But even Hamish was silenced by sleep, brief though it was—no more than twenty minutes, but twenty precious minutes if a man’s life was hanging in the balance. The day had broken now. Whatever was going to happen had already happened.

He sat for a moment in the motorcar, fighting his fatigue and staring at the closed and silent police station.

It was one of the hazards of police work, making the wrong judgment. He had done his best to protect the six potential victims of this killer, rather than taking the chance that the murderer wouldn’t strike again while he was away. But at the same time, he’d accepted a risk of a different sort—by denying the killer his opportunity, he could have changed whatever plan there was to these murders and caused it to take on different, possibly more personal overtones. He wasn’t interested in finding out whether he could outwit the murderer or not. He was only intent on stopping him.

He got out of the motorcar and stretched, his muscles tight and cramped from the drive from Wales. And then he walked to the door of the police station and put out his hand to lift the latch.

The door was firmly locked.

He stood there for a moment, his tired mind trying to grasp what that meant. A police station was always open. If the constable wasn’t there, he left a message on the desk telling whoever needed him where he could be found.

Foreboding gripped him. He knocked firmly, using his knuckles. And there was no answer.

He had no idea where Walker was. At home? At the scene of another death? And there was no one about at this hour, the street quiet and shuttered.

And then Rutledge remembered Mrs. Sanders, who had seen the lorry driver come through Hastings and then return again for the police after he’d spotted the first body on the road. Rutledge had read her statement.

He turned and looked across the way. Where was she? Not in the shops—or even above them. Then he saw the tall, narrow house wedged between a milliner’s and an apothecary’s. It looked to be one of the oldest buildings in Eastfield, brick and timber, the upper story leaning slightly to one side, as if the foundation had begun to subside when the newer apothecary’s had been built.

Crossing the street, he walked up to the front of the house and looked up at the double windows of the first floor.

One window was open to the slight morning breeze, the lacy white curtain billowing into the dark room behind, and Hamish said, “ ’Ware!”

Rutledge peered intently at the window and then realized that behind the panel of white curtain was a tiny, wizened face, looking to be as old as the house itself.