Rutledge thought, Kenton has heard rumors about Daniel Pierce, and the father’s smugness has irritated him.

Pierce was outraged. “Race horses? Good God, where did you hear that nonsense? I grant you they were at school together—Anthony was there as well. As for any business venture, they were hardly of an age before the war to be thinking about such matters. In fact, as Mrs. Farrell-Smith can attest, she and her husband were only just married, and Daniel was considering the law as a profession.”

“My mistake,” Kenton answered, smiling. “Shall we take our tea in the lounge?”

Pierce signaled to the woman who had served them. “It’s late, and I really must look in at the brewery.” He rose and said good night.

Kenton watched him go. “He’s in trade as well as I am. But you’d think the brewery set him up higher than the rest of us. I never could abide self-importance.”

“You rode him hard,” Rutledge said. “His son is one of the victims.”

“He was prepared to believe that Carl had been to the brewery the night Anthony was murdered,” Kenton retorted. “Anthony moved in such exalted circles he probably wouldn’t have recognized Carl on the street. Ironic, isn’t it? Pierce wanted the Yard here in Eastfield. And I trusted the Yard, to my sorrow.”

Rutledge left shortly thereafter. It was nearly time to start his patrol of the streets, and he went first to his motorcar to fetch his torch.

The shops had closed hours before, and the sun had vanished behind a bank of clouds. Shadows had deepened along the High Street, and beneath trees there were already pools of blackness. A gray cat trotting past a stationer’s shop disappeared around the corner, leaving him alone as he left the hotel behind and turned toward the brewery. He turned again to walk down the side street by the Misses Tate School, and doubled back toward the Hastings Road before moving on in the direction of the rectory. It was a random pattern, his ears attuned to the silence around him, his faculties alert.

Hamish said, “It’s an uneasy quiet.”

It was. A warm evening usually drew couples out to walk, holding hands in the darkness, or men talking together and laughing as they headed to the pub or sat on the bench outside the baker’s, having a last smoke. Instead, doors were shut, closing the sound of voices and laughter in, rather than letting it spill out into the night. Occasionally he’d seen a curtain twitch as someone looked out, then quickly pulled it across the window again.