Roper was quiet for some time, and Rutledge had almost despaired of an answer when the man said, “He was a beautiful baby. My wife said so, and even I could see that he was. A good one too, never any trouble. Well, that changed when he started walking. Nothing was safe, he’d clamber on anything, and never cry when he brought it all down with him. More surprised than afraid, as if he’d expected it to hold.” A flicker of a smile touched his mouth, pride in his son. “He was a good student. He wanted to go on to university, but of course there was no money for that. He said that farming was changing, and we had to change with it or be left behind. And then there was the war. When he marched away, it was the blackest day of my life. But he came back, like he said he would. Though it changed him, I could see that. I thought he might marry and settle down, but he said he needed to forget first. He didn’t say what he needed to forget, but I expect it was the horrors.”

“Did the Misses Tate feel that he should go to university?”

“They spoke of him as promising. He never had to study long hours, he just listened to his lessons and remembered what he’d heard. He took after my dear wife, there. She was a great reader, and read to him of an evening in winter. I liked listening to her voice. She could make you believe the story was real.”

“Did he get on well with his fellow students?” Rutledge probed patiently.

“Oh, yes. He rose to corporal in the war, did you know? But he didn’t like soldiering very much.”

Rutledge had no choice but to bring up names. “Was he friends with Theo Hartle? Or William Jeffers? Or young Tuttle? Did he get on well with Virgil Winslow or Tommy Summers? Or the Pierce brothers?”

Roper turned to look at him. “Imagine you knowing all their names! I’d not say friends, so much as they grew up together. Still there’s a bond in that. He didn’t care much for Winslow, he said he traded too much on his illness. Some do, you know. Others never let it change them.”

And Summers’s name was conspicuous by its absence in his recollections.

Rutledge said, “What about the Summers boy?”