“She never came back? You’re quite sure of that?”

She smiled. “If Betty had come home like a beaten dog, Mrs. Darley would have shouted it to the world. As vindication for dire predictions.”

He said slowly, “I shall have to ask Mrs. Darley to look at the body.”

The smile vanished. “No. I know how she feels about Betty, she’d like to think the girl got her just deserts. It wouldn’t be an objective identification. She’s not vindictive, but she was badly hurt by what she perceives as the girl’s callousness. Well, it was a personal rejection of a sort, wasn’t it? Mrs. Darley offered Betty the best she had, and it wasn’t good enough for the girl. At least that was the way Mrs. Darley felt her friends must see it.”

“Someone has to tell us if the dead woman is Betty Cooper. Or not.”

She took a deep breath and stood up. “I’ll do it. Just give me a moment to change into something cleaner.”

“You must think about it carefully,” he warned her. “It won’t be a very—pleasant—experience for you either. She was bea—”

“No!” she said sharply, cutting across his words. “Don’t tell me. I can stand it better if I don’t know how she suffered.” She turned to look at him. “Are you reaching for straws, Inspector? I have heard—various accounts, I assure you, and none of them kind—about what was done yesterday. I’m very glad those children were found alive. But I think the methods used to be certain were rather cruel.”

“It would have been far more cruel to have hanged an innocent man.”

She said, “It is no excuse, all the same.”

They arrived at the doctor’s surgery half an hour later. Rutledge had telephoned the police in Singleton Magna, asking Hildebrand to make the necessary arrangements. There was a message waiting for him at the surgery. “I’m pursuing my own line of inquiry. Handle this yourself.”

Dr. Fairfield was distinctly cool, but did as he was asked.

Henry Daulton had insisted that he come as well. “My mother will need me afterward,” he said simply. “I saw dead people in the war. She won’t like it.”

All the same, they made him wait outside.

In the spare, scrubbed room, Mrs. Daulton was shown the articles of clothing first. She looked at them, then shook her head. She was very white, her lips drawn tightly together. After a moment she said with some constraint in her voice, “No. I don’t recollect Betty wearing anything like this while she worked for the Darleys. But then I wouldn’t know her personal wardrobe. Or what she may have bought later. I’m sorry. That’s not much help, is it?”

The musty smell of earth and death filled the air as the clothes were refolded and put away.