“I don’t think so,” Rutledge answered him. “And I ask you again. Is there anything in your pasts that could have come back to haunt you? Is there anyone who has ever held a grudge? In the war, here in Eastfield, in any place for that matter.”

But they shook their heads.

Hamish said, “It was something loomed large in the killer’s mind. But ye ken, not in theirs.”

“How well do any of you know Daniel Pierce?” Rutledge asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Walker’s gesture intended to stop him from asking these men about the younger Pierce. But this was a murder inquiry, and Tyrell Pierce couldn’t set limits on the directions it took.

“We knew him as a boy. But not as a man,” Tuttle said after a glance at his companions. “He went away to school, you must know that, and even when he was home during holidays, he didn’t have anything to do with us. Then after the war, he was hardly here in Eastfield before he was gone again. It was ‘Mr. Daniel’ then, and touching your cap to him.”

“Did you resent his going away to school? Or was there something between you before then, while he was still Daniel? An old hurt, a misunderstanding, a case where no harm was meant, but he took it hard? Or perhaps you did?” His eyes swept the half circle of men, and he read nothing there that would help him.

“He gave as good as he got,” Marshall answered, his glance sliding toward Walker and then away again. “We avoided him if we could manage it. He was Anthony’s—Mr. Pierce’s—little brother, and no one cared to have him tag along after us. What’s more, he was a tattletale if we weren’t careful, and on purpose he never got it right. Often as not, we were in trouble for something we hadn’t done. I was that glad when he and his brother went off to that school. We’d had enough of both of them.”

Rutledge considered the man, wondering what he had to hide. Because his voice and his shifting gaze betrayed him.

Hamish said, “He didna’ care to be caught.”

And that was very likely it—Marshall had been a ringleader in whatever mischief was afoot, and Daniel Pierce was a thorn in his side.

“The only reason we was allowed to play together was Mr. Pierce was busy at the brewery and couldn’t always keep an eye on Anthony. And who else was there, I ask you, his age? The rector’s son was older, and Dr. Gooding only had girls,” Henderson added.

“Anthony was all right,” one of the other men put in. “He never caused any trouble.”

Which was an odd way to put it.