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David. What are you trying to say?”
    â€œI never try to say anything. I just say it. So was his mother the only reason you didn’t like Davey?”
    The vicar was half out of his chair now. “You persist in this judgment —”
    â€œJudgments I leave up to God. Sit down. He was killed sometime early this morning. Five, six. Why would he have been out at that hour and in Wynchcoombe Wood?”
    Mr. White was astonished. “But he was killed in the church!”
    Macalvie shook his head. “He was put in the church. Probably at that hour there was nobody about. And barely light. But would no one have been in the church this morning? A char? Anyone?”
    The vicar shook his head. “Not necessarily. And no reason for anyone to go into the choir vestry.”
    â€œYou don’t keep a very sharp eye on your grandson, do you?”
    Jury interrupted, much to Macalvie’s displeasure. “Why would Davey have been out that early?”
    Mr. White colored, smarting still under the bite of Macalvie’s comment, probably, Jury thought, because it was true.
    â€œDavey was a bit odd —”
    Macalvie’s impatient sigh told him how much he believed that excuse.
    â€œI only mean that he occasionally liked to get out of the house before breakfast, before school, and go to the woods to, as he said, just ‘think about things.’ He hadn’t many school chums . . .” The vicar’s voice trailed away under Macalvie’s blue gaze.
    Jury was himself thinking about Simon Riley. “Thinking about things” could have meant smoking the odd cigarette. Or just getting away. Another lonely boy, perhaps, in a cold house. But he didn’t voice his opinion.
    Macalvie did. “Must have had a great life, your Davey. Didn’t you worry about him, out in the dark or the dawn,alone in the wood?” He had got up to prowl the room and was now looking over the vicar’s bookcases.
    â€œNothing’s ever happened in Wynchcoombe Wood.”
    Macalvie raised his eyes from an old volume. “Something has now. And didn’t you read about that kid in Dorchester, Mr. White?” he asked casually.
    For the first time, the Reverend Linley White looked frightened. “I did. You’re not saying there’s a psychopathic killer loose?”
    Macalvie’s answer was another question. “Can you think of anyone who hated your grandson?”
    â€œNo. Absolutely not,” he snapped.
    â€œHow about someone who might hate you?”
    This time, the vicar had to stop and think.
III
    What Wiggins had learned from the housekeeper verified the information they had got from the vicar. Except the housekeeper did wonder why Davey hadn’t come back for his breakfast and his schoolbooks. Wiggins read his notes, and they were, as usual, thorough. Jury told him to go along to Wynchcoombe Wood. Macalvie cadged a few Fisherman’s Friends and told Wiggins he wanted Kendall and his men to comb that vestry walk inch-by-inch. Davey could have stumbled, fallen, been dragged. That might account for the bruises.
    Wiggins put away his notebook. “Yes, sir. You having an incidents room set up, sir?”
    His yes was grudging. “Tell Kendall to get a portable unit and stick it in the middle of the damned Green.” He nodded toward the clutch of villagers standing in front of the George and the tea room. Even from this distance, they seemed to pull back a bit, as if from fear, or, perhaps, the divisional commander’s eye. “No, Wiggins,” said Macalvie wearily, asthe sergeant wrote it down. “Put it in that parking lot —” Macalvie nodded off to the right and a large lot, probably meant for the cars and caravans of summer tourists. “And tell Kendall to keep it staffed with the few men from headquarters who won’t be stumbling all over their own feet. Much less mine.”
    The church had been cordoned off; now,