Then I’ll see to it that he has something to carry him on. There’s his brother’s funeral. And now this. I understand he’s not delivering the eulogy for his brother. Susannah Teller was adamant that it be the eldest brother. Edwin. Now we must concentrate on the living. The husband. The child. Someone ought to notify the family. I don’t think Teller is up to it.”

“I’ll see to the family.” Rutledge followed the doctor to the door and then went back into the room to look down on the woman lying on her pillow, her face pale and already losing that quality that made people real.

There was a glass on the bedside table. Milk, he thought. And a bottle that had come from a doctor’s dispensary. There was no label on it.

He walked to the only other door in the room and opened it.

A dressing room, and then on the other side, as Dr. Fielding had said, the door into what must be the master bedroom. He crossed to open it, then looked back into the room where Jenny Teller lay.

“Why was she sleeping in there tonight?”

But Hamish had no answer for him.

Walter Teller’s bedchamber was high-ceilinged and spacious, handsomely furnished, and with a newer bed, more modern in style than the four-poster, and a low bookcase beneath the double windows that faced the front of the house. A part of the original building, it had the wider floorboards and a prie-dieu against one wall that looked very old, a vestige of the Catholic owners before the Reformation. Someone had kept it for its beautiful lines and decorations, and it was well suited to the room.

Walking back to where Jenny lay, he closed the dressing room door. And at almost the same moment, Fielding returned with Walter Teller.

Teller crossed the room, looked down at his wife, and collapsed to his knees beside the bed, taking one of her hands in his and burying his face in it.

Fielding gestured for Rutledge to leave him there, and they walked out into the passage together.

Rutledge asked, “Did Walter Teller ever tell his wife where he was when he disappeared?”

“I’m not sure. She brought Harry in to visit the dentist on Thursday, and I was just coming out. I asked her how her husband was, if I should stop in and see him, perhaps keep him under observation for a while. And she told me he had fully recovered. I asked if he’d said anything to her about where he’d been while he was missing. I was curious, and it was important as well to add that to his file in the event it happened again. She replied that he hadn’t confided in her. I could see she was unhappy about that. I suggested that she should give him a little space. That perhaps he himself was in need of time to understand his behavior. Harry had gone to speak to the vicar’s son, who was coming down the street with his mother. Mrs. Teller watched him for a moment and then said that she wondered if her husband’s family knew more about what had happened than she did, that they’d left her and gone in search of him, as if they knew something she didn’t. I tried to make her understand that staying occupied was one of the best ways to weather a worrying time. That if they were at all like their brother, they couldn’t have sat still and just waited, as she had done. That seemed to relieve her mind a little.”

“Could that explain sleepless nights? Women worry about their families—if they are ill or hungry or frightened or hurt. It’s their nature to care.”

“I doubt it. It could be as simple as still not forgiving her husband for sending Harry away so soon. Or her guilt over her brother-in-law’s fall. After all, he came down for her birthday celebration.”

“Yes, I see that.”

“Her death is consistent with overdose. There were no signs of struggle, only the disarrangement of the sheets while Teller strove to revive her. She drank her milk—if that’s where she put the sedative—of her own free will. No marks on the lips to indicate that she was forced to swallow it.”

Rutledge let it go. He went to rouse the maid, snoring deeply in her room in the attic, and asked her to prepare food for what was to come. She burst into tears when he told her that her mistress was dead, and he left her to grieve