“He might have awoken to find you weren’t here, and he may have gone to Essex to seek you,” Rutledge pointed out.

“But he knew I wouldn’t go that far. As for his family, I feel let down, somehow. As if his brothers are more worried about Walter than about me. That sounds selfish, doesn’t it? But they were here last night, badgering the police, and I could see that they could hardly sit still.”

“Do you think they might know something they haven’t told the police? About your husband’s illness or his disappearance?”

“What could they know?” She considered that for a moment, and then said, “Walter is a good man, he’s tried to live up to his calling, and he takes his responsibilities seriously. He’s kind and considerate, and not the sort of person who has secrets. He wouldn’t leave me to worry like this if he were in his right mind. I’m sure of it. I don’t believe for a moment that he knew what he was doing yesterday, and that’s what’s so frightful to think about—that he’s ill and not able to judge things properly and can’t care for himself.”

“I understand.” Rutledge glanced at Matron, to see if she had anything more to add, but she was watching Mrs. Teller with concern for her distress. Feeling his gaze, she turned to look at him.

“I can add very little to that, except to say that Mr. Teller was very depressed by his illness. I had wondered if he feared his condition was permanent.”

“Then when it changed for the better,” Rutledge pointed out, “it should have been very reassuring. And it was not. Which leads me to believe that something else was on his mind.” He turned again to Mrs. Teller. “Where would he be likely to turn, if he were troubled?”

“Why should he turn anywhere? He only needed to ask one of the sisters where I had gone. They would have told him.” She blinked back tears. “It was the first and only time I left him. I hadn’t slept at all—I was so afraid he would die.”

Matron said, “When Sister Agnes looked in on him shortly before three o’clock, he appeared to be asleep. When she returned at twenty past four, he was gone. In little more than an hour, he recovered the use of his limbs and dressed himself. It seems hardly possible.”

“Someone might have helped him dress. Helped him to leave.”

“Who? To what end?” Jenny Teller put in quickly. “Everyone was at Edwin’s house—they were all there.”

Hamish said, “Did he wait for her to go?”

It was a good point. Jenny herself had just said that she had never left her husband’s side. And he could hardly dress and slip away with her there in the room.

Rutledge left Mrs. Teller in Matron’s care and searched the clinic himself, as the staff and then the police had done the night before.

Sister Vivian accompanied him and answered his questions. But it was clear that a patient would have found it difficult to slip out the staff entrance or the door where supplies came in and the dead were carried out.