They stared at him.

“It won’t work,” Marshall told him point-blank. He was a small, compact man with a broken nose and an obvious dislike of authority. “You can’t be sure that madman is after one of us. Why not the greengrocer? Or the foreman at the brewery? The rector, or the clerk at the hotel?”

“Are you volunteering?” Rutledge asked.

“I’m not volunteering—” Marshall began.

Rutledge cut him short. “I remind you, each victim was alone after dark. No one saw the killer arrive, no one saw him leave. Think of a better plan, and I’ll consider it.”

Marshall objected again. “Look, we don’t know why those four died. I’m not saying it’s something they did. Or didn’t do. But my conscience is clear. Why should I run with my tail between my legs, like?”

There was a silence.

“Step forward. Who among you feels safe enough to take such a risk? You survived the war, the lot of you. Are you feeling lucky?”

They talked amongst themselves and then turned back to him.

“Three days,” Walker’s nephew said. “Not an hour more.”

“Thank you. But I warn you, if you give Constable Walker here any reason for complaint, I’ll have the lot of you in charge for obstructing the police. Is that clear?”

The man called Henderson said, “Where will you be?”

“Tracking down connections between the living and the dead. Unless you can tell me what you believe this is all about? Unless you know something that I don’t—and Constable Walker doesn’t. What happened in France?”

“Nothing,” Henderson replied. “Nothing that would lead to murder, then or now. We served with honor. All of us.” There was the ring of truth in his voice.

But he hadn’t been in the company that left Eastfield together. Three years younger than the rest, according to Walker, he’d volunteered on his seventeenth birthday and had served with the new tank corps. Like Anthony Pierce, he was an outsider. Still, Pierce had been murdered anyway.

No one else spoke up. Rutledge waited, looking each man in the eye, and they dropped their gaze first, even Marshall.

Hamish said into the silence, “Ye ken, it might not be what they did, but what they failed to do. And they wouldna’ remember that.”

Rutledge answered him in his mind. This killer could have moved on to Hastings or Rye or even London. But he hasn’t. Because his quarry is still here.

Half an hour later, he left Eastfield behind.

Walker’s parting words were, “I hope you find something that makes this incarceration worthwhile.” There was an undercurrent of doubt in his voice.

Rutledge’s first stop was in Hastings to see if any progress had been made in tracing Hartle’s movements before he was killed.

Inspector Norman said testily, “It’s early days. But he was seen in a shop that carries varnish at half past ten in the morning. They didn’t have what he needed, and he went to another place of business and found it closed. He came back half an hour later and bought four tins of the varnish. He was to pick them up at two o’clock. At that point, it appears he had lunch in a small pub that fishermen frequent. Apparently he knew the pub’s cook in France. He visits the man whenever he’s in Hastings. Yesterday the man wasn’t there. His wife’s mother was being taken to hospital in Eastbourne for suspected appendicitis. We checked, and she was admitted for surgery. Hartle waited for him at the pub, and the cook returned to Hastings at three-fifteen. The two men sat down together for a good twenty minutes, and Hartle asked if the family was able to pay for the mother-in-law’s care. Then a little before four o’clock, Hartle left to retrieve his tins, ostensibly on his way home to Eastfield, or so the cook says. He could think of no reason why Hartle would delay returning—he’d got what he’d come for. We know for certain our man left the pub close on to four. Half a dozen people can vouch for that. After that, we lose him.”