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Haldanes are. The Davenants used to be just about as big, but Hugh Davenant was not the man his father was, and he lost most of his money in wild schemes, then had to sell off land to pay his debts. That’s Mrs. Davenant’s late husband I’m speaking of. She was lucky he died when he did. He hadn’t learned a lesson as far as I could tell, and she’d have been penniless in the end. But he had no head for business, it was as simple as that.”
    “Who bought most of the Davenant land? Harris?”
    “He bought several fields that ran along his own, but Haldane and Mrs. Crichton’s agent took the lion’s share. She lives in London, she’s ninety now if she’s a day, and hasn’t set foot in Upper Streetham since the turn of the century.”
    “Which leaves us with Mavers wanting to shoot the Czar and a choice between Harris and the Haldanes.”
    “People like Mavers don’t think the way you and I do. He had a running feud with Harris, and if he wanted to kill anyone, he’d probably choose the Colonel on principle. In fact, he once said as much when the Colonel threatened to put him away if he tried to poison the dogs again. He said, ‘Dog and master, they deserve the same fate.’”
    “When did this happen? Before the war or later on?”
    “Yes, before, but you haven’t met Mavers, have you?”
    “He has witnesses who say he was here in the village on Monday morning, making one of his speeches to people coming in to market.”
    Royston shrugged. “What if he was? Nobody pays any heed to his nonsense. He could have slipped away for a time and never be missed.”
    Rutledge considered that. It was a very interesting possibility, and Mrs. Davenant had made much the same comment. “Do you think Captain Wilton killed Harris?”
    Royston firmly shook his head. “That’s ridiculous! Whatever for?”
    “Daniel Hickam claims he saw the Colonel and the Captain having words on Monday morning, shortly before the shooting. As if a quarrel the night before had carried over into the morning and suddenly turned violent.”
    “Hickam told you that?” Royston laughed shortly. “I’d as soon believe my cat as a drunken, half-mad coward.”
    Prepared for the reaction this time, Rutledge still flinched.
    The words seemed to tear at his nerve endings like a physical pain. Through it he asked, “Did you see the body yourself, when word was brought that the Colonel had been found?”
    “Yes.” Royston shuddered. “They were babbling that the Colonel had been shot, and that there was blood everywhere, and my first question was, ‘Has any one of you fools checked to see if he’s still breathing?’ And they looked at me as if I’d lost my wits. When I got there I knew why. I tell you, if I’d been the one who’d done it, I couldn’t have gone back there. Not for anything. I couldn’t believe it was Charles at first, even though I recognized his spurs, the jacket, the ring on his hand. It—the body—looked—I don’t know, somehow obscene—like something inhuman.”

    When Royston had gone, Rutledge finished his coffee and said gloomily, “We’ve got ourselves a paragon of all virtues, a man no one had any reason to kill. If you don’t count Mavers—who happens to have the best alibi of the lot—you’re left with Wilton and that damned quarrel. Tell me, Sergeant. What was Harris really like?”
    “Just that, sir,” the Sergeant replied, addressing the question as if he thought it slightly idiotic. “A very nice man. Not at all the sort you’d expect to end up murdered!”

    Very soon after that they found Daniel Hickam standing in the middle of the High Street, intent on directing traffic that no one else could see. Rutledge pulled over in front of a row of small shops and studied the man for a time. Most of the shell shock victims he’d seen in hospital had been docile, sitting with blank faces staring blindly into the abyss of their own terrors or pacing back and forth, hour after hour, as if bent on