All the same.

                                     *      *      *

     "He's just walking about," Constable John Perry told Myrtle Prescott.

                                    *      *      *

    Before the war, of course, both of them had been farm lads.  Wal had turned an eye in Jess's direction, naturally (and along with every other man in Halefoot) though being a good friend not for long.  He'd stood down, as he put it.  Her parents, just as naturally, had been pleased she'd married Jim, since anybody with half an eye could see that Walter Simes would, to say the least, be unreliable.    After they'd married and Myrtle arrived, things might have changed between him and Wal, but they didn't.

     He could see he was putting it together, now.  Like a jigsaw only with the pieces face down, and you were allowed to turn some of them over here and there and then you could look at them and fit them to make the picture you were looking for.   None of the pieces looked like Jess, not yet.   He was exasperated by this but, underneath, untroubled.  He'd find them, all the       

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