Elizabeth got up, her skirts brushing against him as she turned to go. “I’d like very much to know who gave you this information. You said ‘a number’ of sources. Was that true? Or simply a euphemism?”

“Yes. It was true. I’ve heard it from enough sources that I have no choice but to believe it.”

She frowned, mentally running down a list of possible names. He could see her mind at work. Then she smiled. “Well. It doesn’t matter. My father is safe, isn’t he? Either way. If Margaret is dead. And it wasn’t I, was it, who drove Margaret to the station that last morning. Good day, Inspector!”

He watched her walk on toward the inn, her stride graceful, her bearing giving her that aura of royal dignity that made up for inches. But he thought, his eyes on her straight back, that she was upset, as if he’d touched a rawness in her that bled inside.

Rutledge considered the possibility that whatever the stationmaster might have said, Margaret Tarlton reached Singleton Magna, and Elizabeth Napier met her there, offering to drive her on to Sherborne. And killed her along the road, to put an end to any connection between Margaret and Thomas Napier.

But that brought him around again to the question of who drove Margaret to Singleton Magna.

He was beginning to believe he knew … if it hadn’t been Aurore in the Wyatt motorcar, it might have been Simon. In spite of Mrs. Dixon’s certainty that Aurore was driving, it was the vehicle and not the occupants she’d seen. He was persuaded of that by his own instincts and the woman’s vehemence.

But why would Simon kill Margaret Tarlton or anyone else? Why would Aurore be terrified that he might have?

It was on the way back to his car that he halted by the smithy and stood thinking intently for several minutes as he watched the activity around him. People going about their own business moved past him with curiosity in their eyes, nodding but not pausing to speak to him. He was the bringer of misfortune, in a sense. They wouldn’t ignore him completely, but there was no warmth in their faces as they went on. The sooner he left, the sooner life in Charlbury could return to normal.

As, in a way, it already had. In spite of police activity in the neighborhood, in spite of the discovery of another body some distance away, no one had been murdered in Charlbury itself, and no one had been arrested in the village. The initial shock had begun to wear off and, with it, some of the tension. That explained the activity on the street. He found that very interesting.