“And she may be right.” He took a deep breath. “It’s time to go to Hobson. Constable Satterthwaite and his superiors have the right to know where we’re looking, and what the evidence is.”

“He will be verra’ angry,” Hamish warned. “It was a cruel thing to do to such a lass.”

He stayed the night in Cheshire and drove the rest of the way to Hobson just after first light.

The village was awake and the shops busy when he got there. Constable Satterthwaite was pleased to see him, standing in the police station doorway with a packet of tea biscuits in his hand and smiling.

“Did you learn anything more about Larkin?”

“I went to his college in Cambridge. The porter there vouched for him. Meanwhile, I’ve been searching for the real Peter Teller. Not the man you thought you knew. That man never existed.”

“I met him—we saw him time and again here in Hobson,” the constable argued. “He wasn’t a figment of her imagination. Or ours. Besides, there’s the boy.”

“He was someone else. There’s much to tell you,” Rutledge said, taking the chair across the desk, as they reached the office.

“The man in London, then,” Satterthwaite said with resignation.

Rutledge proceeded to outline what he had learned so far, and how he believed it all fit together. Satterthwaite listened in silence, but his face reddened as the evidence against Peter Teller mounted.

“Why did he have to kill her, then?” he asked finally. “She thought he was dead. It was finished.”

“I don’t know. Yet,” Rutledge admitted.

“Damn the man!” he said heavily, and then to Rutledge, “I’m sorry, sir, but you weren’t here, I was. I’d like very much to watch him hang for what he’s done. Not just the murder, you understand, although that was bad enough. But for her empty life, for not being there when Timmy died and she was half out of her mind with grief, wanting to bury him at the farm, and not in the churchyard. We had all we could do to convince her to let us take him away. She wanted him there, where she could see him every day.”

Rutledge was reminded of Mr. Cobb, who spoke to the memorial to his sons, every morning and every evening. He could understand her need.

Satterthwaite got up and paced the floor, his feet heavy on the boards as he traced the same line back and forth, back and forth.