“And a woman like yon is naught but trouble!” Hamish added for good measure. “Leave her out o’ this business.”

Rutledge laughed. But he could still see the softness of her skin, warm with the sunny day, and the dark tendril of hair that swept across her cheek like a caress. Why was it that French women had a knack for disturbing a man, whether they were beautiful or not? Whatever it was, most of them were born with it, and he didn’t need to understand it to recognize it.

In a ramshackle barn, swaybacked with age and a roof half fallen in, he was startled by a small hawk he’d disturbed. She came sailing down toward him, defending her fledglings, and swooped near enough for him to hear the soft whish of her wing feathers on the still air. And then she was back in the beams again, well hidden. He could feel her eyes watching him. Nothing here, only prints of the heavy nailed boots of searchers.

He hadn’t expected to find anything. The effort had been made in the name of thoroughness. A policeman needed patience. And hope?

At the outskirts of Charlbury, which straggled in Saxon style along the road like beads on a string, he paused long enough to get his bearings.

It was no more than a village, houses facing each other across the high road and, at the far end, a stone church. There was a long narrow green, with its pond and white geese sailing above their reflections like frigates in the sun, an inn, some half-dozen shops, and on a slope behind an outlying farm, a round building with a thatched roof, gleaming whitely. It looked as if it had been stranded there, with no connection to Charlbury except perhaps fate.

Most of the houses were small, but between the common and the church they were larger and better kept. He thought it likely that the well-to-do farmers lived there. The grandest of the lot, with a slate roof and a sizable wing on its westerly side, was set well back from the street and boasted a fine garden behind a low, gated stone wall. There was little activity in Charlbury, as if people were working in their back gardens or on the farms that spread out around the outskirts. One shopkeeper was washing his windows, and farther along a small boy squatted by a bench, teasing a cat with a string. It played with the end desultorily as if preferring to doze peacefully in the sun. The boy gave up as Rutledge watched, and turned to run toward the pond. As he did, he cannoned into a man coming out of the small bakery, who bent double from the force of impact and swore feelingly at the child. The words carried in the warm air.