“Yes, I do. Thank you, Inspector.”

Rutledge turned to walk away, and Russell said, “Actually-there is one thing you might do for me.”

Facing Russell again, Rutledge asked, “What is it?”

“Pray for my soul. It might help. A little.”

M otoring back to the Yard, Rutledge considered Wyatt Russell. If he’d been telling the truth, that he’d come to confess a murder that was weighing on his soul, why had he been so reluctant to tell the whole truth, and not just a part of it?

Was someone else involved?

And that was very likely the answer. But then why not simply continue to live with the secret, and die without confessing it? When Russell learned he couldn’t have it both ways, he had retreated from that confession.

Was that someone else a partner in the crime? Or the reason for it?

As he got out of his motorcar at the Yard, he was examining a map of Essex in his head. North of the Thames, north of Kent on the other side of that river, it was threaded with marshes, the coastline a fringe of inlets and a maze of tidal rivers that isolated the inhabitants in a world little changed with the passage of time. Until the war, the people of that part of Essex had known little about the rest of their county, much less their country, content with their own ways, in no need of modern conveniences or interference in a life that contented them.

As Essex moved inland, it was a different story entirely, with towns, villages, and a plethora of roads. Basildon, Chelmsford, Colchester might as well be the antipodes as far as the marsh dwellers were concerned, as distant to their way of thinking as London itself. And Rutledge, nodding to the sergeant on duty and mounting the stairs to his office, was certain that a murder in villages even in that part of the countryside wouldn’t go unnoticed. Unless, of course, Russell had been very clever indeed at disposing of an unwanted body.