not to have the truth about it brought into the open. The poor are not necessarily saints. And sinners do have some goodness in them. Isn't that what the church teaches?'
Heller took a deep breath. 'Back to Michael. Do give him the benefit of the doubt. There's much healing left to do.'
'I'll bear that in mind,' Rutledge answered mildly. He turned to walk back toward the church, and Heller followed him. 'We aren't going to solve this dilemma, Mr. Heller, until we have our killer. And to that end, I must go on questioning people, however unpleasant it must be.'
Heller said nothing, keeping pace beside him, his mind elsewhere. As they parted at the corner of the churchyard, he broke his silence. 'I will pray for you to be granted wisdom, Inspector.'
'It might be more beneficial to your flock if you prayed for wisdom for Inspector Padgett as well.'
Heller smiled. 'I already do that, my boy.' He glanced upward, where a flight of rooks came to perch on the pinnacles of the church tower. After a moment he said, 'I've been told that Mrs. Quarles is home again, with her son. They're to collect her husband's body and take it north for burial. I did wonder why Mrs. Quarles hadn't asked me to preside over a brief service here, before her husband was taken north. But that's her decision to make, of course.'
'Perhaps here in Cambury, you know him better than Mrs. Quarles wishes.'
Heller sighed. 'I can tell you how it will be. Once Mr. Quarles has left the village, it will be as if he never was. We'll not talk about his irritating qualities, because of course he's dead. There will be a family bequest to the church, and we'll name something after him, and forget him. It's a poor epitaph for a man who was so forceful in life.'
'Did you know that Quarles's partner, Davis Penrith, was the son of a curate?'
'Actually I believe Mr. Quarles brought that up once in a conversation. He seemed to find it amusing.'
'Because it wasn't the truth, or because Penrith didn't live up to his father's calling?'
'I have no idea. But Mr. Quarles did say that he didn't have to fear his partner, because the man would never turn against him. Or to be more precise, he said the one person he'd never feared was his partner, because Penrith would never have the courage to turn against him.'
'When was this?' Rutledge asked.
'I don't remember just when-I think while Mr. Quarles was living here in Cambury for several weeks. I was out walking one afternoon, and he was coming back from one of the outlying farms. He stopped to ask me if he could give me a lift back to town, and I accepted. We got on the subject of enemies, I can't think how…'
'That's an odd topic for a casual encounter.'
'Nevertheless, he made that remark about Penrith, and I commented that loyalty was something to value very highly. He told me it wasn't a matter of loyalty but of fact.'
Yet Penrith had walked away from their partnership. And as far as anyone knew, Quarles hadn't felt betrayed. Had, in fact, done nothing to stop him.
'They were an unlikely pair to be friends, much less partners,' Rutledge mused.
'Yes, that's true. I thought as much myself from Mr. Quarles's remarks. But there's no accounting for tastes, in business or in marriage, is there? Good day, Mr. Rutledge.'
He watched the rector striding toward the church door, his head down, his mind occupied. As Heller disappeared into the dimness of the doorway, Hamish said, 'There's no' a solution to this murder.'
'There's always a solution. Sometimes it's harder to see, that's all.'
'Oh, aye,' Hamish answered dryly. 'The Chief Constable will ha' to be satisfied with that.'
M
iss O'Hara was just coming out her door with a market basket over her arm as Rutledge passed her house. She hailed him and asked how the Jones family was faring.
'Well enough,' he told her.
'We ought to find whoever killed Quarles and pin a medal on him. They do it in wars. Why not in peace, for ridding Cambury of its ogre.'
'That's hardly civilized,' he told her, thinking that Brunswick might agree with her.
'We aren't talking about civilization.' She drew on her gloves, smiled, and left him standing there.
Rutledge could still see her slender fingers slipping into the soft fabric of her gloves. They had brought to mind the uglier image of Harold Quarles's burned hands, the lumpy whorls and tight patches of skin so noticeable in the light of Inspector Padgett's lamps as the body came to rest on the floor of the tithe barn.
Like the coal mines, those hands were a part of the public legend of Harold Quarles. Neither Rutledge nor Padgett had thought twice about them, because they had been scarred in the distant past.
He turned back the way he'd come and went on to Dr. O'Neil's surgery.
The doctor was trimming a shrubbery in the back garden. Rut- ledge was directed there by the doctor's wife, and O'Neil hailed his visitor with relief. Taking out a handkerchief, he wiped his forehead and nodded toward chairs set in the shade of an arbor. 'Let's sit down. It's tiresome, trimming that lilac. I swear it waits until my back's turned, and then grows like Jack's beanstalk.'
They sat down, and O'Neil stretched his legs out before him. 'What is it you want to know? The undertaker has come for Quarles, and I've finished my report. It's on Padgett's desk now, I should think.'
'Thank you. I'm curious about those scars on Quarles's hands.'
'You saw them for yourself. The injuries had healed and were as smooth as they were ever going to be. It must have happened when he was fairly young. I did notice that the burns extended just above the wrist. And the edges were very sharply defined, almost as if someone had held his hands in a fire. You usually see a different pattern, more irregular. Think about a poker that's fallen into the fire. The flames shoot up just as you reach for it. You might be burned superficially, but not to such an extent as his, because in a split second you realize what you've done, drop the poker, and withdraw out of harm's way. What I found remarkable was that Quarles hadn't lost the use of his fingers. That means he must have had very good care straightaway.'
'Were there other burns on his body? His neck, for instance, or his back. I'm thinking of bending over a child, protecting it with his own body as he runs a gantlet of fire.'
'I wasn't really looking for old wounds.'
'If he'd had other scars like those on his hands, surely you'd have noticed them.'
'Yes, of course. Burns do heal with time, if not too severe. A wet sack over his back might have been just enough to prevent permanent scars. Where, pray, is this going?'
'Curiosity. I'm wondering if there were other enemies besides those we know of in Cambury.'
O'Neil said slowly, 'If someone had held his hands to a fire, it would have been Quarles who wanted to avenge himself.'
'Yes, that's the stumbling point, isn't it?' Rutledge smiled wryly.
O'Neil said, 'Sorry I can't help you more.'
'Do you by chance know anything about these Cumberline funds that Quarles nearly lost his reputation over?'
O'Neil laughed. 'A village doctor doesn't move in such exalted circles.' The laughter faded. 'Sunday night as I was trying to fall asleep, I kept seeing those wings outstretched above the dead man. It occurred to me that after someone hit him from behind, they desecrated his body. The only reason I could think of was that Quarles died too easily, that perhaps he was expected to die slowly up there with the wings biting into his back. Terrible thought, isn't it?' onstable Horton spent a wet Saturday evening in The Black
And that possibility, Rutledge thought, spoke more to Michael Brunswick than it did to Hugh Jones. Pudding. It was not his first choice, but his friends drank there from time to time, and he went in occasionally for a pint to end his day.
Tom Little was courting a girl in the next village but one, and full of himself. He thought she might say yes, if he proposed, and his friends spent half an hour helping him find the right words, amid a good deal of merriment. The landlord had occasion to speak to them twice for being overloud.
Constable Horton, trying his hand at peacemaking, joined the group and steered the conversation in a different direction. He was finishing his second glass when a half-heard comment caught his attention. He brought his chair's front legs back to the floorboards with a thump and asked Tommy Little to repeat what he'd just said.
Little, turning toward him, told him it would cost him another round. Constable Horton, resigned, got up to
