“Ye’ll not be getting answers from yon puir sod in the gaol,” Hamish reminded him. “He’s a witless man.”

Which was a very good point, Rutledge thought.

This case, so obviously clear-cut and so near to being closed, was going to sink or survive in the courtroom on the basis of cold, hard fact. Weapon. Opportunity. Motive. And the how and when and where of the act.

“Aye,” Hamish replied, “broken men conjure up sympathy. Unless they’re branded cowards …”

Rutledge winced and turned his back on the motorcar, looking up at the field. Why here? he asked himself. Because she had gotten away from Mowbray, as someone had suggested? And it was here that he’d caught up with her again? Simple happenstance?

All right, then, where had she run from?

To search for the children, he told himself, I’ll have to work out the direction she’d be likely to come from—and how Mowbray had followed her.

Yet there was nothing in any direction to suggest a sanctuary where a frightened, weary family might have taken refuge.

He tried to picture them, the children crying, spent and thirsty, the mother trying hard to shush them and soothe them at the same time. The man—her husband? her lover?—carrying the little girl, while she held the boy. Four miles—but still not far enough. They would want to get clear of Singleton Magna and the pursuing Furies as quickly as possible, which told him they wouldn’t have asked for a ride on a wagon. Nor would they stop at a farmhouse door to ask for a glass of water or an hour to let the children rest. Either way would leave traces of their passage.

It had taken Mowbray two days to catch up with her….

Consider a different point of view. Where had the family intended to leave the train? They could have been traveling to the Dorset coast or any town in between. Or beyond, to Devon, even to Cornwall. All right, given that their direction was south, or even southwest, they’d most likely keep to that. However indirectly. Which meant, in theory, that they’d have left Singleton Magna by the same road he’d just traveled. Where, then, had they spent that last night?

Rutledge slung his coat over one shoulder and walked on to the signpost where the road divided.

Two arms pointed southwest. The faded letters read STOKE NEWTON and LEIGH MINSTER. From there the road might well carry on to the coast. The third arm pointed northwest, to Charlbury.