“Shall we adjourn to the Artichoke and take some luncheon?” he said with a wide smile. “I think we deserve it.”

“Indeed we do,” she agreed heartily, taking his arm. “The very best they have to offer.”

They ate at the Artichoke and Monk attempted to question the landlord, a burly man with a red face and a magnificent nose, squashed sideways from some ancient injury. But he was busy and highly disinclined to answer any questions that were not to do with the bill of fare. Monk learned nothing, except that it would be an excellent place in which two men might meet unnoticed.

Afterwards they tried a few more shops and passersby; there were few idlers in the thick fog and darkening afternoon. By three o'clock Monk offered to take her home. It was bitterly cold with a rawness that chilled to the bone, and she must be weary.

“Thank you, but you don't need to come with me,” she said with a smile. “I know you want to go on until darkness.”

“Of course I shall take you,” he persisted. “You should not be alone anywhere near here!”

“Nonsense!” she said briskly. “We are equals in this. Courtesy I accept, but I refuse to be treated as an incompetent. Call me a hansom, and I shall be home within the hour. If you make me feel a burden to you, you will rob me of all the pleasure I feel now.” She smiled at him dazzlingly, laughter in her voice. “And the very considerable feeling of accomplishment. Please, William?” She had not used his name before. He found it peculiarly pleasing to hear it on her lips.

And the argument was telling. He conceded, and took her to the nearest main thoroughfare, where he stopped a hansom and helped her in, paid the driver, and watched it retreat into the looming fog. It was quickly swallowed, even its lights engulfed within minutes. Then he turned back and spent one more hour asking, probing, seeking. But he learned nothing more, only fear and rumor of Caleb Stone, all of it ugly. He seemed an elusive man, appearing and disappearing at will, always angry, always on the edge of violence.

Everything that he knew convinced him the more that Angus Stonefield was indeed dead and that Caleb had murdered him when the hatred and jealousy of years had finally exploded.

But how to prove it to a jury? How to create more than a moral certainty, a crushing sense of injustice, of wrong done, and all answer for it defied?

There was no corpse. Maybe there never would be. Everything he knew of Caleb depicted him as a man of cruelty and absolute selfishness, but also of considerable cunning, with many friends along the waterfront who would hide him-who did, whenever he was threatened.