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lass,” Jim Follet told him. “The nearest medical man is a good twenty mile from here as the crow flies. Jarvis, his name is. My Mary's been doctoring the family and the animals for thirty year or more.”
    Rutledge believed him. In such isolated farms, the wife was usually the first and sometimes the only help to be had in an emergency.
    Follet stretched his legs out to the hearth. “Where did she go off the road?”
    Rutledge told him what he could. Follet said, “Aye, I know the place. She's not the first to come to grief there! Even heavy rains make that stretch hazardous. Well. I'll have a team up there at first light. A pity about the horse.”
    “I don't know if there's any luggage in the back. But if she drove from

Carlisle . . .”
    “There'll be a valise of some sort. Yes, I'll look.”
    Follet reached across the table to a pipe rack and began to fill one, tamping it carefully before lighting a spill at the hearth and holding it to the tobacco. His hair was iron gray, his skin toughened by wind and cold. The blue eyes squinting through the pipe smoke were sharp. Rutledge noticed that he'd hastily pulled on his trousers and a sweater over his night clothes, his braces hanging down to his hips.
    “Nasty business,” Follet said again, referring to the murders. “Not the sort of thing we're used to. An entire
family
, by God. It makes no sense to me!”
    “Did the search party bring any other news?”
    “As far as I can tell, Inspector Greeley has no idea who's behind these killings. To be honest, that question's plagued me as well. Ever since the men left here. And for the life of me, I can't come up with a satisfactory answer. It isn't as if the Elcotts were troublesome, the sort who'd rub people wrong and make enemies! And Cummins—who keeps the hotel—did tell me it appears nothing was taken. That rules out thievery. The best I can think of is a chance encounter—someone quietly passing through, and Elcott spotted him. Once the man was seen, he might've feared word would get out. But even that's far-fetched! It smacks of something vile, to my mind—killing those children.”
    “How well did you know the family?”
    “Well enough. The Elcott farm lies across Urskwater from us, and I doubt I've been there more than a dozen times over the years. Henry—the father—I knew best, of course. We'd served on church committees together. I'd meet Gerald now and again in Urskdale. He's the older brother, and High Fell went to him when Henry died. Good sheep man. His wife came here in the third year of the war—at the end of 1916, I think, or first part of '17. A war widow, she was, with two children. Late last summer she and Elcott had the twins. Nice enough woman, from all reports. Kept her house well, and Mary claims she was a good cook. A neighbor bought a packet of her sweet cakes at the last church fair, and told Mary they was particularly fine. If the boy's dead, it's a kindness, in a manner of speaking. What's he to do, on his own at that tender age? Besides, I don't see how he could have survived for long out in that storm!”
    But what if the boy could identify the killer? What if the killer and not the storm had already reached him and left him dead? A sixth victim?
    There was nothing to be done tonight, Hamish reminded him. Except to make all haste to Urskdale.
    But Rutledge was considering the homey accolades. They were the measuring stick of small towns and villages all across England. The state of a man's stock and the state of a woman's kitchen told neighbors whether they were dependable or slovenly, careful or spendthrift, reliable or slack. Perhaps more so here, where isolation made a knowledge of one's neighbors rudimentary. To stop next door for a cup of sugar often meant a walk of several miles. Still, a man learned soon enough who was to be trusted and who wasn't. . . . Had Elcott had any suspicion at all that he and his family were in danger? Or had Death simply walked in one evening?