But her eyes were showing the strain of worry, and he said, “What’s wrong?” His words crossing hers.

She let the door frame go, then shrugged, that French expression of I wash my hands. … “He doesn’t sleep well. At night. He hasn’t since the war. He rests here sometimes, when he doesn’t want to disturb me, moving about the house in the dark. Or if he’s very tired, sometimes in the afternoon. That’s why the bed is here. It doesn’t signify.”

It was an apology for her husband. Perhaps for the state of her marriage. And an attempt to distract him. But the tension in her was palpable.

He read her eyes, not her words. “What’s wrong?” he repeated.

“You misunderstand, there is nothing to worry you.” She looked away.

He stood there, watching her. In the end, she turned her face back to him and said, “It isn’t a police matter! Simon has gone somewhere. I was worried when he didn’t come to dinner. I waited, and finally I went to find him. But he isn’t in the house. Or in the grounds. I’ve looked. Elizabeth Napier took it upon herself to walk up to the church and to the Wyatt Arms. He won’t be there, but it gave her something to do.”

And took her out of my way…. The thought if not the words hovered between them.

“How long has he been gone? Did he take the car or one of the carriages?”

“Since teatime. I think. The motorcar is still here, and the carriage.”

“Then he must be in the village—at the Arms or at the rectory, perhaps.”

After a moment she said, “It—this isn’t the first time he has gone without telling me. But not this long, before. That’s the only reason I worry.”

She stared at him, her eyes begging but saying nothing. Refusing to betray her husband.

The dead didn’t wander about in the night, talking to fence posts and trees, looking for their soul. Jimson’s words echoed darkly in his mind.

“Can I help? Mrs. Wyatt?”

Hamish was telling him that it was not his affair, it was not police business. But Rutledge had an intense feeling that it might be. Men like Simon Wyatt didn’t walk out their door at teatime and disappear.

“You can help by returning to Singleton Magna and calling again in the morning. Everything will be well in the morning, I promise you!”

“Will it? Let me help you find him. Discreetly. People are used to a policeman prowling about. God knows, we’ve searched for days in every conceivable place for those children! Where shall I begin?”

“He hasn’t—” She stopped, then after a moment said, “Before this, he was always in the house or the gardens.” Yet her voice seemed hollow, even to her own ears. “Always.”