Rutledge studied the open face, his thoughts going suddenly to the missing children. But there appeared to be no intentional double meaning in the remark, only simply a statement of fact and unassuming self-satisfaction. In this one thing, if nowhere else, he had exceeded his father.

The man’s eyes followed him as Rutledge turned back down the street toward the inn. Hamish, as aware of it as he was, muttered uneasily. “He’s no’ a simpleton,” he said. “There’s the mind of a child, all the same. I canna’ trust it.”

“He let the bird go,” Rutledge silently reminded Hamish. “No, I don’t think he’d harm children. Although he might be persuaded to hide them.…”

As he passed the largest house, the one with the wing set back beside it, he heard a woman calling a man’s name from somewhere out of sight. And then, more clearly, the response.

“No, don’t bother me with that. Not now!”

The owner of the voice came around the corner of the house, carrying one end of a ladder and in his rough clothes looking more like a laborer than the man lugging the other end did. But his fair hair and fairer skin, flushed with heat and exertion, weren’t a working man’s. He shifted the ladder with dexterity and said as he lifted it to the gutters, “No, let me go first! It will save time!” and went smoothly up to the roof with the apparent ease of long practice.

The Wyatt home? Rutledge asked himself. It was the only one he’d seen so far with room enough to house a museum, even a tiny one.

Outside the milliner’s shop, a woman came hurrying through the door to hand a small box to a younger woman pushing a pram. The two of them looked up at Rutledge as he passed, then began speaking again in lowered voices. The news of his arrival was already moving quickly along the village grapevine. As interesting gossip always did, it seemed to fly on the very wind.

Then why, in God’s name, had there been no gossip about the Mowbray children?

Even Hamish had no answer to give to that.

He retrieved his car from the inn and was halfway out of Charlbury when he saw the constable coming toward him on foot, a sturdy, youngish man with red hair, the stiff collar of his uniform unbuttoned in the heat.

Pulling over to the side of the road, Rutledge waited for him, and the man came up to the motorcar with an arrogance to match his stride.,

“Something you’re wanting, sir?” he asked, his eyes sweeping over Rutledge in what was close to incivility. Hamish growled under his breath, describing the man and his ancestry in Highland terms.