“There was a shape draped across the fence,” Paxton continued. “It looked like a scarecrow, but there’s no scarecrow on that land. I climbed the gate and went to have a look-see. I never seen so much blood. I felt it under my boots. I’d say Mal hadn’t been dead more than a couple of minutes when I found him.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Stokes.

“His innards were steaming,” replied Paxton, simply.

“What did you do then?” said Burke.

“I went back to the village, fast as I could. Ran into the pub and told old Ken the barman to send for the constable here. I think some people might have been on their way to take a look at the body for themselves, soon as they heard, but as it happened the constable was passing when they came out and he went with them.”

“And you also went back, I presume?” said Stokes.

“I did. When all was done, I went home to the missus here and told her what had happened.”

Burke turned his attention to the young woman seated to his left. Mrs. Paxton had spoken barely five words since their arrival. She was a slight thing, with dark hair and large blue eyes. Burke supposed that she might even have been termed beautiful.

“Is there anything you can add to what your husband has told us, Mrs. Paxton?” he asked her. “Did you hear or see anything that night that might help us?”

Her voice was so low that Burke had to lean forward to hear what she was saying.

“I was asleep in bed when Fred came in,” she said. “When he told me it was Mal Trevors, well, I just felt something turn inside me. It was terrible.”

She excused herself and rose from the table. Burke watched her go, then caught himself doing so and returned his attention to the men around him.

“Do you remember how the people in the inn responded when you told them the news?” he asked Paxton.

“Shocked, I suppose,” he said.

“Was Elsie Warden shocked?”

“Well, she was later, when she found out,” said Paxton.

“Later?”

“Dr. Allinson said that Elsie’d taken ill not long before I returned. His wife was looking after her in old Ken’s kitchen.”

Burke asked if he might use the toilet, so that he could have a little privacy in which to consider what he had learned. Fred Paxton told him the facilities were outside, and offered to show him, but Burke assured him that he would be able to find them alone. He walked through the kitchen, found the privy, and relieved himself while he thought. When he went back outside, Mrs. Paxton was standing at the kitchen window. Her upper body was bare and she was washing herself with a cloth from the sink. She stopped when she saw him, then lowered her right hand so that her breasts were exposed to him. Her body was very white. Burke looked at her for just a second longer, then slowly she turned away, her back a pale expanse against the shadows, and disappeared from view. Burke skirted the side of the house, returning to the main room through the front door. Upon his return, Waters and Stokes stood and the four men walked together into the front yard. Paxton spoke to the constable about local matters, and Stokes ambled onto the road, taking the air. Suddenly, Burke found Mrs. Paxton by his side.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

She blushed slightly, but Burke felt that the only real embarrassment was his own.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said.

“I do have just one other question,” he said to her.

She waited.

“Did you like Mal Trevors?”

It took a moment for the answer to come.

“No, sir,” she said eventually. “I did not.”

“May I ask why?”

“He was a brute of a man, and I saw the way he looked at me. Our land adjoined his, and I made a point never to be alone in the fields when he was around.”

“Did you tell your husband of this?”

“No, but he knew how I felt, right enough.”

She stopped talking suddenly, conscious that she might have said something to incriminate her Fred, but Burke reassured her.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Paxton. Neither you nor your husband is a suspect here.”

She remained suspicious of him, though.

“So you say.”

“Listen to me. Whoever killed Mal Trevors would have been covered in blood afterward. I hardly think that description applied to your husband that night, did it?”

“No,” she replied. “I see what you mean. I don’t think Fred has it in him to kill Mal Trevors, or to kill anyone, come to that. He’s a good man.”

“But you felt distressed at Trevors’s death, despite what you felt about him,” said Burke.

Again, there was a pause before the reply came. Burke could see her husband over her shoulder, no longer distracted by Waters but now coming to his wife’s aid. There was little time left.

“I wished that he was dead,” said Mrs. Paxton softly. “The day before he died, he brushed against me when we were in Mr. Little’s store together. He did it deliberately, and I felt him push into me. I felt his…thing. He was a pig, and I was tired of being afraid to walk in our own fields. So, for a moment, I wished him dead, and then a day later he was dead. I suppose I wondered…”

“If somehow you might have caused his death?”

“Yes.”

Fred Paxton was now beside them.

“Is everything all right, love?” he asked, placing a protective arm around his wife’s shoulders.

“Everything’s fine now,” she said.

She smiled at her husband, but it was to reassure him rather than to express any real emotion on her own part, and Burke caught a glimpse of the real power behind their marriage, the strength hidden inside this small, pretty woman.

And he felt a surge of unease.

Everything’s fine.

Everything’s fine now that Mal Trevors is dead.

Sometimes you do get what you wish for, don’t you, my love?

By now it was growing dark. Stokes remarked that winter seemed to be extending its reach far into February, for although the winter solstice had long since passed, daylight was in short supply in Underbury and its surrounds. Constable Waters counseled the detectives against visiting the Warden family after dusk-“They’re an uneasy lot, and like as not the old man will have a shotgun in his hand to greet visitors at this hour”-and so the policemen returned to the village, where Stokes and Burke ate stew together in one corner of the inn, untroubled by inquiries after their health. Burke announced that he wished to visit Dr. Allinson, and politely declined his sergeant’s offer of company on the road. He wished to have some time alone, and although Stokes generally knew when to keep quiet in the presence of the inspector, Burke nevertheless found the presence of others distracting when he was trying to think. He secured a lamp from the innkeeper and then, once the directions offered were clear in his head, he took to the road and walked to the Allinsons’ house, which lay about one mile north of the village. It was a starless night, and Burke was oppressed by unseen clouds.

All of the windows were dark when he arrived at the house, save one at the very highest eave. He knocked loudly and waited, expecting a housekeeper to open the door. Instead, after some minutes, and to his surprise, the lady of the house herself greeted him. Mrs. Allinson wore a very formal blue dress that extended from her ankles to her neck, where it ended in a faint ruffle beneath her chin. It was somewhat dated to Burke’s eye, but she carried it off with aplomb, aided by her height and her fine features, not least of which were the flawed green eyes now regarding Burke with polite inquiry and, he felt, not a little amusement.

“Inspector Burke, this is a surprise,” she said. “My husband had not told me to expect you.”

“I regret any imposition,” said Burke. “I take it that your husband is not at home?”

Mrs. Allinson stepped back and invited the policeman inside. After an almost imperceptible pause, Burke accepted the invitation and followed her into the drawing room, once Mrs. Allinson had illuminated the lamps.