She spilled tea into the saucer and clicked her tongue in annoyance. “I wish you would tell us what’s wrong! What it is you want from us.”

Sims took the saucer from her, poured out the spilled tea, and wiped it with a serviette. He said, “I have work to do here. I can’t abandon my parish on a whim. Miss Trent is justified in asking what it is you want.”

Rutledge said quietly, “I’m a policeman. Have you forgotten? I don’t have to ask. I can require you to accompany me. Now, if you’ve finished your tea, we’ll be on our way.”

Listening to Hamish battering at the back of his mind, Rutledge made one detour on his way to the road south.

He pulled once more into the rutted drive by Randal’s farm.

But the gelding and the farmer had not come home.

Rutledge was beginning to feel uneasy.

The motorcar was silent as they drove south. Rutledge, uncomfortable because the Vicar was sitting in Hamish’s usual place, was not the best of companions, and May Trent kept her face turned away from him, looking out the window.

Hamish, on the other hand, was conducting a long and skeptical conversation with Rutledge.

“It isna’ the best way! Go to London, and speak to yon Chief Superintendent, tell him what it is you suspect! Let him reopen the inquiry.”

“Bowles won’t be any more receptive than Blevins was. And the case will be closed. I have at best twenty-four hours to solve he mystery that surrounded Father James’s last days. But it was there.” Rutledge paused. “And there’s a secret binding these people together. Each seems to know only a part of it. What I don’t understand—yet—is whether the mystery and the secret are one and the same. I’m willing to bet my career that they are!”

“Aye, it could be so. But the days of the rack are over— you canna’ force them to tell you. Or be certain in the end you’ve got the truth.”

Rutledge concentrated on the road for a time and then picked up the thread of his silent conversation with Hamish. If nothing else, it kept him awake. But it failed to satisfy either one of the participants.

Hamish’s last salvo was telling.

“They willna’ like it in London.”

“No. But we’re a long way from London.” Rutledge shut out the voice in his aching head and tried to concentrate on the busy road south.

It was close to teatime when Rutledge pulled the motorcar into a small space between a cart full of cabbages and the deep hole that still reeked like a cesspool.