“You’re welcome to see for yourself. The truth is, after Mr. Gifford left, I’ve thought about it a good bit, and there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

He tried another possibility.

“Do you know a Miss Trent?”

“The lady at the hotel. Oh, yes, sir, she’s called on Father James a time or two. The man she was to marry, he was killed in the War, and she’s finishing the book he’d begun. As a memorial, so to speak. It’s all about what’s to be found in old churches—misericords, brasses, pew ends, baptismal panels, that sort of thing. Before he went off to France, her young man had written all the book except the chapter on Norfolk. As you’d expect, Father James knew the history of any number of the churches up here in the north, and was helping her.”

Suddenly enlightened, Rutledge remembered that Lord Sedgwick had referred to May Trent as having a religious bent. He could understand why such a mistake had been made, if she spent so much of her time visiting churches.

Mrs. Beeling spoke up. “You’re speaking of that pretty lady who was here to tea once when I came? Very kind she was, asking after my Tommy.” To Rutledge she said, “Tommy nearly lost a leg in the War. He still limps something fierce. The bones not knitting right.” And that carried her to a new train of thought. “You was the policeman in the motorcar t’other day, with Lord Sedgwick. Tommy was taking me to the doctor, and he said he saw the Inspector with His Lordship, but I took it to mean Inspector Blevins. And that made no sense at all!”

“Why not?” Rutledge asked.

“His Lordship’s far above taking up Inspector Blevins. Proud man, like his father. And he was as mean as they come! My grandmother was parlor maid to the Chastains, that lived in the hall before the first Lord Sedgwick took it over. When she married the coachman, they was given a grace-and-favor cottage in the village, for life. No such thing when I married my Ted. Head gardener, Ted was, and the old lord—Ralph, this ’un’s father—he knew the gatehouse cottage was coming open, and he never said a word. But this ’un’s wife, she tried to make up for it, and was kind enough to give me a brooch to wear on my wedding day.” The old woman fumbled in her shawls, and held out a lovely little enameled brooch, a hunting scene of hounds and horsemen over a fence after the fox. “That’s an American hunt, that is. Not one of ours. See the fence? Wood railings! You can tell by the fence!” She had remembered exactly what she’d been told about the little brooch, and it was a prized possession, one she wore when calling on friends.