“Miss Napier. She came to find the constable herself. And she was that upset to learn he’d already gone out. ‘But it can’t wait—it’s been a week, that’s enough time wasted!’ she said. I could see her hands trembling, and her face was white, she looked about to cry. I brought her inside for a cup of tea, for she didn’t want Mr. Wyatt to see her that way. Took a quarter of an hour to settle her down, poor soul.”

Two masters at work, he thought. Mrs. Prescott intent on pulling the truth out of an apparently distraught woman, while Miss Napier was carefully sowing the seeds she wanted to bear fruit.

“Did she tell you what was wrong? Why she needed Constable Truit?”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Prescott said, casting a glance up and down the quiet street. “She said her secretary, that was visiting the Wyatts, had disappeared. She wanted to know if I could tell her anything that might help. But I couldn’t,” Mrs. Prescott said, with simple honesty. “I never saw Miss Tarlton leave. Miss Napier, she asked me to make inquiries in Charlbury. Among my friends. To see if they had any word. And that’s what I did.” She paused, her eyes worried. “All Charlbury knew who she was—the Tarlton woman. She’d come to apply for that position at the Wyatt museum. They was in need of an assistant for Mr. Simon. A pretty young woman. Such lovely hair. I saw her when I carried a jar of my plum preserves along to Mrs. Wyatt. Why should anyone want to harm her?” It wasn’t a question he could answer. Yet. She added philosophically, “Well, it gives busy tongues something new to wag about We’ve nearly talked to death Mr. Simon’s choice of wife and still nobody knows quite what to make of her.”

He was furiously angry with Elizabeth Napier for giving the story her own peculiar twist. No association with Mowbray or his wife—no link with the body found outside of Singleton Magna. It was as if the two crimes—if there had indeed been a second murder—had been unconnected. As if there were still Miss Tarlton’s dead body to find, well hidden in someone’s bushes or back garden.

Small wonder the village had withdrawn behind closed doors!

Another search, this time turning Charlbury upside down. Delving into secrets that no one wanted to see exposed. Because there were always secrets—whether they had had any impact on the crime in question or not

And Hamish had been right Elizabeth Napier had adroitly outmaneuvered him, by coming here and starting her own rumors. By worrying her father and sending him directly to Bowles to complain of the police.

Hamish interjected, “Helplessness is a weapon that’s hard to fight”

And Rutledge had no taste for playing the bully.