A growing aura of suspicion spread through the town, as people tried to second-guess the police.

Then it slowly began to occur to inhabitants, one after another, that the killer couldn’t be a local man. Not someone they knew. It simply wasn’t possible.

Still, eyes turned suspiciously, glanced over shoulders, followed this man or that down the street with furtive conjecture-an unease spreading like a silent illness through the town.

Mr. Sims found himself thinking that there was a reason for killing Father James, if he’d seen the face of the man invading his home and threatening him with the crucifix from his own altar. Recognition was knowledge-and there were some who might be afraid that even the compassion of a priest had its limits.

Fear was seldom ruled by reason; it reacted to danger first and logic afterward. The first blow must surely have been fear-the succeeding blows could have been fear, or could have been cunning, the need to silence. How was anyone to know, until the priest’s killer had been found?

Sims tried not to look into the faces of the people of Osterley and speculate. But he couldn’t stop himself from doing it. Human nature was human nature. He was no different from the rest of his neighbors.

The War had taught Sims that frightened men did whatever they had to do to stay alive. And in the trenches, killing had become a natural reaction to peril. He wondered if the priest’s attacker was an unemployed former soldier, one so desperate that he’d felt no compunction about taking life.

One man in Osterley came close to meeting those criteria. Sims refused to entertain the likelihood that he would ever kill again.