“Apparently he’d seen Inspector Mickelson standing in the churchyard by his mother’s grave. He was afraid Mickelson was looking into his family’s past. It wasn’t true, of course, but it nearly got Mickelson killed, all the same. By the time he’d retrieved his motorcar and stopped Mickelson by the rectory gates, there was no opportunity to garrote him, and so he used a spanner.”

“I hear Mickelson is being bloody-minded about clearing you of any role in his attack.”

“He’s had an epiphany. So I’ve been told. The KC trying Summers—Julian Haliburton—has informed Mickelson that the Crown takes a dim view of muddying the evidence. Inspector Mickelson’s statement has officially exonerated me of all blame.” Rutledge didn’t add that it would be some time before his arrest on a charge of attempting to murder a fellow policeman had faded from the collective memory of the Yard. That anyone believed him capable of such an act still stung.

Cummins chuckled. “Yes, Haliburton is a stickler for accuracy.” His amusement faded. “You understand that you won’t be promoted to fill my shoes? Bloody stupid of Bowles, but there it is.”

“I hadn’t expected it,” Rutledge said. And yet he knew that he would have liked to follow a man like Cummins.

“On a more interesting subject than the Chief Superintendent, I haven’t thanked you for your help with the Stonehenge murder. This is more information than I’d ever hoped to find.”

“There’s something more,” Rutledge replied. “I think I know the name of the murder victim.”

Cummins was aghast. “I don’t believe it. How in hell’s name did you ever get to that?”

“We’d wondered why the knife was left in Hastings. It occurred to me that there must be another connection. At least a name to be going forward with. And what’s the most popular name in Hastings?”

“Robinson? Turner? Johnson?”

“William the Conqueror. The first of the Norman kings of England. There’s an Inspector Norman there, as well. While I was there giving evidence at the inquest, I asked one of his constables if there was anyone in the Inspector’s family who had gone missing in 1905. At first Petty thought I was trying to cause trouble with the police in Hastings, but then he told me that there were several families named Norman in that part of Sussex. And one of them, a William Norman, was lost in Peru in 1906. He was a schoolmaster who was eager to find another lost city of the Incas. As it happened, an American, Hiram Bingham, actually did find a lost city. Machu Picchu. This William Norman sailed for Peru on the twenty-second of June, 1905. The family was told he’d reached Peru safely, had gone into the jungle, and was never heard from again. He was declared dead seven years later.”