Blevins walked back into the room rubbing his thigh with his fist. “Damned ox! Rutledge, did you say? From the Yard? What do they want? Is it about the priest’s murder?” As Rutledge nodded, Blevins bent to pick up papers that had fallen from the desk to the floor. He added, “Well, you’re just in time.” He jerked his head toward the rear of the station, where the protests and curses marked the location of a holding cell. “That’s our man. At least there’s every likelihood it is. He was the Strong Man at the bazaar. Quite an act, pulling a line of carriages against a team of horses, picking up a bench with two young ladies seated at either end, defying ordinary men to lift his iron weights. Very popular with the young people, engaging personality, they tell me. Name’s Walsh.”

It had been simple theft after all. “What connects him with the priest?” Rutledge felt like hell, his mind refusing to function, while his lungs burned.

“Circumstantial evidence so far. Mrs. Wainer was quite put out when she found Walsh wandering about in the rectory on the day of the bazaar looking—he said—for water to wash up. She sent him away with a flea in his ear. Fortunately, later on she remembered what had happened and told Sergeant Jennings. And when the police in Swaffham caught up with him at a fair there, he had a new cart for his gear. We’ve just brought him in, as a matter of fact.”

“Nothing suspicious in a new cart, surely?” The fire was subsiding.

“It was paid for two days after the priest was killed. With bits and pieces of bills and coin.” Blevins gestured to the chair vacated so abruptly by the Strong Man, then sat himself down behind the Sergeant’s desk. There was a cut on the heel of his hand, and he stared at it, then at the bloody stain spreading on his cuff. “Damn the bastard! Teeth like steel traps!”

Rutledge took the chair. His chest was settling into a dull ache now. Gingerly testing, he took a deep breath and felt nothing beyond the usual resistance. But the memory of the pain was still fierce. “The sort of money a bazaar takes in, yes. But surely the kind of thing his act brings in as well.”