She must have been a woman of extraordinary patience, he thought all at once. Always waiting, like the faithful Penelope. Why had she accepted such a life? And what in the end had it brought her?

But he thought he had found the answer to her acceptance in one small thing—there must have been a pet here at one time, something to keep her company. A cat, a small dog for safety and for friendship? From the upstairs window he could see a little graveyard with whitewashed headstones, four or five of them, as if over the years she had lost her companions as well as her son, and laid them to rest in a garden of remembrance. For around the stones grew pansies in profusion, and forget-me-nots.

He went back down the stairs, feeling depression settling over him, and walked out to the little graveyard. Three cats, two dogs, judging from the names painted in dark blue script on the whitewash. And one marked only mr. g.

“Do you want to speak to the farmer?” Constable Satterthwaite asked as Rutledge turned back to the house.

“If he was busy with a sick animal, he’s probably right, he saw nothing. What about his family?”

“His wife had gone to visit their daughter. The son is married and helps out at the farm on most days, but he walks over from where he lives.” He gestured toward the distance. “On the far side of his father’s land.”

“Therefore, nobody from his household came this way. All right, let’s speak to Mrs. Blaine. If something is missing here, we have no way of guessing what it is.” But downstairs again he paused long enough to flip the pages of the books by Mrs. Teller’s favorite chair, to see what might have been secreted among them. She had good taste in reading, he thought as he scanned.

Nothing but an occasional starched and embroidered bookmark fell out.

Rutledge stood in the passage for a moment, listening to the sounds of the house around him, trying to feel the presence of the woman who had spent most of her life here, and left so little of herself behind. But she was elusive, and he wished there had been a photograph of her in better times.

Then he followed Satterthwaite outside. The sky was a bright rose fading to shades of gray and lavender as the sun crept over the far horizon, and in the east the lavender deepened to purple. They closed the door on the silent house and walked back to the motorcar.

While the roof of Mrs. Blaine’s farmhouse could just be seen from the Teller house, the way there was not as direct. They turned down a rutted lane and bounced along it to the house nestled in the curve of the hill.