As they turned into the hotel yard, she said, “Please. Find something for me to do. I’m responsible for the school. What if he decides to burn it down? Who knows what he could do, to try to cover his escape? I’ll be worried sick until it’s over.”

After she had been given her room key, Rutledge asked the desk clerk for paper and pen, and told Mrs. Farrell-Smith what he wanted. Then he went to find Constable Walker.

He would have given much to put a watch on the school long before this, as soon as Mrs. Farrell-Smith was safely out of it. He had learned a grudging respect for the man they were after, well aware that Summers was capable of circumventing any plans the police chose to make. But Walker agreed with Rutledge that there was a greater risk of losing their quarry altogether if he got the wind up and slipped away. Besides, in daylight, there was no way to guard the rear of the property without being seen—the pastures beyond were flat and empty of shelter.

“If he thinks you saw him, he’s already gone away,” Constable Walker pointed out. “What I’m counting on is that he wants his revenge so badly, he’ll take a chance that you didn’t notice him.”

Rutledge tried to picture the street in front of the school. “There’s the first floor in the greengrocer’s house.”

Walker was skeptical. “You can see the main door from those windows, but there’s not a good view of the alley.”

“Then we wait until dark, and box him in.”

With an eye to that plan, there was something else Rutledge needed to attend to. He spent quite some time closeted with an assistant at the ironmonger’s shop, and left there well satisfied with their knowledge of what he wanted.

Restless now, with nightfall still hours away, Rutledge patrolled the village and outlying farms on foot, staying well clear of the school but covering as much ground as he could. There was no indication that Summers had left the school building, but Rutledge spoke to every man whose name might appear on the killer’s list, telling them to be alert. He found all of them save Tuttle, whose mother informed him that her son was in Hastings until the morrow. “There’s a girl,” she’d said. “He can’t stay away from her.”

All the same, as a precaution, Rutledge ordered Walker to be on the lookout for his nephew, in the event he came back to Eastfield earlier. The course of true love seldom ran as smoothly as expected.