“He gave it to her. A tortoiseshell. Named the damned thing Arrow, after our firm, and told her that as long as she possessed Arrow, she had his heart in her hands. He’d found it as a kitten in a corner of the brewery wall one winter’s night. He had a soft spot for cats. I never could understand that. With any luck, Arrow has used up her nine lives and has gone on to whatever heaven God reserves for animals.”

Rutledge thanked him and was walking to the door when Pierce added, still fuming over Rutledge’s allegations about Daniel, “I know you’re lying to me. I can prove it. Daniel can’t be in contact with dogs. They make his eyes red, and he wheezes. And so you may tell Inspector Norman that this trick won’t wash.”

Standing in the doorway, Rutledge said, “I’m sorry?”

“We had him to specialists in London. Daniel. Dogs and chocolates. We were warned that either of them could kill him by choking off his air.”

Closing the door, Rutledge stood there, his mind flying.

If that hadn’t been Daniel Pierce and his bride with her dog Muffin, who the hell had it been?

Chapter 20

20

Rutledge turned on his heel and knocked at the door behind him, opening it almost at once before Pierce could deny him entrance.

“Do you have a photograph of your son?” he asked the man behind the desk. “As recent as may be.”

Pierce said warily, “Not here. At my home. Why do you need a photograph? I have told you, Daniel isn’t a murderer.”

“To eliminate him finally from the queue of suspects.”

“I’ll bring it to the hotel later in the day, shall I?”

Rutledge had to be satisfied with that.

He asked the clerk, Starret, for the use of the brewery telephone. He thought at first that the man would refuse, for he looked toward Pierce’s office uncertainly.

It took some time to reach Gibson at the Yard, and his voice was testy.

“I’ve not found this Thomas Summers. The Army records show that he enlisted in Buildwas, Shropshire, he was wounded twice in France, he was demobilized in early 1919 because he was attached to the details reburying the dead. His current residence is still in Shropshire. They don’t have a more recent one.”

“I’ve been there,” Rutledge said, Hamish hammering in the back of his head to the point that he could hardly think. “He’s not there. What else?”

“I was at Somerset House, and after looking up Lieutenant Pierce’s marriage—there is no record of it—I took the liberty of looking up Corporal Summers’s records. I see his birth, right enough, there in Eastfield. He was married in Brighton three weeks ago to one Edna Stallings, spinster, from Bedford. He put down Shropshire again as his residence.”