He looked from this vantage point around the circle of corn and trees and distant church tower, the horizons of this place of death. But he saw nothing to draw his attention. No shed, no barn with its roof falling in, no farm house. The clump of trees, then? They were far enough off the road

Rutledge spent a good quarter of an hour searching among the trees and came up emptyhanded. No sandwich wrappers, no scuffed earth, no suitcases—

Suitcases.

No one had mentioned the family’s suitcases. Had these been left on the train? Or had they tried to drag their luggage with them, down the hot and dusty road? It was a point to consider. Another point to consider …

He went back to his motorcar, hot and dusty himself, to drive on down the left, southwestern, fork in the road.

It led to two straggling villages, houses lining the road, water meadows at their backs on either side, and farms in the outlying fringes. In each one Rutledge sought the local constable and questioned him. The first one was still enjoying a belated dinner, and the other was in his shirtsleeves gossiping over the garden wall with his neighbor. But they answered him readily enough.

Rutledge learned that Hildebrand, in his thoroughness, had preceded him here, and there appeared to be nothing left for him to discover in either Leigh Minster or Stoke Newton. No strangers have come through here in the past week—both constables assured him of that, and he believed them. They appeared to be steady, careful men who knew their patch well. Nor had an ownerless suitcase turned up in the middle of a field or under some hedge. Apparently neither village had been pulled—wittingly or unwittingly—into the tragedy at Singleton Magna.

Back in his motorcar again, the cooling wind of twilight swirling about his shoulders, Rutledge listened to the voice in the rear seat. It seemed to breathe on him, though he knew very well it was only the soft Dorset air.

“I do na’ think he’d have come so far. The man was certain his wife was still in Singleton Magna—he went raving about yon town for two days, searching. People saw him. And he was asleep there when the police came looking for him! But what’s no’ been answered is, what made him so certain they’d be found there? That the townsfolk must have hidden them from him?”

“I don’t know,” Rutledge said. “In the end, he did find the woman close by. He caught up with her there in the cornfields. And he killed her there and left her there. Unless …”

“Aye, unless. Unless the man with her got rid of her because she was the one Mowbray wanted. And he and the children got clean away.”