She smiled for the first time. “He has no imagination. You do.”

Would it have made any difference if Mrs. Farrell-Smith had trusted him sooner?

Impossible to say. Still, Marshall might still be alive. He’d learned, as a policeman, that people held their secrets close, and the common good often failed to have any bearing on that need to protect them.

“Must this come out, if Summers is arrested?” she asked after a moment.

“I’m afraid so.” And then he said, “Mrs. Farrell-Smith, where is Daniel?”

The shadow of an old grief settled over her face. “I wish I knew. He’s loyal to my husband, you see. They were friends at school. He thinks my husband killed himself because he was jealous of me.”

“Did he have cause to be?”

She shook her head impatiently. “You don’t understand. Michael didn’t kill himself because Daniel loved me. He killed himself because Daniel didn’t love him.”

“And you never told the police this?”

“I didn’t mind suspicion falling on me. It was Daniel I didn’t want to drag into the inquiry. Besides, it would have crushed any hopes I harbored in that direction.”

“Did Anthony know you loved his brother?”

“Not in the beginning. When I did tell him, he warned me that Daniel wasn’t the sort to settle down, and he wished me luck. I think Daniel still has the war on his mind, if you want the truth. But I’ve waited six years. I can wait six more if I must. And I’ll be here, in Eastfield, if he ever decides to come home again.”

She returned the garrote to the envelope and locked it away again. “Don’t let me down,” she said as she came around the desk to see him out. “Find Summers. I don’t want another scandal keeping Daniel away. I don’t want another cloud over our names.”

At the door, Rutledge said, “If your aunts knew what was going on, why in God’s name didn’t they protect young Summers? Or punish his tormentors? Why did they allow the bullying to continue for so long?”

She frowned. “They were old-fashioned. They believed that a boy should be able to take care of himself. Sticks and stones and all that. They felt that it was important for him to develop a backbone, stand up to his tormentors. But when one is so young, one doesn’t have the skills to face down a bully and teach him a lesson, does one?” She considered Rutledge for a moment, then added, “In my opinion there was something else as well. Their father— my great-uncle, the Frenchman who founded the school—would have considered Tommy Summers slovenly and unfit. He’d have taken him in hand and made a man of him. My aunts weren’t capable of that, and they must have felt that Tommy was a rebuke.”

And so five men had died.