“There are three rooms downstairs, and three bedrooms above. Her aunt lived in one of them, the boy Timmy in another. I don’t think, from the look of them, that she used either room after they died.”

Rutledge crossed the entry and went through the open door beyond. He could see the short passage continued, with the stairs to one side, the kitchen straight ahead, the parlor to his left, and a small dining room or sitting room to the right.

As he walked through the rooms, he found himself thinking that the parlor appeared to be frozen in time, intended for the use of guests of another generation, who never came. A settee and two chairs, a worn but handsome carpet, small tables with little treasures on them. There was another framed photograph, this time from Keswick in the Lake District, surely a souvenir of a visit. A tall blue vase intended for summer flowers took pride of place on one table, beside it a well-thumbed book of verse with no inscription. Just above the table hung a sandalwood fan in a case, spread to show the lacquered painting on parchment and the carved sticks. Handsomely embroidered pillow slips with Chinese scenes of mountains rising about a misty river set off the plainness of the dark furniture.

They were unusual pieces to find here in Hobson.

“What did her husband do before the war? Was he a farmer?”

“A career soldier. He was always sending her gifts from all over the world. I sometimes brought the packages out here, on my rounds. Her face would light up, and she’d smile as if it were her birthday.”

The dining room had been turned into a sitting room cum workroom, with a tabletop easel. On it was a watercolor of a cat curled up on a windowsill. It was only half finished. There was also a book of accounts on the table, a low bookshelf of leather-bound classics by the chair that was obviously her favorite. The cushions were worn, and the padded back had taken on a comfortable shape.

The kitchen was tidy, telling Rutledge that she had not expected guests, for the teapot and the cups and saucers were in their proper places in the cupboard.

“Or ha’ been washed and put away again,” Hamish suggested.

The square, footed dish on the table, covered by a linen handkerchief, held honey, and there was bread in the tin box by the stone sink. Looking out at the kitchen yard, he could see that flowers and herbs grew in profusion, turning the silvery wood of the shed into a backdrop for beauty and using the rough stone foundations of what must have been the ancient barn and other outbuildings as a sheltered place to grow more delicate plants.