Satterthwaite replied, “Cobb said he never touched them. He had no reason to do it, and he couldn’t have taken them home with him. Teller must have put them in the boot. We’ll have to ask Larkin if he could see the boot of the motorcar from where he was.”

“No,” said Rutledge. “If she’d been alive, she would never have allowed that. Not her letters. She’d have fought him every step of the way.”

“Even if she was disillusioned?”

Satterthwaite scowled. “Then it was Cobb. Bound to have been. To hurt her more? Or maybe he wanted to read them. Who knows?”

“You said Cobb was in Thielwald?”

“I told you. I didn’t want him here. He’s safer there. And so am I.”

“I want to see him.”

“I know how much time you’ve given to this inquiry. I know how well you’d put together the case against Teller. I know how I’d said all along that no one here in Hobson would touch her. We were both wrong.”

Rutledge kept his cup, reached for the Thermos, uncapped it, and poured himself more tea. Then he said, “All right. I still must speak to Cobb. I want to judge him for myself. Let’s go.”

“Now? At this hour of the night?” Satterthwaite demanded as Rutledge drained his cup and handed back it to him.

“I have to be back in London as quickly as I can. There’s Teller’s death.”

They drove to Thielwald in an uncomfortable silence. Satterthwaite had said what he knew he must say. And Rutledge could think of no way to prove him wrong.

Hamish, a third in the motorcar, his voice at Rutledge’s ear, was trying to make himself heard, but Rutledge shut him out.

Concentrating on the dark winding road ahead, Rutledge tried to find holes in Satterthwaite’s arguments, weighing Teller against Cobb. He’d liked Cobb. He’d believed the man when he said that he couldn’t have killed Florence Teller. But then Teller himself had denied touching his wife. And that had rung true as well.

The sky was just brightening as the rain clouds scudded away, already thinning enough to offer the promise of sun to take their place.