She went with him to the door and watched as he reversed down the track.

Regina Summers was serene in her certainty that her brother bore no ill will for whatever had gone wrong in his childhood. And perhaps he didn’t. But men’s lives were in the balance.

Rutledge stopped the motorcar, got out, and walked back to the cottage door.

“Your father,” he said. “Do you think he saw how wretched his son was, and decided to take him away from Eastfield?”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “That never occurred to me. For Tommy’s sake? Oh, no, Tommy never told him about the things that went on at school. He never told the Misses Tate, either. He thought they would see. And they never did.”

“Why not? Surely, someone recognized the situation? After he nearly fell off the cliff at East Hill.”

“My father was so busy mourning my mother he saw very little. And as for the school staff, no one liked Tommy. He didn’t fit in. The Misses Tate saw him as a troublemaker.”

“And you did nothing?”

She smiled sadly. “I was too young to understand. I just knew that people liked me and they didn’t like my brother. I was glad they liked me, and I didn’t want to lose that.”

“Did Daniel Pierce take your brother’s part when he was being bullied?”

“Sometimes he did. I think it was to be contrary, not because he liked Tommy. My brother saw Mr. Daniel after the war. He told me in his last letter. He expected Mr. Daniel to remember him, and his feelings were hurt when Mr. Daniel didn’t. But he said Mr. Daniel had changed, that he was thin and not himself. He thought he’d been ill.”

“Do you know when this was? Or where?”

“May or June of 1919. In London, I should think.”

He thanked her and walked back to the motorcar.

Hamish said, “This is a verra’ fine cottage, with yon flowers, and a’ just as she likes it. She only needs her brother to walk her doon the aisle, no’ here.”

But if that brother was the killer, what, after all these years had set him on this road?

His route south and east took him within striking distance of Chaswell, and Rutledge decided he could afford half an hour out of his way to call on Rosemary Hume. Although he’d received Reginald’s letter, his duty to Maxwell was personal.

As Reginald had noted, some of the sharp edges of the anger that had made her bitter had been blunted, and when Rutledge was shown into her sitting room, he could just see the telltale redness around her eyes from tears shed in the night.

Still, she greeted him with cool civility. He hadn’t been forgiven.