But Rutledge cut him short. His eyes moved across to the police station where Mowbray still sat in his gloomy cell, watched day and night. “It’s a beginning, isn’t it?” he responded. “That’s all that matters!”

The station door opened and Hildebrand came out, then paused as he saw Rutledge looking toward him. An instant’s hesitation, and he walked on, as if the man on the other side of the street didn’t exist.

“You’ve spoiled his investigation,” Hamish pointed out. “He will na’ thank you for it.”

“Mowbray might,” Rutledge said. “Nobody else seems to care about him.”

After eating his dinner without being aware of what was on his plate or his fork, Rutledge went out to his car and turned it toward Charlbury.

It was late in the evening to be calling on police business, but often the unexpected worked more successfully than the routine.

The road was dark, nearly empty, except for a dog that trotted into the undergrowth as the car’s headlamps flicked over the crest of the rise. But Charlbury was brighter, and the Wyatt house looked as if it was expecting the King. There were lamps lit in most of the rooms, and in the museum wing. He left his car up by the church and walked back, making his way to the wing on foot. He thought: Curious … so much light and no sounds of voices, of people shouting or talking or laughing.

The museum was empty. The masks leered at him in the brightness, mouths agape or dark slashes, eyes black with speculation or alarm, and the weapons, doubled with their own shadows, gave the rooms an air of tension. He walked through the three main areas, into the small, empty office, and then into the room across from it, hardly more than a large broom closet. He had never been there before. It held a bed with only a blanket, military in its folds, a chair, and a wooden table of indeterminate age, rescued from the attics or a jumble sale. A cupboard held a pair of shoes and some underwear, a clean shirt and a folded, freshly pressed pair of trousers.

Rutledge stood there in silence, not needing Hamish’s comments to tell him that this was where Simon Wyatt spent most of his nights.

A gasp from the doorway made him spin around.

Aurore was there, grasping the frame with fingers that were white. “For a moment I thought—” She stopped. “Were you looking for Simon?” Her voice had steadied, sounded nearly normal. “Couldn’t you have come to the door and knocked, as everyone else does?”

“—that I was Simon?” he asked, finishing her first, unguarded reaction. “I didn’t come to the door because I saw the lights here and thought he was in this wing. I preferred not to disturb the household, calling so late.”

“Simon … is out,” she said.