He thanked her and left, walking through the churchyard as the sun’s heat dissipated. Looking up at the church tower, and the weather vane swinging slightly west in the light breeze, it occurred to him that the rectory housekeeper often knew more about events in a village than anyone else—sometimes including the rector himself.

Retracing his steps, he knocked again. When the housekeeper answered a second time, Rutledge said, “I wonder if you could help me, since Mr. Ottley isn’t here. Have you lived in Eastfield most of your life?”

“All my life,” she told him complacently, “save when Mr. Newcomb and I went to Cornwall on our wedding trip.”

She invited him inside, leading him to the parlor and offering him a chair with the simplicity of someone accustomed to receiving the rector’s visitors and making them comfortable until he returned. But when it came to sitting with him, she was clearly ill at ease, perching on the edge of her own chair.

“How well did you know the murder victims? I wonder if you could tell me what they were like as schoolboys. Were they often in trouble, or were they generally good youngsters?”

“Not troublesome, precisely,” she answered, considering the matter. “Lively, I’d say. Thoughtless, sometimes, as when they set fire to the old mill. The fire could have spread, you see, but it didn’t. Except for Mr. Anthony, his brother Daniel, and Theo Hartle, they were farmers’ sons, and eager to be outside, not shut up learning history and Latin and the like. Not that some of them weren’t good students. The elder Miss Tate told me once that Jimmy Roper could have made something of himself if he hadn’t been the only son and expected to inherit the farm. Theo was very good at numbers, and if he hadn’t had such a gift for working with wood, I think Mr. Kenton would have made him bookkeeper.”

Here finally was the information that Mrs. Farrell-Smith could—should—have found for him in the school records.

“I’ve heard,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “that there was some problem with young Daniel Pierce.”

“He got his nose bloodied a time or two,” she said, nodding. “But he was a sweet boy, nevertheless. He just never wanted to be a brewer. That was Mr. Anthony’s life, he was always underfoot there. The foreman’s wife told me once that Mr. Anthony wanted to go hop picking, to learn more about them.” She smiled at the memory. “His mother put a stop to that. ‘When you’re older,’ she told him.”

“Were the brothers on good terms with each other?”