“Go on.” Hudson felt a tightening in his gut that was definitely caused not by the chowder, but by the misadventures of a chowderhead.

“My village,” said the professor as he continued to eat his soup, “was attacked from the sea by a ship armed with a mortar weapon. That would explain the destruction you obviously have seen. We were also attacked from within, by traitors under the command of Mother Deare, who was herself under the insane command of an individual who calls himself ‘Cardinal Black’. They came for the book of potions created by my ex-chemist, Dr. Jonathan Gentry. You may have known him in New York?”

“Yes, and I understood from Matthew that he lost his head at one of your dinner parties.”

“A more important thing has now been lost,” Fell said. “The book that Gentry’s head conceived. Without it—and without a chemist to decipher the formulas—there is no hope for the recovery of Miss Grigsby. By my estimation—and it could be quite faulty, but I do have some idea of the power of that particular concoction—she will continue to decline until the Nashes have an infant daughter to care for … if the antidote is not given to her in several doses, and I believe the threshold of recovery is now in the realm of … I would say, to be safe … twenty-one days.”

Hudson sat very still. He didn’t move even when Noreen came out with their platters of baked halibut, fried corncakes, applesauce and candied yams.

At last, Hudson unclenched his teeth. “What was the point,” he said with an effort, “of giving her that drug? What had she done to you?”

“It was what Matthew has done. All that he has done, and all that he has cost me.” Fell swirled the wine around in his glass and watched it, the candlelight glinting off the glass and into his amber-colored eyes. “I intended him to watch her decline into imbecility … and to watch you perish from the very force of fear itself.” His gaze left the glass and aimed at Hudson. “I hope you intend to use that blade on the corncake,” he said softly, “because the halibut needs only a fork.”

Hudson realized he had picked up the knife and was holding it in a white-knuckled grip, the point upraised to stab not a fish but a foul.

“So,” Fell continued, with a slight shrug as if the weapon Hudson held were no more than an apparition, “Matthew and Julian have ridden off to find Cardinal Black and bring back the book and a chemist. They are beginning at a village called Adderlane, six or seven miles northwest along the coast. We learned that Black’s men were using it as their staging-point. We’re in Wales, about twenty miles from Swansea, if you’d care to know.”

Slowly, Hudson lowered the knife; there was no sense in stabbing the man in the heart for two reasons: Professor Fell had no heart, and his own death would be immediate and equally senseless. Anyway … he was still hungry, and he was going to force himself to eat. Keeping it down later might be a different kettle. “You mean to tell me,” he said, his throat dry, “that only Matthew and one other man have gone on a raid? How many men does Black have?”