"Did your son have an alibi?"

The flush deepened. "He didn't need one. His word was good enough."

But once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker, in the eyes of the police.

Walker stirred uneasily, as if he'd been caught in the crossfire between Pierce and the Hastings police.

Dropping the subject of Daniel Pierce, at least for the moment, Rutledge asked who had found the bodies of the other two victims.

Walker said, "It was the housekeeper at the Roper farm. She thought Jimmy might still be sitting with Dandelion. Instead she found his body just outside the stall. And young Mr. Pierce was discovered by the foreman, coming in to work the next morning. He thought the killer might still be in the brew house, and sent his men to search, armed with whatever weapons they could lay hands to, while he stayed with the body and one of the other men came for me."

"But there was no sign of an intruder."

"No, sir. Whoever he was, he hadn't broken in."

"Who survives Jeffers and Roper?"

"Mrs. Jeffers, his wife. And Roper's father-he's old, frail."

Rutledge turned to Pierce. "Your son Anthony wasn't married?"

"The young woman he would have married at the end of the war died in the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918. Of late, Anthony had been friends with Mrs. Farrell-Smith. She's head mistress at the Misses Tate School. It's a well-established institution here in Eastfield. A good many people from outside the village-Battle, Hastings, as far away as Rye-send their children here. Anthony attended it himself until he was twelve. The Tate sisters were still alive then."

"Have you seen any strangers here in Eastfield? Has anyone asked for Jeffers, Roper, or Pierce?"