“Inspector Barton’s wife’s in the middle of a difficult pregnancy, and Dorset might as well be on the moon, she’s that upset about him leaving her. And Trask’s no countryman, they’ll be sending out search parties for him! As for Jack Bingham, he’s due for leave in two days.” Or so Bowles had claimed.

Not that it mattered; Rutledge was glad to be out of London. Loneliness had its own compensations, even when it brought Hamish in its wake.

Rutledge found his turning from the trunk road at the next signpost and was soon moving more southwesterly into the heart of Dorset. And with it the scent of hay faded. His mind found its way back from the past and slowly focused on the present.

This was Hardy country. But it was the difference in light that impressed Rutledge more than the author’s dark and murky characters. There was a golden-brown tint to the light here that seemed to come from the soil and the leaves of the trees. Not washed pastel like Norfolk, nor rich green like Kent. Nor gray damp like Lancaster. Dorset had been wool trade and stone, cottage industry and small farming towns strung along old roads that the Saxons had laid out long before the Norman conquest. Outlying meadows where cattle quietly grazed.

Rutledge found himself wishing he could ask a painter like Catherine Tarrant if she saw light in the same way, or if it was only his undependable imagination.

He came into the town of Singleton Magna almost before he knew it was there, the abrupt shift from fields to houses almost as sharp as a line drawn in the earth. The railroad’s tracks parted company with him and ran on to the station.