Rutledge had been considering that possibility. “If he killed her here in the open and the children saw him do it, how could he persuade them to come away with him after that? It was a bloody crime, she’d have screamed the first time he struck her. They would have cried out in alarm, pulled at his coat, his arms—trying to stop him—then fought to stay by her, because they wouldn’t have understood that she was dead. And if she was a liability to him, why did he stop at killing her? Why not rid himself of both the children—they weren’t his, after all. No, that line of investigation is taking us nowhere.”

“But it’s the children that’ll tell you the rest of the truth. Alive or dead.”

“I know,” Rutledge said. “And where shall we find them?”

It was nearly dark when he got back to Singleton Magna and left his car behind the inn. In his absence Hildebrand had come to find him and written a message on hotel stationery, its thick, crested paper incongruously scrawled over in heavy black ink.

“London just replied to your request for more information on Mrs. Mowbray. She was from Hereford. No known connection with Dorset. That may mean that the man with her lived or worked or had relatives in this county. I’m looking into that now.”

It was one of the telephone calls Rutledge had made that afternoon, asking a canny sergeant he knew in London to look into Mrs. Mowbray for him. Gibson always had his ear to the ground. If anyone could uncover information on the dead woman, it was he. A pity there was no way Gibson could do the same for the man.

And Rutledge didn’t hold out much hope that Hildebrand would fare any better, with so little to go on. It might take weeks to trace him—if he belonged in Dorset. Or years, if he came from another part of England.

“If he got clear, they’d hide him, him and the children. Family. Friends. If he asked,” Hamish said as Rutledge took the stairs two at a time.

“Very likely,” Rutledge answered aloud, before he could stop himself. “Unless they know that Mowbray is safely in jail.”

“But the children are no’ his,” Hamish pointed out. “And the mother’s dead. If yon man wanted to keep them—”

“—he’d stay out of sight. He’d have to turn them over to the police if he came forward. Yes, that’s an interesting thought, isn’t it?”

The children, again …

They were beginning to haunt him.

Chapter Four

4

Rutledge spent a restless night, his room too warm for comfortable sleeping, and his mind too busy.