It was Lawrence Cobb, his trousers stained from working the earth and pulling weeds. A pile of wilting debris lay on the grassy path next to his boots.

“Oh—it’s only you, then,” Cobb said in relief. “I’ve come here to keep the gardens for her. Until someone knows what’s to happen to this place. It’s the least I can do. Her flowers shouldn’t die too.”

Rutledge could read the unspoken words in his eyes—and it brings her closer, as if she were still alive and somewhere inside.

“I see nothing wrong with it,” Rutledge answered him. “A pity you weren’t out here working on the day she was attacked.”

“Don’t you think I dream about it at night?”

“If your wife hears of it, it will be on your head.”

Cobb said, “If I had been here, she might still be alive. But that’s hindsight. I hear you found that walker. Was he the man?”

“As it turned out, he was a witness and a very helpful one. He saw the motorcar by the hedge and the man who was driving it.”

Cobb dusted his hands, nodding. “I knew it. Someone from his family, most likely, with an eye to the property.”

“Someone from his family, yes, but I don’t think this property entered into it. I think he’d come to see her, and decide what to do about her. What I don’t know is whether or not she invited him in. It must have been a shock to her to see him there. She wouldn’t have known what to say.”

Cobb stared up at the bedroom windows, as if he could see the answer written there on the glass. “She stopped looking for him—waiting, listening for the door—over a year ago. She told me he must be dead, but you could tell she hadn’t really started to believe even then. I think she expected some miracle, and then when it never happened, she lost hope. The logic in her head told her one thing, her heart something else.”

“Was he good to her?”