Rutledge was suddenly reminded of the farmer’s wife and daughter he’d interviewed only days before, who had been on the same train as Mowbray. No, housemaid to a farm wife wouldn’t appeal to an ambitious young woman out to make her fortune.

“I suggested to Simon that he take her on, when he came back from France and brought Aurore to Charlbury. He interviewed Betty, but there wasn’t any money for a second girl. And Edith had been with Simon’s father. She’s the cook’s niece, you see, and wanted to stay on.”

“That refusal was the turning point for Betty?”

“Yes, it was. Not a month later she was gone in the night, slipping away with her belongings and not leaving so much as a note. Mrs. Darley would gladly have given her a reference.”

“Was there a man in the picture?” he asked.

“No,” Mrs. Daulton said, considering the possibility. “I think not. Betty had … ambitions. She might flirt with every man she met, including our own Constable Truit, but it was harmless, she was hoping to do better than a farmer’s son. At any rate, as far as anyone knows, that’s the last news of Betty Cooper.” She smiled wryly. “I consider Betty one of my failures. You and I know very well what happens to most of the hopeful young women who go to London without references or prospects. It’s a dreary end to ambitions, isn’t it?”

“There’s no possibility of finding her, there are too many like her in London. If that’s where she went.”

“There’s no family in Plymouth that I’m aware of. No reason to go back there.” She smoothed the dirt from one palm. “The war gave girls so many new opportunities. Still, I don’t know that it’s a good thing to offer a glimpse of a new way of thinking and then snatch it back the minute the men come marching home from war. What will they do? These girls with a taste for independence?”

“Betty had no other training?”

“To hear Mrs. Darley tell it, she was a cross between Mata Hari and the Whore of Babylon! But no, she had no skills. She was pretty enough for Dorset, but I doubt she’d attract all that much notice in London. Still, who can say? She might have settled somewhere and found happiness by now!”

“Describe her, if you would, please.”

Mrs. Daulton considered for a moment. “Very dark hair, very white skin—which made a striking combination, as you can imagine. I don’t recall what color her eyes were. Blue, at a guess. Slim, but only of medium height. I had a feeling she might run to plumpness in middle age.”

The description came very close to the body they’d found. But Betty had left Dorset months before the physical evidence pointed to a time of death.