Satterthwaite broke the silence. “A fair day . . .” And then his voice trailed off as Rutledge brought the motorcar to a halt in front of Thielwald’s police station. “I was thinking,” he went on as they got out. “If Cobb hadn’t walked out on her, I wonder if Betsy would have come to me. Even if she’d found a dozen bloody canes lying about in the barn. I think she’d have kept her mouth shut, and lived with a murderer, if it meant she could keep Cobb. After all, he’d rid her of her rival, whatever the reason behind it. Still, in the end, he’d have been brought under her thumb with the threat of exposure. That’s in her nature, to want to rule the roost. And he might have killed her then, to escape.”

“The only surprise is the fact that she didn’t wait longer than she did, on the off chance that he might come back. Now he’s out of reach for good.”

Rutledge went to the boot and took out the pieces of cane, wrapped in an oiled cloth. Changing his mind, he left them there and led the way to the door.

The sleepy constable on duty picked up the lamp on his desk and showed them to the cell where Cobb was sitting on the edge of his cot, his head in his hands. From the drained, empty look in his eyes as the door swung open and he saw Rutledge standing there, it was evident he’d not slept since he’d been arrested. He got slowly to his feet, and in the light from the constable’s lamp, Cobb’s eyes gleamed like those of a trapped animal.

Rutledge had seen that look before—nearly as often in the innocent as in the guilty. That fear of things getting out of hand, of wanting to fight back when flight was no longer an option, and that blindingly helpless feeling of knowing the odds are set against you because the evidence is overwhelming.

He was prepared for argument, for Cobb appealing to him over Satterthwaite’s head, expecting the man from London wouldn’t know Hobson or its people as well as the constable did.

Instead Cobb said, “Am I to be taken to London, then?” The words came out more harshly than the man intended.

Rutledge said, “That hasn’t been decided.”

“You’ll have to find another home for Jake, you know,” he went on, striving to conceal the anxiety that had kept him awake.

“He seems to prefer women.”