“They got on well enough together. They were just different. Mr. Daniel was always adventuresome, and Mr. Anthony more bookish. In 1910 when there was all this talk about going out to Africa to grow coffee, I told Mr. Newcomb it was a shame Mr. Daniel wasn’t old enough to give it a try, but he said if the boy didn’t care for the brewery, then he wouldn’t be one for growing the coffee beans.”

Rutledge brought her back to the subject at hand. “Who bloodied Mr. Daniel’s nose, if it wasn’t his brother?”

“It was the other boys, if you ask me. They’d band together sometimes and tease Mr. Anthony or Mr. Daniel about their clothes or their accent or their manners. Mr. Anthony would ignore them, but Mr. Daniel was not one to turn the other cheek. I remember Rector had a word with him about that.”

“Was there much teasing or taunting, do you think? If they turned on the Pierce brothers, who did the other boys harass? People tell me boys will be boys, but sometimes it’s cruelty, well beyond the bounds of teasing.”

“Yes, sometimes it did get out of hand. I remember that poor Summers lad. He was overweight to begin with, and afraid of his shadow. Not good at sports, his face all blotched, clothes never together properly. Mr. Newcomb worked on the wormwood at the school one September, and he told me the boy was the butt of all manner of jokes and pranks and never stood up for himself. Mr. Newcomb wanted to say something to the elder Miss Tate, but it wasn’t his place. Mr. Newcomb did speak to Constable Walker, when Mr. Daniel got into trouble about fighting, defending him, like, but nothing came of it.”

Rutledge had heard some part of this story before. From Mrs. Winslow? Yes, as she talked about her brother Theo tormenting her about her freckles. He asked, “What became of the Summers boy? Does he still live in Eastfield?”

“Oh, heavens no. His father was a clerk at Kenton Chairs, and he was made a better offer by a firm elsewhere. Lincolnshire? Staffordshire? I can’t remember just where, but he packed up and left. There was just the two of them, a boy and a girl. Their mother died when they was very young. She’s buried in the churchyard here.”

Walker—speaking about the near-drowning of a boy—had said the family moved away.

“Do you remember the child’s first name?”

“I believe it was Tommy. Tommy Summers. I haven’t thought about him in years. I hope things worked out better for him, wherever he went.”

Yet sometimes a child was marked, and other children sensed it, like wolves turning on the weakest member of the pack. It was a poor analogy, perhaps, but it served.

“I wonder if Inspector Mickelson came here to ask Mr. Ottley about the Summers boy?”