“Yes, sir.”

“And I, as doubtless you have surmised, am Sir Grenville Cony. I am also a busy man. Why have you come to see me?”

She was unsettled by his abruptness, by the distaste on his extraordinarily ugly face. The meeting was not at all as she and Toby had imagined it.

“I wished to ask you some questions, sir.”

“Meaning you wish me to supply you with answers? About what, pray?”

She forced herself to speak clearly, even boldly. There was something about the small, fat man that was unnerving. “About my father’s will, sir, and about the Covenant.”

He smiled, the wide mouth curving malevolently. “Sit down, Miss Slythe, sit down.” He waited until she was perched precariously on the spindly chair. “So, you wish some answers from me. Well, why not? I suppose that’s what lawyers are for. Preachers for opinion, Miss Slythe, poets for fancy, and lawyers for facts. So, ask me your questions.”

Sir Grenville had begun a strange action as he spoke to her. His left hand was moving with stealth like slowness along the surface of the table. It crawled like a crab, as if his white, pudgy fingers were small legs, and she saw that the hand was travelling toward a china dish in which were the remains of a fruit pie. His eyes stayed on Campion.

“Well, go on, girl!”

The hand distracted her. It had reached the dish now and the fingers were sidling slyly over the rim. She forced her eyes away and tried to think. “My father’s will, sir, seemed mysterious…” She tailed off lamely, her nervousness increasing with each second.

“Mysterious? Mysterious!” Cony’s voice was oddly harsh for such a small, fat man. “The will was read to you, was it not, by a lawyer? I will agree that Isaac Blood is merely a country lawyer, but I would have thought him competent to read a will!” The hand had reached the remnants of pie now and was molding pastry and fruit into a compact ball.

“He did read the will, sir.” Campion was trying to compose her thoughts, but still the sight of the hand, now on its slow way back from the dish, disconcerted her.

“I am so glad, Miss Slythe, so glad. For a moment I had thought you found our profession wanting, but it seems Mr. Blood is spared this charge. So what, pray, was so mysterious? I found your father’s will touchingly simple.” He smiled again, as if to soften his sarcasm and then, with an oddly ceremonious gesture, brought up his hand and popped the ball of crushed pie into his mouth.

He seemed to smile at her as he chewed, as if he knew he had succeeded in unsettling her. His left hand, freed of its first burden of pie, was once more creeping down the table.

Campion forced herself to look at the pale, unblinking eyes. “In my father’s will, sir, there was mention of a Covenant, and of a seal. Mr. Blood was not able to give me details.”