“Lord save us, no! I overheard her talking to one of the cowmen. He was teasing her, like, and she said a gentleman didn’t have dirt under his nails nor smell of sweat, nor drink himself into a stupor of a Saturday night, and knew how to treat a lady. Much taken with Mr. Wyatt she was. She said he’d gone and got himself a French wife, but it wouldn’t last. He was home now, and not in France. That’s when I came around the corner from looking at the cream pans and told her I’d not have talk like that under my roof. My late husband didn’t stand for that kind of sauciness, and neither do I! It wasn’t more than ten days later, if that long, before she was gone. And I haven’t seen her, nor wanted to, since. I don’t wish her harm, no, but some learn the hard way, don’t they?”

Rutledge also tracked down Constable Truit, who had—according to Joanna Daulton—tried to court the dead woman.

He shook his head when Rutledge began his questions. “Inspector Hildebrand asked me to have a look at the body when it was first brought in. I couldn’t see any likeness to Betty. Miss Cooper. Sleek as a cat, she was, sunning itself in the window. Not like this one, thin, cheap clothes and shoes. Not Betty’s style.” His confidence was solid, convincing.

Rutledge wondered if Truit saw what he wanted to see or if this was a considered opinion. All the same, the answer contradicted Mrs. Daulton’s tentative identification.

A dead end. And yet … if the dead woman was Betty Cooper, she’d come back to Dorset. Someone had killed her, when she did, to silence her.

Just as someone had killed Margaret Tarlton, when she came back to Charlbury for the first time since 1914.

“That’s wild supposition,” Hamish said.

But was it?

What did these two women have in common? Or—to put it another way, what threat had these two women posed, that cost them their lives?

The common thread, if there was one, seemed to be Simon Wyatt. And a savage beating that was the cause of death in both cases. But it was as tenuous as gossamer, that thread. One tug, to see where it might lead, would snap it.…

If Elizabeth Napier had killed her secretary because Margaret had borne an illegitimate child to Thomas Napier, it made no sense for her to have killed a serving girl months before.

If Daniel Shaw had killed Margaret out of jealousy, he had no motive to kill anyone else.

If the connection was Simon Wyatt, then he, Rutledge, was back to Aurore.

“Or Simon himsel’,” Hamish pointed out. “For yon bonny house and the money it will bring in.”