And with that, fresh terror leaped into Matthew’s heart and as he turned to run back to the coach, Julian shouted “The woman!” It was not so much losing Elizabeth as a dubious hostage that sped his legs, but the idea that she might have taken the book. Still, the doors on the righthand side of the coach remained open and neither he nor Julian had seen her emerge; and yet of course she might have slipped out the other side, and gone.

When he peered into the coach he found that the Spitalfields Murderess had pushed aside the heavy coat and opened the breakfast basket where it lay on the floor between the seats. She was eating a biscuit and a slice of ham.

Her eyebrows went up. “Caught him, I’m guessing.”

Matthew nodded. The red leatherbound book remained exactly where it had been when he’d sprang out after Firebaugh. In another moment Julian arrived with the doctor in tow. He shoved the whimpering and bloody man into the coach. Firebaugh curled up on a seat and clasped one hand to the wreckage of his ear and the other to his sliced face.

“Here.” Julian gave Matthew back the blade and retrieved his own gun. “There are two people watching us from a window and three others have come out to stand across the street. I’m going back in and grab what I can.” He registered Elizabeth sitting quietly and eating her ham and biscuit. “Better not try anything,” he warned her, but Matthew thought it was just to hear himself say it. Then he closed the coach’s doors and went about his looting in earnest.

“The smell of blood,” said Elizabeth. “Thick in here.”

The way she said that made his stomach give a twinge. She kept unhurriedly eating her food. When she was done, she brushed the crumbs from her sea-green gloves and said, “You should put that dagger away.”

Did any man on earth obey a suggestion as quickly? The dagger, which Julian had been thoughful enough to wipe clean in the snow, went into Matthew’s jacket and out of sight.

“Monsters!” Firebaugh groaned. “You both are—oh my Jesus!” He tried to sit up and nearly tumbled down between the seats. In his blood-smeared face his widened eyes were fixed upon Matthew. “You!” he wheezed. “Matthew Corbett! Oh my Jesus … the Monster of Plymouth! In the Pin! I knew I recognized your—” He gave a groan and clutched at the remnant of his ear, after which he huddled himself up on the seat and seemed to go into a delirious daze of muttering and shivering.

“He’s gone ’round the bend,” said Matthew, unwilling to answer any questions concerning the murderous and quite false reputation bestowed upon him by Lord Puffery’s Pin.