Though she had cut herself off from the mainstream of life in Lowfield, Catherine was fully aware that the talk would already be beginning. A month ago, it would not have occurred to her to care.

“Catherine,” Galton said.

She looked at him.

“Who rents your place?”

“Martin Barnes,” she said promptly.

She slid easily back into her silence. It had been her natural element for months; and even before that, she had not been what anyone would call talkative. Her roommate in college had called her “Sphinx.” It had become her accepted name on the small private campus.

She wished there was someone around to call her that now.

Martin Barnes. That was food for thought. Catherine supposed the person most familiar with that piece of land must be the most suspected. The shack was visible, but not obvious, from the highway. You wouldn’t, Catherine decided, just glimpse it and say, “Perfect place for this body I have on my hands.” But Mr. Barnes can’t have anything to do with this, she thought. He’s-older than my father; he’s a good man. Besides-she must have been raped. Why else would anyone drag a lady out to the country and bash her on the head?

But the woman’s dress hadn’t been disarranged. Catherine could see it clearly, pulled down around the woman’s knees. A print shirtwaist dress, an everyday dress, short-sleeved for the summer. The kind of dress any older woman in Lowfield would wear to go to the grocery. Not a dress any woman would wear to die in.

Robbery, then? Catherine wondered. Had there been a purse at the woman’s side? She couldn’t recall one-and she could still see the body clearly. She shuddered, and her small square hands gripped her folded arms.

“Let me tell you the procedure, Catherine,” Sheriff Galton said abruptly, and she knew he had noticed the shudder.

She summoned up a courteous show of interest.