He had no idea where he was. Looking up at the scrolled letters on the shop window, he realized that this was where Russian émigrés had put their personal belongings up for sale.

Turning away, he tried to get his bearings. There was the distant headland, green now in the sunlight, where Hartle’s body had been found. Using that as his guide, he walked in an easterly direction until he realized that he was coming out of a side street that ended near the water.

The pub was several streets over. Glancing at his watch, he realized that he’d been walking for more than an hour. He swore and was about to turn up toward the pub and his motorcar when another shop window caught his eye.

The display was of all things military. Gold braided tricorns, an assortment of swords, and a polished table where tiny lead soldiers fought pitched battles. There was a rusty halberd, books on military tactics from wars long past, a pistol with a split barrel, and even a well-used Kaiser Wilhelm helmet with its pointed spike, and a long spear that appeared to be East African.

On the spur of the moment, he went inside. The proprietor was an elderly man with streaks of gray in his fair hair, and bright blue eyes. He glanced up from a sock he was mending as the bell over the door jingled, and smiled at Rutledge. “Looking for anything in particular?” he asked in a deep, gruff voice.

“Identity discs from the war. Do you ever see them? Or have them for sale?”

The crinkles around the blue eyes deepened. “There’s no market for that sort of thing. They were rather flimsily made, as a rule. Buttons, now, and uniforms—they turn up. I have a button hook, from the Grenadier Guards. Any number of shell casings, some of them with trench art, others plain. An officer’s whistle, well-polished riding boots with gilt spurs—even several pairs of field glasses.”

Hamish had subsided in his mind, and Rutledge was about to turn away when something caught his eye in the glass display case where he was standing. It contained smaller and more expensive objects kept under lock and key. There were an ivory pipe, a cigarette case made from what appeared to be tortoiseshell, a flint knife, a few American Civil War lead soldiers, and assorted buttons, watches, rings, and other pieces of jewelry inscribed with military insignia.

He pointed to the knife. “What can you tell me about that?”