“But he was in this house in the afternoon,” Mrs. Wainer said earnestly. “I found the Strong Man wandering about inside this house!” She cast a resigned glance in Rutledge’s direction. “That’s what alerted Inspector Blevins to look for him.”

“Yes, and a dozen other people were in here as well. I saw Lord Sedgwick’s son come to have a lie-down, when his back was paining him. I asked him if I might bring him a glass of water, and he said thank you but no. There was also the doctor’s wife, to put a plaster on Mrs. Cullen’s cut finger, and—”

“The Sedgwicks were at the bazaar?” Rutledge asked, although he knew they were. But Mrs. Beeling seemed to have perfect recall.

“Osterley doesn’t have a lord, you see,” Mrs. Beeling explained graciously, “though there’s always been good blood here. The Cullens and the Giffords and so on. But there’s no title. Still, the family does try to make an appearance on special days, and that’s as it should be.” She nodded. The Sedgwicks were not old money, but they were still money. “As for Arthur, he’s in terrible pain, they say, but he can get about. He’d come down for the fete and stayed on for that Herbert Baker’s funeral.”

“He was at Herbert Baker’s funeral?” The garrulous old woman had given Rutledge more information in a quarter of an hour than anyone else had done in several days of asking questions.

“Of course he was. Herbert Baker had been his father’s coachman, and then driven Arthur’s wife about in the motorcar until her death.”

Rutledge turned to Mrs. Wainer and said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll take you up on the offer of a cup of tea.”

She wasn’t pleased to serve him in the kitchen. And as it turned out, he wasted the next quarter of an hour.

Whatever her sources were for the gossip she had freely dispensed, Rutledge discovered that Mrs. Beeling had nothing more of interest to tell him, except that she most certainly had her own opinion on why Herbert Baker had seen two priests shortly before he died.