He straightened and moved aside while the sergeant handed the shovel to a thickset constable with sleeves already rolled above his elbows. He set to carefully, as if he’d done this sort of thing before. Scraping, wielding the shovel as a broom more often than the work it was designed to do, the man made slow progress. Hildebrand, tight-faced, impatience in every line, watched. But he didn’t hurry the constable, and after several glances at Hildebrand, the sergeant made no comment either. The clang of the shovel, the grunting of the constable, and the distant rooks broke the stillness. And then the rest of the bone came into view, A shred of stocking clung to the flesh, and at the end, an ankle in a black, heeled shoe.

A woman. The grave was not deep; at a guess no more than a foot of soil covered her body. She appeared to have been wrapped in the coat rather than wearing it.

It had been far too hot for a wool coat the day the woman in the farmer’s cornfield had died. This wasn’t Margaret Tarlton or Mrs. Mowbray. And it wasn’t the missing children.

Hildebrand sighed. Another damned question…

It took an hour or more to uncover the remains to the point where the men watching and waiting could look at her and form any opinion of age, class, or time in the ground.

The constable from Leigh Minster squatted to peer into the makeshift grave, studying the body. After a time he said, “Don’t recognize her! We’ve no one missing, I’d know if there was. Who is she then? Can anyone say?” He got to his feet, looked around at the men on either side.

It was difficult to judge what she had once looked like. The face was badly decomposed, with signs that it had been damaged before death. The dark hair was tangled and mixed with clots of damp earth. Hildebrand turned to the constable from Stoke Newton. “Anything?”

“No, sir. There was a woman went missing some while back. A maid. But I wouldn’t—” He looked more closely and then shook his head, “I don’t think this one’s been in the ground long enough. It’s hard to say, but I’d guess from the coat and shoes she’s not a servant girl on her day off. Dressed more like a woman gone to market. Still—early days yet!”

Listening, Rutledge thought, I was right. An able man, that one! Aloud he said, “The face. It hasn’t been beaten the way the Mowbray woman was?”