Before he could respond or stop her, she had risen and was walking swiftly toward the hotel doors, head down so that no one could see her face. He started to follow, and realized at once that it was the wrong thing to do. A public hotel was not the place for a scene.

The waiter came to the table to ask if there was anything else that Rutledge wanted.

Watching Meredith pass by the window on her way to her motorcar, Rutledge answered without looking up.

“A whisky,” he said. “If you have it.”

Hamish said, “It doesna’ matter if she’s a widow or no’. You couldna’ tell her the truth.”

And those words were to follow him home, echoing in his head.

He realized that it didn’t matter how he’d come to feel about Meredith Channing. Or how she felt about her own circumstances. In the end, there was nothing for either one of them.

The next morning, he stared at the paperwork on his desk awaiting his attention and decided he couldn’t face it. Instead he drew out of his pocket the information he had collected about the flint knife and considered it.

Charles Henry. That was the name of the man who had claimed his grandfather had found the knife in his back garden in East Anglia, miles away. If it was true, what had decided Charles Henry to sell it to a shop in Hastings? Why not offer it to a museum, or if it was money he was after, there must be a dozen other places that would be interested in the knife. In London, for one. Why a small shop on a back street in Hastings? Unless Charles Henry lived nearby.

Cummins had been right, it was hard to put the case out of his mind, and the more Rutledge seemed to learn, the more the puzzle pulled at him. And how to go about finding this man? After so much time had passed, he could have died, gone to war, or immigrated to Australia.

The odd thing was, Charles Henry sounded as if someone had given his Christian names, not his surname. Charles Henry Blake, Charles Henry Browning, Charles Henry Tennyson. Or perhaps it was, simply, Charles Henry.

And what—if anything at all—did Charles Henry’s grandfather have to do with Harvey Wheeler, the man who was found dead at Stonehenge?

Probably nothing at all.

Rutledge drew pen and paper toward him and wrote a note to Chief Inspector Cummins, giving him the details that the proprietor of the military shop had provided.

He added,

This will provide enough information to lead you to no possible conclusions, but should keep your mind busy for a few days, guessing at answers.

He signed it, put it in an envelope, stamped it, and set it aside for mail collection.