no one found her, you had to be the one to call the police. You couldn’t wait any longer.”

“It’s Cobb—”

“Cobb didn’t have the box of letters. Teller didn’t have them. That left you. Which means you went inside that house, stepping over the body, to see if Cobb was in the back weeding. And because he wasn’t, you helped yourself to the bird, to the box where you knew Mrs. Teller had kept her personal papers, and then the head of the cane, which was gold. Putting it all together, I can see now that it was Betsy who killed her. And you went there as soon as she told you, to make sure there was no evidence against her.”

Mrs. Blaine, fighting for control, said, “I’ll tell them in the courtroom that you’re a filthy liar, that you came here from London and couldn’t see your nose in front of your face. I’ll tell them that because I did a good deed, you want to blame me, to cover up your incompetence. They won’t like you when I’ve finished with them, and they won’t believe a word you say.”

“Betsy thought it was Cobb, didn’t she, who had brought Florence Teller to tears? She didn’t wait to hear all of it. She acted in a fury.”

Mrs. Blaine moved away from the sink. “You’ll not hang my daughter. She’s the victim here. Betrayed by her own husband, watching that woman suck him dry of any feeling for her, and not satisfied with that, he turned my daughter out of her own house. The constable will tell you, he saw Cobb coming into Hobson with the mark on his face where my daughter had to defend herself from his brutality. He said straight out that he’d kill her if she touched Florence Teller. Do you think she’d dare?”

“Cobb walked out, he didn’t turn her out.”

“He’s a murderer. He’d have come back in the night and stabbed her in her sleep. That bit of cane was found in his things. Not hers.”

“The parrot. The head of the cane. The box of letters,” Rutledge said again. “You took them all. Shall I bring the parrot back to Hobson?”

“I thought I was protecting her. It turned out I was protecting her worthless husband. And who will listen to a bird?”

“If you’d believed it was Cobb, you wouldn’t have needed the parrot or the box. And you’d have left the cane where it was. Didn’t it bother you that she lay there two days while you hoped someone else would find her? Two days—I call that inhuman.”

She whirled, her hands closing over the heavy whetstone that was used to sharpen knives, and she flung it at Rutledge with deadly aim.

But he was expecting it, and she narrowly missed him. With a cry of fury, she turned and was on her way out the door, just as her daughter came into the kitchen from the yard.

Mrs. Blaine burst into tears. “I’m a mother. I had to protect my daughter. I killed her, not Betsy. It was never Betsy.”

Betsy, barging into her mother, spun her out of the way. “I heard all of it,” she said, her face flushed and her eyes bright with her fury. “I heard what you were saying. Well, I’d do it again. If I had the chance, I’d do it again! You don’t have any idea how much I hated her.”

Chapter 29

It took some time to arrange matters. The two women were shut up in the pantry by the kitchen door, where the windows were too small to allow either of them to escape. Satterthwaite was left to guard them while Cobb and Rutledge went back to Thielwald to bring back help.

On the way, Cobb said, “How did you know?”

“Betsy wouldn’t throw a handful of earth on the coffin. You left her a rose.”

“You knew then?” Cobb asked in disbelief.

“No. But it occurred to me on the way to the Blaine Farm. You said yourself Mrs. Blaine was like a magpie. The gold knob for a rainy day. The letter box in the event a deed was in there as well. Jake, in the event he could name her daughter. If Betsy had been glad someone else had killed Florence Teller, she’d have wished her to rest in peace. And to leave you in peace.”

“I’d told her I’d kill her if she hurt Florence.”

“She was in a fury that day. She must have thought you and Mrs. Teller had had words. That you’d come