“Sheriff Lancer. From Whistler Green. He’s waiting in the parlor.”

Matthew stood up. His heart was beating harder. A sheriff, here to probably ask questions? Who had told him? Doctor Clark, of course. Two constables escorting a triple murderer to trial in Bristol. Oh shit! Matthew thought.

“Matthew?” Julian said as he started to follow Varney. “Thank you.”

“Just make up your mind that a bed in a coach inn is not a suitable place for a man of your talents to die,” Matthew told him. “Now be still and rest.” He left the room, quietly closed the door and went out with Varney to the parlor, where a broad-shouldered man in a dove’s-gray cloak and a black tricorn with a crimson band was standing before the hearth smoking a pipe that had a black bowl the size of Samson Lash’s fist.

“Matthew Corbett, Sheriff Gideon Lancer,” said Varney.

The sheriff shook Matthew’s offered hand with a grip that Matthew thought he would feel until the new year. “Smells good, whatever Ann’s cooking,” Lancer told Varney.

“You’re welcome to stay with us and have a plate.”

“That wouldn’t suit Becca. She’s already hung the pot over the fire and she’s furious I came out here to see this young … constable,” he answered, deliberately laying in the pause. He smiled, showing teeth that looked to Matthew like the jaws of a bear trap. “So I’ll pass this time, but some other?”

“Of course.”

“Fine. Now … might I have a moment with this Mr. Corbett?”

Varney retreated, leaving Matthew in the clutches of a man whom the New York problem-solver instantly thought could see through the entire charade before a word was spoken. Gideon Lancer removed his tricorn and cloak and hung them up beside the door. He wore a gray jacket with black patches at the elbows, black breeches, white stockings and a plain white blouse. There was nothing about him that might be called ostentatious, except that the pipe’s bowl was awfully big. Matthew judged him to be in his mid-forties. He was of medium height with a stocky build, had a scalp covered with gray sand and owned a pair of deep-set brown eyes that Matthew thought could go from warm to accusing at the hint of a lie. His nose was the rugged, crooked sort seen on street brawlers, and a small scar curved upward across his rock of a chin.

All in all, the man scared Matthew to the marrow of his bones.

“Sit,” said Lancer, motioning toward one of the two brown leather chairs on either side of a small table before the hearth. Matthew did, and Lancer took the other chair. The sheriff spent a moment firing up his plain pewter tinderbox to relight his pipe, and then he blew out a curlicue of blue smoke and said, “What’s the story?”

“Pardon?”