first investigation might have missed. A broken twig. A scuff mark. A single thread from a coat. Anything.
There was nothing.
The elderly gardener was trimming roses under a black umbrella. He saw me coming and lowered his shears slowly.
"You keep coming back," he said. His voice was quiet, almost wary. "Still looking for the man with the red hair?"
I nodded. "Tell me again what you saw that night. Every detail, no matter how small."
The old man hesitated, rain dripping from the brim of his cap. "He didn't hurry. That's what stuck with me. Most men in a hurry move sharp. He moved smooth. Like the rain itself was waiting for him. When he smiled at Mr. Hawthorne through the window, the master… changed. His shoulders dropped. His face went soft. I've never seen that before. Not with Mr. Hawthorne."
He looked away, uncomfortable. "The young man touched the master's shoulder once. Lightly. Then he left through the garden door. Five minutes later… the shot."
I stood there letting the rain soak through my coat. The gardener's words left more questions than answers. Why had Hawthorne — a man known for distrusting everyone — invited a complete stranger inside so easily? What exactly had been said in those ten minutes? Why had no one else in the house heard raised voices or a struggle?
I walked the garden again. Nothing. No footprints. No forgotten cigarette. Only the steady rain, falling as if on command.
Back at the hotel, fresh newspapers waited for me. The headlines had already begun to shrink:
"HAWTHORNE MURDER: PROSECUTOR LANG STILL MAIN SUSPECT"
Victor Langford's article had been cut to almost nothing. Eleanor Voss's piece was reduced to a few short paragraphs that said almost nothing at all. The story was being quietly pushed aside, like something inconvenient.
I sat at the desk and read the shortened reports three times. The silence around the case was starting to feel deliberate. No new leads. No new witnesses. Even the servants I had spoken to earlier now gave shorter answers, as if their memories were fading.
Or being helped to fade.
Inspector Davies was waiting for me at the station when I stopped by that afternoon. His face was harder than before.
"You've been spending a lot of time at that house, Crowe," he said, not bothering with pleasantries. "Asking the same questions over and over. Almost like you're looking for someone who looks… familiar."
The words landed heavily. I didn't answer.
He leaned forward. "Some of the lads are starting to talk. Saying it's strange how you arrived right after the murder. How you seem to know things before we do. How this phantom you keep describing sounds a little too convenient."
I left the station without another word. The rain met me outside like an old companion. In every puddle I passed, my own reflection stared back at me — older, tired, dark-haired. The same face I had seen in mirrors for years. Nothing more.
That evening a telegram arrived from Brussels:
"No new incidents. Press pressure increasing. Eleanor not herself. Be careful. — Victor"
I sat at the desk, the red-orange hair strand still on the table beside the telegram. No new killings. No new evidence. Only questions that grew heavier with every passing day.
I finally allowed myself to look in the mirror.
The face staring back was the same one I had always known. Older. Worn. Nothing luminous. Nothing perfect.
And for the first time, I wondered if the man with the burning red-orange hair was real at all.
Or if I was simply chasing something that existed only in frightened descriptions and washed-away rain.
The rain outside fell harder, as though the sky itself were laughing at the thought.