He packed his belongings quickly, left the hotel, and drove to London in a cloud of anger and bitter frustration. Hamish, reacting to the tension in his mind, reminded him that he had admitted that he had not come to any conclusions himself about the identity of the killer loose in Eastfield.

“And that,” Hamish added as the motorcar finally reached the city, “is the only way ye’ll find yoursel’ reinstated.”

But Rutledge didn’t respond. He found a place to leave his motorcar, and once inside the Yard, took the stairs two at a time, in search of Sergeant Gibson.

He found the sergeant in the canteen, having what passed for his dinner, a plateful of sandwiches and a cup of tea. Gibson looked up, saw Rutledge, and said, “Not here.”

Carrying the plate of sandwiches with him and balancing the cup of tea, Gibson followed Rutledge to his office, and as Rutledge took the chair behind his desk, Gibson carefully set down first the cup and then the plate on the corner of a box of files.

“Sir, Superintendent Bowles never liked the fact that he wasn’t here to choose who was to go to Eastfield. And you gave him the excuse he needed to change inspectors.”

“I didn’t give him any such thing,” Rutledge retorted. “Mrs. Farrell-Smith has her own agenda. I don’t know what she expects to gain from it, but at a guess, I don’t think it’s the murders that are worrying her. It’s an earlier run-in with the Yard.”

Gibson stared at him. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t. It was the only explanation I could come up with on the long drive back to London.”

“There was an inquiry into her husband’s death. He died of a fall while walking in Derbyshire. The police felt that the circumstances didn’t quite match the version of his fall that Mrs. Farrell-Smith had given them. She was present, you see, but had sat down on a rock to catch her breath, and her husband went on alone for some distance because he wanted to take a photograph from the overlook. He fell just after she caught him up. She said. She admitted to having witnessed it.”

“What was the outcome?”

“The inquest brought in death by misadventure, but Mrs. Farrell-Smith was still under a cloud as far as the police were concerned. They couldn’t find a motive for her to kill the man, and without that, they couldn’t manage to charge her. It would have been easy enough, according to the sergeant I spoke with, for her to tip him over the edge if he was busy with his camera. The footing is uncertain at best at that spot.”

Rutledge was reminded of the drop from East Hill in Hastings, the headland where Theo Hartle was killed.