Interesting… Glanville studied the two pieces of the broken tombstone near where Blyth’s body had been discovered. The torrential rain and sticky mud couldn’t hide the fact that the chunks of marble fit together without any large gaps. He glanced around the graveyard as cold drops of water ran over his brows and down his nose.

Sir Horace had taken the bloodied piece that had been used to bludgeon Blyth, and he’d given it to the constable. There should have been an unfilled gap in the broken tombstone.

There wasn’t.

That could only mean the rock came from elsewhere, and given its mostly smooth sides, it had to have come from some other memorial stone. He traced his way back to the lychgate. Nothing.

He glanced up at the dark sky and pulled the collar of his borrowed overcoat closer around his neck, although it did little good. Wind tossed another sharp spray of water into his face. Blinking, he wiped the water out of his eyes and methodically walked back to the broken tombstone. He ought to give up and go home. Get some sleep.

But like a loose tooth, he couldn’t leave it alone. The murderer might be desperate enough to return to obscure any remaining traces that the other men had missed. Not that the killer could do much to disguise a broken tombstone… He walked past the dreary spot and moved slowly toward a small gate at the rear of the graveyard.

The gate was rarely used anymore—if at all—and was mostly hidden by hedges and thick swags of ivy that seemed determined to rope everything together into an impenetrable mass of dank, bug-infested vegetation. But the wall was barely four feet tall. Certainly low enough for someone to vault over it. Twenty yards away from the low rock wall and gate, another tombstone leaned drunkenly into the path. Or at least half of a tombstone. A crack had developed halfway down the worn marble and several chunks lay on the ground at the base.

Glanville picked up the pieces and fit them together. The uppermost left corner was missing. Gently placing the chunks at the base of the gravestone, he stood and looked around.

Assuming she hadn’t lied about Cavell leaving her at the lychgate, Miss Stainton would have had to walk past one broken tombstone, past Blyth, and halfway to the back gate to pick up a piece of masonry from that particular stone. How would she even know that there was another crumbling gravestone here? Why pass up equally useful chunks—ones she would have run across first—in favor of a rock further away?

The fact that the weapon used on Blyth seemed to come from this memorial stone suggested that the murderer had entered the graveyard through the rear gate instead of the lychgate. And whoever it was—Miss Stainton now seemed unlikely—had apparently picked up the rock on the way to meet Blyth. That suggested premeditation. The killer could hardly have asked Blyth to kindly wait a moment while he returned to the broken tombstone to retrieve a handy chunk, carried it back to Blyth, and bludgeoned him with it.

One could hardly imagine Blyth standing still for that sort of thing.

No. Whoever murdered Blyth would have used a piece from the crumbling gravestone nearer to Blyth’s body if he or she had acted impulsively.

Straightening, Glanville eased back through the graveyard. The horses were in sight when he paused again. He frowned in thought as rain dripped off the brim of his hat to splatter over his nose.

The curate had lived in a small cottage between the church and the vicarage. They should have searched it while the coroner and his motley band of jurors had been present. He took a step toward the path running around the church to the vicarage, then halted abruptly as another thought struck him.

An awfully unpleasant thought.

Over the course of the last two weeks, he’d been quite adamant in his opinion of his sister’s decision to marry Blyth.

A suspicious person might be inclined to point out that his antagonism gave Glanville as good a motive to dispose of the curate as Miss Stainton possessed. Perhaps even better. Glanville rubbed the back of his neck and then shrugged.

No matter. He still wanted a look at the curate’s modest quarters. Someone ought to—and soon—otherwise the killer would have all night to poke around.

There probably was no reason to fear that a critical piece of evidence might be removed, but Glanville was not prepared to be so trusting. The only thing that caused him a twinge was the thought that if someone found him there, they might wonder if he were trying to dispose of evidence. Especially if they thought back to some of the riper things Glanville had said about the proposed marriage between his sister and the unctuous, weedy little curate.

Somehow, Blyth always set Glanville’s teeth on edge. Even now, when the curate was dead.

The small cottage was dark when he approached the door, and the doorknob turned easily under his hand. A small lamp sat on a table, conveniently placed near the door, as well as a small tinderbox containing brimstone matches. He soon got the lamp glowing merrily and held it up to look around.

The curate’s quarters were depressingly tidy. The front door opened into a very narrow entryway graced only with the narrow table, lamp, and a row of pegs on the wall. A black overcoat sagged from one of the pegs. Glanville ran his hands over the coat, but the pockets were empty of anything except an old crumpled handkerchief and a torn scrap of a broadsheet that had evidently held a piece of cheese at some point, from the greasy stains on the paper. A few orange crumbs rattled around the folds.

To the left was the small sitting room and next to that, a bedchamber. On the right was what might be called a dining room—at least there was a wobbly round table with two chairs tucked under it—and then a cramped kitchen. Glanville glanced quickly around the sitting room, but there wasn’t much to see. It was depressingly bare, with no indication of the kind of man Blyth might have been.

Or perhaps the very lack of personality revealed Blyth’s character all too well.

A minuscule, lonely desk sat directly under the single window. The top surface was scratched and battered, and the drawers only held a few scraps of paper, a pot of ink, and a few quills. A Bible sat on top, the flyleaf identifying it as belonging to Trevor Blyth. No threatening letters were tucked inside, and, in fact, the Bible looked barely used. Other than the desk, the only other furniture was an uncomfortable looking horsehair settee and two ladder-backed chairs. Nothing to comfort the soul in this dreary room.

A couple of bland pastoral landscapes graced the walls. Glancing behind them revealed nothing more than a spiderweb and a feathering of dust.

The dining room was equally bereft of any indications of Blyth’s personal life or interests, and the bedroom was dismal and comfortless beyond belief. A narrow bed sat in one corner underneath another revoltingly placid seascape sporting an improbable rainbow stretching through crystal blue skies and reflected in an unnaturally calm ocean, the likes of which Glanville had never been privileged to see. The single chest of drawers contained a few neatly folded shirts, neckcloths, and so on. Nothing was hidden. It spoke only of a poverty both of possessions and soul.

Glanville straightened and frowned as he studied the dingy rooms. He had never seen a cottage so empty of all personality. Perhaps Blyth really was as spiritually inclined as he claimed, preferring the metaphysical over the physical. Or perhaps he had more to hide than even Glanville had suspected and had buried whatever it was in the graveyard, which attracted his attention so frequently.

But why were there no books? No letters? No miniatures of family members?

Sighing, he stepped into the kitchen, if one could call it that. A few cupboards, a spirit lamp, a tin sink, and a fireplace fitted out with a few iron hooks. There weren’t even any ashes from previous fires on the blackened hearth. No one had done any cooking there for quite some time, except possibly to boil water in a pan over the spirit lamp for a pot of tea.

But then, the curate probably took his meals with the vicar, since Wolstenholme had a housekeeper who also did a great deal of the cooking for him and his wife.

Poking around, Glanville opened the cupboards. A canister of tea, another of sugar, a thick white ceramic teapot, a couple of cups and saucers, and a tin of biscuits. Nothing very exciting. He was about to turn away when the lamplight glinted off something at the back of the top shelf in the cupboard. Metal. A box shoved behind another stack of chipped teacups.

He shoved the cups aside and pulled down the box. Coins rattled inside.

Well, the curate had to keep his money somewhere. Glanville was about to push the box back into its shadowy corner when he noticed an engraved brass plate on the front. Organ Fund.

His brows rose as he opened the box and looked inside. A little less than five pounds in various coins tumbled around. He, like all of the other parishioners, had contributed liberally to the fund to repair St. Mary’s organ. There ought to be far more than five pounds. The organ had certainly not been repaired yet. It still wheezed like an asthmatic hound if anyone dared to sit down at it.

Did Wolstenholme know Blyth had the box of contributions?

He returned the box to its hiding place, considering how best to broach the subject to Wolstenholme.

The vicar would not be pleased. Not be pleased at all. He was a deeply religious man who took his Bible seriously and quite literally. And he earnestly wanted the organ repaired so that his wife could play it again.

Glanville could only hope there was an innocent explanation for the presence of the box in Blyth’s cottage, or Blyth might find himself buried in unconsecrated ground, if Wolstenholme had anything to do with it.

He’d blown out the lamp and was shutting the door behind him when an even more cynical thought waltzed through his mind. Was the organ fund just the first of Blyth’s depredations? Had there been other such misappropriations?

And if so, did Wolstenholme already suspect his curate? Could he have been the one who confronted Blyth and subsequently put a stop to the curate’s borrowing of church funds in the most permanent way possible? The vicar would certainly be aware of the locations of broken tombstones, scattered throughout the graveyard.

The list of suspects was growing. Though perhaps only because it pointed at someone other than himself. Or Miss Stainton.

He frowned. The evidence suggesting Miss Stainton as the likeliest culprit remained the strongest, despite the box in Blyth’s cupboard. The box only showed that Blyth might have been an even worse curate than anyone previously considered him to be.

Jerking the waterproof overcoat more securely around his throat, he dashed out into the rain. Nothing would be settled tonight, and he still had the horses to retrieve.

The two animals were patiently waiting for him with drooping—and dripping—heads, under an old tree that did very little to keep the persistent rain off of them. His saddle was completely saturated and unpleasantly cold to his posterior, which, before this, had been the one remaining dry spot on his body.

He exhaled heavily and picked up the reins, leading Sir Horace’s horse through the thick mud to Laurelwood. The clink of a few coins—too few—in Blyth’s tin box echoed in his mind with each clip-clop of the horses’ hooves along the road.

How did you ask a vicar if he’d killed his curate for embezzling church funds?

Why had Glanville even decided to involve himself? He ought to be relieved that his sister no longer had the opportunity to make a fool of herself by marrying Blyth and leave it at that. What did he care if Miss Stainton were found guilty? If a jury decided she had killed Blyth, then so be it.

But his sense of fairness wouldn’t let it rest. So here he was, wandering around in the rain, trying to dig up evidence. As if he, alone, would know the truth when he saw it, even though he had just as much of a motive as anyone.

The whole thing was awkward. Just plain awkward. He shook the rain off his gloves.

With any luck, the vicar would have an attack of conscience and confess that he had murdered his curate in a fit of holy rage.

Glanville sneezed, wiped his nose, and hunched over the steaming neck of his horse. The rain had settled down to a constant patter, tapping his shoulders in a regular, irritating cadence. The moon peeked out of the thick clouds briefly before disappearing again, as if reluctant to show its face for fear of being held responsible for such a wretched night. Lightning flashed in the distance, followed by a belly-churning roll of thunder.

A miserable night for miserable deeds, indeed.