In August 1920, a dying man comes to Rutledge and confesses to killing his cousin during the war. Weeks later the confessor is found shot and floating in the Thames, but the identity he gave proves false and the supposed earlier victim may never have existed. Rutledge follows the deception into Essex marsh country, where wartime secrets and family hostility make even basic facts difficult to establish.
The mystery treats confession not as closure but as another form of evidence requiring proof. Men could vanish during wartime chaos, inherit names or allow families to assume convenient deaths. Rutledge must discover why someone wanted Scotland Yard to believe a particular story before the false confession creates another victim.
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