“Aunt Felicity wrote that Daniel had already made a friend at the new school and had been invited to stay with him one weekend. The friend’s father had served in India and had books on Thuggee, the bandits who preyed on caravans. Quite the sort of thing a boy would read, if he had the chance. Daniel told my aunt that he had tried to make a garrote like the one described in the book, only he didn’t have a man’s head scarf or a handful of rupees to tie at each end. He only had some rope he’d found in a shed at the brewery and two sticks he’d been whittling.”

Rutledge tested the rope between his hands, snapping it taut, but the threads of hemp were worn and gave under the pressure. “It wouldn’t have worked, of course,” he said.

“Ah, but the other boys weren’t to know that, were they? No one locked doors—and Daniel’s version of Thuggee would have been appropriately bloodcurdling.”

“Who was he trying to protect? Which boy?” he asked

“Daniel refused to say. Of course my aunts weren’t blind. According to Aunt Grace, it had to have been the Summers boy. Daniel defended him sometimes. Still, Aunt Felicity believed Daniel was showing off, just to be bloody-minded. Her word.”

And in return, Thomas had discovered garrote, learned what it was, and then used one years later to kill his protector’s brother. It was a measure of the feelings that drove him that Summers owed nothing to Daniel Pierce, not even a modicum of gratitude, and had used his name at The White Swans apparently without a qualm.

“Gentle God,” Rutledge said quietly.

“Indeed,” Mrs. Farrell-Smith agreed.

Hamish said, “In France Indian soldiers served.”

Although the British had crushed Thuggee, these men would have known about it—some said it still existed in dark corners of the country—and very likely could have shown Summers what a proper garrote was, if he hadn’t found sufficient information on his own.

“If you had learned of this report when first you came to Eastfield, you would have suspected Daniel. It was damning,” Mrs. Farrell-Smith was saying. “I think his father must also have feared this would come to light—he must have been worried sick when Anthony was killed, for fear that in revenge I’d betray Daniel. My aunts would eventually have told him about the garrote. Still, he needed to know that one son hadn’t killed the other. And so he had wanted Scotland Yard, less prejudiced than Inspector Norman, to investigate. Daniel was his favorite, and now he has only one son.”

“But you weren’t pleased that the Yard was brought in. Why did you think I’d uncover this? Why were you afraid of me and not of Inspector Norman?” He set the garrote back where he’d found it.