“He must have taken those as well. I think he’s preparing to kill again. At the end of the war, he was on burial detail. Did you know? He’d have seen enough of the discs then to copy them exactly. As for names, he could have collected them from any soldier he met. He didn’t want the names of the dead—ghosts don’t kill. And he wanted us to search half of England looking for those men. Dust thrown in our eyes. But I think I know where he is. And I’ll need your help getting to him.”

Norman nodded to the constable on guard, and the three of them left the shallow depression.

Back into the sunlight again, Rutledge told Norman what he suspected.

“I can bring enough men to cover the entrances. But who’s going in? We don’t know if he’s armed. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is.”

“I’ll go in. I think he wants to garrote me, not shoot me.”

“By the way, there’s a message for you from the Yard,” Norman said after a moment. “Mickelson is feeling better, and he’s pushing the doctor to release him. He wants to take the case back from you.”

“Wanting is not having,” Rutledge answered. “And with any luck at all, if I’m right, we’ll catch our elusive friend tonight.”

But in the back of his mind, he heard Hamish’s words. “What if he’s cleverer than you?”

Chapter 24

24

Rutledge escorted Mrs. Farrell-Smith back to Eastfield, and she sat beside him in the motorcar in pensive silence most of the way.

She had already agreed to take a room at The Fishermen’s Arms as a precaution, but now she said, “There must be something else I can do. After all, some of this is my fault.”

“Do you know where Daniel Pierce is?” he asked, not looking at her.

It was some time before she replied. “When he came to tell me that he was leaving Eastfield for good, that he was never coming back, I was so angry I picked up the first thing to hand and threw it at him. It was the paperweight from my desk, and it actually hit him in the face. I was appalled. I stood there unable to say anything. And he just turned and left my office.” She coughed, to ease the constriction in her throat. “I tried to tell myself it was the war, the danger he lived with every time he went into one of those abominable tunnels, or perhaps it was blowing up so many men. I don’t know. But he needn’t have lied to me.”

Rutledge was wary, now. Had Daniel Pierce told this woman about Peggy Winslow? Or had she guessed the truth?

“What lie did he tell you?” he asked when she didn’t go on.