“How do I know? I never saw the contents. Only her reading a letter to Jake.” He frowned. “Even my mother-in-law saw her reading them. She thought it was a love letter from me. And didn’t I get a flea in my ear! But I could look her in the face and tell her it wasn’t true. The only time I’d ever written Florence Teller was when Timmy died, to tell her how sorry I was over his loss. I doubt she kept it.”

Into the brief silence, he said to Rutledge, “You haven’t asked me if I killed her. Only what I had to say for myself.”

“Did you kill Florence Teller?”

Beside him he could feel Satterthwaite stir and then be still again.

“I did not. If I hang, I will tell the hangman I never touched her.”

“Then who did? Teller?”

“He must have done.”

Rutledge turned away.

The constable holding the lamp said, “Will that be all, then?” He shifted it to his other hand, preparing to close and lock the cell’s door.

“No. Not yet.” Rutledge walked away, through the gloom of the station and out into the cool morning air.

Satterthwaite’s silent accusation, as if Rutledge had betrayed him, kept him from thinking, and the beaten spirit of Lawrence Cobb, feeling his own sense of betrayal, clouded the issues.

And what were they? A dead woman. A broken cane with blood on the knob. A missing box of letters. Those were the facts, irrefutable, and the evidence must encompass them or it was faulty.

It was also a fact that Teller—or someone—had driven away around the same time Florence Teller was murdered. And Larkin, a walker, was a witness to that. The cane was a witness as well to Peter Teller’s presence. If he’d been chary with information about his regiment while living here in Hobson, he’d never have left that at Sunrise Cottage in his absences. It hadn’t been there for the killer to find ready to hand, until Teller himself brought it.

Teller—or Cobb? Where did the truth lie?

He walked on up the street, shops still closed, the milk van making its rounds, the sound of clinking bottles off in the distance, a crow calling from the church tower down another street, and wheels somewhere clattering over cobbles. A dog trotted up behind him, sniffed in his direction, and trotted on, looking for company. A cat in a house window silently meowed at him as he passed.

Go back to the evidence.

Hamish said, “It hasna’ changed.”

And that was true. It hadn’t altered. Going back over it was fruitless.

Rutledge swore.

He needed a night’s sleep, to clear his mind. But there wasn’t one in the offing.

Hamish was right. The evidence was the same. What was new?