Jimson thought for a time. “The fifteenth, you say? Aye, as I recollect, she was. That colicky heifer had to be fed from a bottle and cosseted. Damn near lost it, and we’d paid high enough for the bull! Stayed till nigh on four, I’d guess, getting it back on its legs. I’ll say one thing, French or not, she has a way with cattle!” He gave the impression that he was of two minds about his mistress.

“And where were you?”

“Loitering in my bed, waiting for the servants to bring me my breakfast! Where the hell do you think I might be? Working, that’s what! Besides the milking, there was rotting boards in the loft that had to be shored up and potatoes to be dug, and the fence in the chicken yard had rusted, some of the little ’uns was running loose.” Yet Aurore had said he had had a cold … or a hangover.

“Could you see Mrs. Wyatt from where you worked?”

“You don’t keep a heifer in the loft, nor with the chickens!”

“Could she see you?”

“I doubt she could, but she wouldn’t miss the hammering in the loft. What’s this in aid of, then? You think I had something to do with this killing?”

Rutledge felt a sense of tension in the man, as if he had told the truth but skirted the edges of lying. How far would he go for Aurore—or for Simon Wyatt?

“We need to be sure where everyone was that afternoon. Often people aren’t aware that they are witnesses. Was Mrs. Wyatt driving that day, or did she walk here?”

“Aye, driving. I saw her when she came up the lane in the Wyatt car. She waved to me when she got out. But it didn’t appear to me she wanted to talk.”

“Did the car leave during the time you thought she was here?”

“Not that I could say. But I didn’t set and watch it either.”

“And so Mrs. Wyatt stayed with the sick heifer, missing her luncheon?”

“How should I know? When I’d finished with the chickens and wanted my own meal, I didn’t look for her to ask permission!”

“You didn’t offer her lunch?”

“Lord, no! What I cook ain’t fit for a lady’s taste!” he said, horrified. “Bacon and cheese, it was, with onionsl”

A countryman’s meal. But the French took the same simple ingredients, added eggs and herbs, producing an omelet. It was all, Rutledge thought, in what you were used to.

“You are sure neither Mrs. Wyatt nor the car went away, from the time she arrived to the time she left. From eleven, let’s say, until four.”

The watery gray eyes flickered. “I didn’t see her leave,” Jimson answered. “But she’d come in to wash up, her boots was out by the kitchen door.”