There was a long silence. “I don’t know,” Sims finally answered. “But I have the oddest feeling sometimes. Of being watched. Our festival is in the spring. June. Why would anyone take an interest in the vicarage, if money was all they were after? Look around you—”

Monsignor Holston had also had the feeling that he was watched. . . .

Sims was saying, “You’re fairly certain, are you, that what I heard was Walsh chiseling off his shackles?”

“Certain enough. We found the chains in the church. You identified the tools as yours, and the latch on the shed door was broken,” Rutledge reminded him. “It seems clear that Walsh came looking for a shed or outbuilding he could break into. And the church was a perfect place to hammer off the chains. No one lives close enough to hear the racket. Except perhaps for you.”

“Yes, well, from what you say, he’s running now and not likely to hang about in Osterley.” He rubbed tired eyes. “All right, thanks. Tell Blevins if he needs me, I’m available. I won’t sleep anyway after all this excitement.”

“I must be going. I’m to make sure Miss Connaught is safe. Blevins has been trying to see that all the people living alone are warned.”

A wry smile crossed Sims’s face. “Yes, go by all means. I’ll be fine.”

But as Rutledge walked out the door to the car, he heard the bolt shot home behind him.

Hamish said, “Was the laughter real—or his imagination, yon Vicar?”

Rutledge answered silently. “I don’t know. Shock can play strange games with the mind. On the other hand, it’s easy to hear what you expect to hear.”

“Aye. Well. He heard something.”

Priscilla Connaught lived in the house at the edge of the marshes, lonely and isolated, where the wind bent the trees and shrubs into Gothic shapes and the grasses rustled like whispers. The walk to the front door was dark, flowers leaning dry seed heads and wilting blossoms over the path. Rutledge could hear the seeds crunching underfoot. Out on the marshes, a bird called, low and forlorn, like a desolate soul looking for solace.

Hamish said, “This is no’ a place for a woman alone!”

But Rutledge thought that it must have appealed to Priscilla Connaught, who carried secrets with her and preferred to use her life as a weapon against a man she hated.

He knocked loudly on the wooden panels, and then pitching his voice to carry, he called, “Miss Connaught? It’s Ian Rutledge. From Scotland Yard. Will you come down, please? I’d like to pass on a message.”

A light came on in a window on the first floor, and he stepped back so that it would fall on his upturned face. A curtain twitched, and he could feel her eyes. Hat in hand, he stood there and said again, “It’s Ian Rutledge.”