“Yes. It’s very quiet,” Rutledge answered, his voice echoing and his footsteps rebounding from the stone paving as he walked down the aisle toward Henry. “Did you see what happened?”

“I was out looking for Simon Wyatt. He was walking again, Shaw told me. He’d seen him and then lost him. A few minutes later Elizabeth asked me to help her find him. She was worried about him. I told her it was all right, that he’d come home on his own, but she insisted.”

“You knew he walked?”

“I don’t sleep well sometimes. Once or twice I’ve seen him go out on the lawn and stand like a statue for a quarter of an hour or more. Another time I met him coming down the shortcut from the farm—it ends over by the churchyard. My mother’s concerned about him, she says he’s on the edge of collapse. But he isn’t. He’s worried about money and Aurore and the museum. He doesn’t see how it’s going to work out, and that’s what makes him black out. To stop thinking.”

Which was an oddly penetrating observation.

“About tonight—” Rutledge reminded him.

“He was in the church earlier. Standing there in front of the altar, lighting candles. Praying, I thought at first. Then he took one of them and started in the direction of the crypt. I don’t think he was walking then.”

“What would interest him in the crypt?” He remembered something Henry had confided to him when he first came to Charlbury. “There are hiding places in the church, aren’t there? Does Simon know about them?”

“I don’t know. He probably does. I didn’t stay very long. But later he came out with a suitcase. I’d seen it before, someone had left it under that stone altar down in the crypt. The old altar, from the Saxon church. Nobody ever uses it, but there’s an altar cloth on it. My mother ironed it every week when my father was alive and kept fresh flowers on it. My father always said it was useless work, but she took pride in it. It’s keeping to tradition, she’d say. I’d hide under its skirts whenever I didn’t want to be found. I think I told Simon about that, but I can’t be sure. I don’t always remember things now.”

“Henry. He knew the suitcase was there—or looked and found it there?”

“Well, he came out carrying it. And don’t ask me where he went with it, I can’t tell you because I don’t know. But I don’t think he wanted to be seen. And almost in the next instant Elizabeth Napier was coming up the church walk again. And you were there under the trees talking quietly to Mrs. Wyatt. I thought it best to go home then.”