“How did anyone lure Hartle out onto the headland?” Walker asked as he joined Rutledge in the motorcar. “And after dark. Hartle was a canny man, he wouldn’t have gone there without a plausible reason.”

They drove in silence back to Eastfield, and Constable Walker pointed out where the dead man’s sister lived.

It was a simple bungalow in a street of similar houses, single story, squat roof, and a small garden behind.

Constable Walker broke the silence as they got out of the motorcar. “I’ve done this three times now. Pray God it’s the last.”

Together they went up the walk. A curtain twitched in the room to the left of the door.

Even as they reached for the knocker, a woman was opening the door to them, her face anxious, her fair brows drawn together in a frown of uncertainty.

“Constable Walker,” she said, her glance flicking to Rutledge’s face.

She was very unlike her brother, Rutledge noted. Smaller boned, fair hair where his was the color of wheat, her face softer and her eyes a pretty brown. Behind her, just visible in the shadows over her shoulder, was a man in a wheeled chair, his face pinched and sour.

“Mrs. Winslow, this is Inspector Rutledge from London—”

Her face crumpled. “It’s Theo, isn’t it? Oh, my God, I knew it—I knew it when he didn’t stop by last evening—”

“I’m afraid so, Mrs. Winslow. He was found early this morning in Hastings.”

She put her hands to her face and began to cry.

Behind her, her husband put out his hand, as if to offer comfort, and then dropped it.

Rutledge gently led her from the door and into a small sitting room, where he’d seen the curtain twitch earlier, settling her on the stiff horsehair sofa. The man in the invalid chair followed them into the room, saying, “What happened to him then? Tell me what happened?”

Rutledge turned slightly toward him and said, “In due course. Constable, perhaps Mr. Winslow will show you where you could make some tea. I think his wife will be grateful for it.”

At first he thought Walker would refuse, but then the constable realized that getting the husband out of the room was important at this stage. He turned to Winslow and said, “Where’s the kitchen, then?” as if in such a small house it would be hard to find.

Winslow cast a glance at his wife, then looked at Rutledge and saw that the suggestion was, in fact, a command that brooked no argument. He spun his invalid chair and with poor grace led the constable away.

Rutledge found a clean, dry handkerchief in an inner pocket and gave it to the weeping woman. She took it gratefully. He said, his voice pitched not to carry beyond this room, “Was your brother in the war?” It was an attempt to distract her from her immediate grief.

She nodded.

“With the rest of the Eastfield volunteers?”

A muffled yes came from behind the handkerchief. And then she raised her eyes to meet his gaze, a slow and awful truth dawning. “He—was he—like the others?”