Summers cried, “All right, for God’s sake, I’ll tell you. Get him away from me—she’s in the Convent of the Claires. South of Paris. I swear it. Please—”

Meredith Channing had said something about convents.

“Why is she there?” Rutledge asked, holding up his hand to stop Bell.

“I told them she suffered hallucinations after a head injury,” he said rapidly. “That what she remembers is confused, erratic. There was never a pet dog, we were never in Sussex—they pitied me.”

Bell hurried forward and caught the dog by its collar, his voice firm, pulling Muffin back. It took some doing, and Summers’s ankle was bloody by the time Bell had separated them. Summers reached down and gripped it, swearing.

Bell turned reproachfully to Rutledge. “That was not right.”

“It was the only way,” Rutledge answered harshly. “He killed with impunity. He’d have left her there. She was no further use to him. Nor was her money, now.”

He turned on his heel and walked out of the room while Bell soothed the dog and carried him down the passage to the motorcar that had brought him from Dover.

Norman left Summers slumped in his chair and followed Rutledge. “You’re a cold bastard when you want to be. And you’ve put Mickelson’s nose out of joint, bringing the suspect in. He’s to be released tomorrow—Mickelson—and sent to London to finish healing. He refuses to clear you, you know. He claims he’s uncertain. But we’ve found Summers’s motorcar. It’s very like yours. Mrs. Farrell-Smith was right on that score. I don’t think you’ll have much trouble over that business.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rutledge said, refusing to admit to Norman or anyone else that it did.

Norman said after a moment, “I’m curious. When did you bring your service revolver to Eastfield?”

Rutledge said, “I took it to France with me. Force of habit.” With that, he walked away, leaving Norman to stare after him.

A fortnight later, when Rutledge had given his testimony at the inquest and returned to London, he asked Chief Inspector Cummins to meet him for lunch at a quiet restaurant where they could talk.

Cummins came in, sat down, and greeted Rutledge cheerfully. “I’m glad to see you survived. It must have been touch and go, according to my sources.”

For an instant Rutledge thought that Cummins was referring to that moment in the wasteland of the Somme, when he’d considered his future and decided against dying there. And then he understood. The reference was to Eastfield. “It was a close-run thing—whether I’d be hanged for murder or would bring in the real killer.”

“Why did he target Mickelson?”