‘It’s for a future attraction.’

I took the list of officer names to my best source of common knowledge: Mrs Lehner.

The bar was beginning to fill up. It was early evening and the light outside had already fled. Autumn nights were not my favourite – they teased of the warmer summer and promised nothing but the coming of winter. I found it a capricious and insolent season, without the honesty of what came before or after, and without the hope of spring. Alexsander liked the colours of the leaves.

Despite the press of thirsty men and women at the bar, Mrs Lehner was more than ready to assist me once again. She made a great pantomime of looking seriously at the meagre scrap of paper.

‘How are your hands tonight, Mrs Lehner?’ I said.

‘My hands?’ she said, clearly surprised by my question. Then she remembered our previous conversation. ‘My hands, yes, sore again tonight, Inspector. But what can I do? My day-sister just won’t listen to reason.’

‘I’d say it’s a rare thing – reason that is – during daylight hours,’ I said. I gestured to the paper. ‘Do you happen recognise any of those names?’

‘Recognise them? Why, of course.’ She nodded furiously. ‘Willa, yes, she’s a lovely, kind girl. Karl is a day-boy, but Mr Hennig always has a good word to say about him. Oh, Felicity is a hard woman. Always sits alone, she does.’

‘Yes, Mrs Lehner, but—’

‘Don’t know this… what does this say here, is it Matherson?’ She held the list out to me.

‘I believe so,’ I said. ‘Second Lieutenant Matherson.’

‘No. Never known a Matherson, Summer Lieutenant or otherwise.’

‘Second Lieutenant.’

‘What’s that, Inspector?’ she said, raising her voice and leaning over the bar. It was growing increasingly busy and loud in the common room. I thanked Mrs Lehner for her help. I missed her reply, but not her conspiratorial wink.

I hurried to the door; it was about time I paid a visit to Mayor Eder. I still had questions about his son, Victor, and I also wanted to know what had become of Constable Webber’s body.

The streets were also busy that evening. Where they narrowed beyond the square I had to press between groups of labourers and workmen, muttering my apologies. They turned to stare at me. On the bigger roads I saw carts of them on their way out of town to the fields and forest beyond. Harvest labourers, I supposed, though in all honesty I knew little of what that actually meant. I assumed it was the stacking of straw bales, digging up vegetables, mending fences, that sort of thing. The kind of work that needed strong shoulders and leathery hands; I felt strangely conscious of my lack of either. I pulled my hat lower and picked up my pace.

As I walked I wondered at the little puzzle of Second Lieutenant Matherson. That he was unknown to Mrs Lehner, who kept a hawk-like vigil over her little field and all the thirsty mice that frequented it, was telling in of itself. An officer who, according to the list the Colonel provided me, made the journey from fort to town but did not visit the inn. In my understanding of soldiers – of people of any kind – the most likely motivation, if not drink, was a carnal one. Was Matherson the kind of officer to visit a whorehouse, or did he have a sweetheart in Drekenford?