“The maid? I don’t think Teller summoned her.” He crossed the room and helped the doctor with his work, smoothing out the bed-clothes, laying the dead woman back into the center of the bed, and pulling a sheet up to her chin. He worked impersonally, and when the body had been made presentable, he could say with certainty that there was nothing unusual here, no signs of violence.

He said, when their work was done, “What happened?”

“An accidental overdose of laudanum at a guess. I prescribed it some time ago. I can’t tell you why she was taking it now. Worry over that business with her husband? Or the boy going away to school? I know she took it very hard when Captain Teller fell here. She said something to me Sunday evening about not knowing how she was to sleep. She kept seeing him lying there at the bottom of the stairs.”

“And you prescribed nothing then?”

“No. She wasn’t asking for medical advice. I just asked how she was bearing up. I’d come back because I was worried about her and the Captain’s widow. Susannah Teller. She was quite distraught. She should have been allowed to go back to London straightaway, but she said you refused to hear of it. Then the police from Waddington came back, and they told everyone they were free to go. Edwin Teller and his wife took Susannah back to London. They were concerned about his grandmother and how to break the news to her.”

“And the sisters? Miss Brittingham and Miss Teller?”

“They left as well. Miss Brittingham asked the rector to keep Harry for the night, thinking it for the best. Miss Teller was very upset and had words with her brother Walter. Then she left.”

Rutledge said, “The Tellers didn’t share a room?”

“The master bedchamber is just through that door. This room is where Jenny stayed for her lying-in with Harry. It was where she always slept when her husband was away.”

“If Walter Teller had been sleeping in there, would he have heard anything?”

“I doubt there was anything to hear. Certainly no violent death throes if that’s what you mean.”

Fielding stood there, looking down at Jenny Teller. “I can tell you, I wouldn’t have been surprised to be summoned because Walter Teller was dead of an overdose. In his case, deliberate.” He shook his head. “He’s been under a terrible strain. They’d warned me at the clinic that this might be a consequence of his illness, and when I was here Sunday to pronounce the Captain dead, I was stunned to see the change in Teller. The attending doctors at the clinic felt that his recovery would depend on finding a solution to his distress.”

“I thought he’d decided not to return to the field. That he was going to tell them that he had done enough.”