“You mean she didn’t leave between eleven and four, or you didn’t see her go home at four?” He couldn’t seem to get a straight answer from Jimson.

“I didn’t see her go at four. When I came back from mending a fence down by the water, closer to five it was, the car was gone. I know, because I went around the house to fetch the milk cans from the road, and the lane was empty.”

Rutledge turned and looked back the way he had come. The trees were old, heavy with late summer leaves, the shadows under them dark and cool. Once this had been a thriving farm, children had been born and patriarchs had died in the house behind him, smoke had risen from the chimneys, washing had hung on the lines, the smell of fresh bread and baked pies had wafted from open windows. Dogs had run in the yard and flowers had bloomed in the weed-grown beds. Until the first Wyatt discovered the power and authority of Westminster, and the family had bettered itself.

“Do you live in the farmhouse?” he asked Jimson.

The man didn’t answer. Rutledge turned around and repeated the question, his mind still probing the past. If Simon Wyatt hadn’t gone to war, Aurore his wife would never have come to England and this place. Was it very like the home she’d left? Was this farm her sanctuary, however run down it was, because it reminded her of her parents and peace and a life very different from the one she lived in Charlbury?

Jimson said testily, “I’ve a room at the back. That and the kitchen, it’s all I want—or need.”

“Does anyone else use the other rooms?”

“Aye, we’ve got the King in one and the Queen in t’other! Are ye daft?”

“It’s a large house for one man.”

“The Wyatts always had a tenant and his family living here. I come over daily from Charlbury then. Mr. Oliphant, he went to New Zealand in 1913, and that was the end to that. The other dairymen went off to fight the Hun. Mrs. Wyatt says there’s no money to hire ’em back now, nor to fix the barn roof! I moved to the house after my wife died, just to keep an eye on the place. Mrs. Wyatt, she keeps some things in one of the upstairs rooms. Towels and coveralls.”

Rutledge had run out of questions. And yet he had a strong feeling that because he’d been partly distracted, he had overlooked something. What?

Jimson watched him, waiting.

The man wasn’t lying, Rutledge was fairly certain of that. Jimson was telling the truth as he saw it. But police work had taught Rutledge that a witness could reply to questions exactly, even honestly—and still manage to avoid the whole truth.

And suddenly the answer was there, in the man’s very watchfulness.