“No, you couldn’t have looked at it the same way! There was no money in the desk, nothing to draw a thief to the study. Nothing for Walsh or anyone like him to slip into the rectory to steal.”

“You’re setting up a scene that didn’t exist! Walsh couldn’t know that, could he? See it my way for once! Walsh was desperate—this was his last hope of finding the sum he needed to finish paying for that bloody cart. He may have killed in a fury when he discovered the box was empty!”

“If this had happened before the bazaar—” Rutledge began.

“All right! Let’s take your position and examine it. A dead man and no tin box would tell me there was another reason, a personal reason, to kill that priest. But I knew Father James too well—and in all your questioning, you still haven’t answered that one, either!”

Blevins, tired as he was, couldn’t make the leap of imagination. Hamish said, “You canna’ expect it from him. He was too close to the victim.”

Rutledge took a deep breath, thinking, Hamish is right.

“If Father James knew something that worried him— possibly involving a police matter—would he come to you with it?”

“Of course he would! I’d be the first person he’d turn to,” Blevins answered with a lift of pride.

But he hadn’t—and for the same reason: Father James, too, had known the Inspector’s limitations as a man and as a policeman.

Rutledge said, “I hear there’s a chance that Monsignor Holston will replace Father James until a suitable choice can be made. I’m driving to Norwich later. Shall I tell him that Walsh has died?”

“Suit yourself. I expect half the county has heard that by now. What’s taking you to Norwich?”

Rutledge smiled. “A personal matter. By the way— who’ll be given the reward that Lord Sedgwick put up?”

“Not the police,” Blevins said wryly. “And Lord Sedgwick ought to make that decision himself.”

“I expect he will.” Rutledge rose from his chair. “Have you by any chance seen Miss Trent? I’d like to speak to her before I leave for Norwich.”

“She went out last night, found herself badly frightened in the woods north of the church, and spent what was left of it at the vicarage. I stopped there to tell the Vicar that Walsh had been found. He thought she was still asleep.”

“What frightened her?”

“God knows. An owl probably, or a badger. Women have no business out in the middle of the night on their own.”

“You’ve heard, I’m sure, that Priscilla Connaught was out looking for Walsh? Ran her car into a ditch and was lucky to survive with only a concussion.”

“Yes, well, rather proves my point, doesn’t it?”