The title was “The Prodigal Son,” and it seemed to capture the story of the youngest son who left home, taking his share of his inheritance with him, leaving older brothers to support their aging father. But life had not been kind to him, and he returned a failure, expecting to be a slave in his father’s holdings, only to be treated like the lost and golden boy he’d been.

Richard.

It could be no one else. Richard—still alive? No, that was impossible! But still a threat to his brothers, because his body hadn’t been found. They would be left to wonder what had become of him. To wonder if he might someday come home in truth.

Rutledge thought about that.

The second murder.

There had been a long and intense search for the boy. No sign of him had been found. Flyers and posters had been sent out, gypsies and tramps questioned, farms fringing the moors turned inside out. He himself, reading over the reports and the final verdict, had believed that the killer had hidden the corpse—no body, no evidence of foul play. But, what if that was all wrong?

What if murder had been made to look like an accident? A drowning, a fall, a boy’s game of hide and seek that had tragically pitched him headfirst into a mine shaft? Knocked down and trampled by wild ponies? There were any number of possibilities. Then consider—

Someone else had found the body—not a search party of half a dozen men, but one person. Who might well have known for other reasons—or guessed—who was behind this carefully arranged scene. And who might have decided that Richard’s death—irreversible in itself—might still be a threat to his murderer. Gathering up the corpse, carrying it away in the night while the searchers were occupied on the moor, taking it where it might never be discovered, someone had altered the murderer’s design. Left a question mark in his mind, a doubt, a worry. And later, near where the body had been lying, the clothes had been buried. In case the murderer came back to search on his own for the child that the searchers ought to have found . ..