not a surrogate.

Rutledge took a deep breath. Somehow he’d been very sure of Cobb’s innocence.

As if the constable had heard his thoughts, he said, “Remember? Larkin heard no shouting, no one crying out when the Teller motorcar was there.”

“Because by the time Larkin came down the hill, she was already dead.”

“I never could understand why Teller broke up that cane,” Satterthwaite went on. “If he’d taken it with him, we’d been none the wiser. Two minutes under a pump or dangled in a stream, and it would have been clean. But I can see Cobb killing her and then destroying the cane afterward. The cane was Teller’s, and he’d have liked to break it over the man himself. But he couldn’t. So he took his frustration and anger out on Teller’s possession. And Cobb is strong enough, he could have snapped off that knob.”

And that was the irrefutable fact. As Hamish was pointing out, even if Teller had hated himself for what he’d done, even if he’d broken his own cane out of self-loathing, he’d surely have had the sense to take the head of the cane with him. Even the drunken Peter Teller was far from stupid.

“Ye said yoursel’, it’s damning,” Hamish told him.

He should have been satisfied. But he wasn’t.

“Why did Cobb leave the rest of the cane for us to find?”

“To protect himself, if suspicion fell on him.” Satterthwaite stood up, collecting his own cup, intending to wash up. “I’ve had hours to think, waiting for you to come back. Hours.”

Fighting a rearguard action, Rutledge said, “And the box of letters?”

Satterthwaite replied, “Cobb said he never touched them. He had no reason to do it, and he couldn’t have taken them home with him. Teller must have put them in the boot. We’ll have to ask Larkin if he could see the boot of the motorcar from where he was.”

“No,” said Rutledge. “If she’d been alive, she would never have allowed that. Not her letters. She’d have fought him every step of the way.”

“Even if she was disillusioned?”

Satterthwaite scowled. “Then it was Cobb. Bound to have been. To hurt her more? Or maybe he wanted to read them. Who knows?”

“You said Cobb was in Thielwald?”

“I told you. I didn’t want him here. He’s safer there. And so am I.”

“I want to see him.”

“I know how much time you’ve given to this inquiry. I know how well you’d put together the case against Teller. I know how I’d said all along that no one here in Hobson would touch her. We were both wrong.”

Rutledge kept his cup, reached for the Thermos, uncapped it, and poured himself more tea. Then he said, “All right. I still must speak to Cobb. I want to judge him for myself. Let’s go.”

“Now? At this hour of the night?” Satterthwaite demanded as Rutledge drained his cup and handed back it to him.

“I have to be back in London as quickly as I can. There’s Teller’s death.”

They drove to Thielwald in an uncomfortable silence. Satterthwaite had said what he knew he must say. And Rutledge could think of no way to prove him wrong.

Hamish, a third in the motorcar, his voice at Rutledge’s ear, was trying to make himself heard, but Rutledge shut him out.

Concentrating on the dark winding road ahead, Rutledge tried to find holes in Satterthwaite’s arguments, weighing Teller against Cobb. He’d liked Cobb. He’d believed the man when he said that he couldn’t have killed Florence Teller. But then Teller himself had denied touching his wife. And that had rung true as well.

The sky was just brightening as the rain clouds scudded away, already thinning enough to offer the promise of sun to take their place.

Satterthwaite broke the silence. “A fair day . . .” And then his voice trailed off as Rutledge brought the motorcar to a halt in front of Thielwald’s police station. “I was thinking,” he went on as they got out. “If Cobb hadn’t walked out on her, I wonder if Betsy would have come to me. Even if she’d found a dozen bloody canes lying about in the barn. I think she’d have kept her mouth shut, and lived with a murderer, if it meant she could keep Cobb. After all, he’d rid her of her rival, whatever the reason behind it. Still, in the end, he’d have been brought under her thumb with the threat of exposure. That’s in her nature, to want to rule the roost. And he might have killed her then, to