“And your eyebrows are smudged down over your nose! And where by the feathered head of St. Minch are my . . . oh, there they are. Turn your apron inside out. The right side looks as if you have been chasing rats up chimneys.”

“Yer boots are all over mud, Mr. Clent . . .”

“And a hundred men’s boots will be so in this weather, calm yourself. Wait—bring the ewer and bowl to me. Stand still . . .”

Mosca’s shoulder blades knotted themselves as Clent dipped his handkerchief in the bowl and dabbed at her face. It took all her willpower to avoid flinching from his hand, as he wiped away her coal-dust eyebrows and carefully drew on a new set with a pencil, his own eyebrows waggling with concentration as he did so.

“We returned from the beast fight and went directly to bed,” he muttered as he added the final touches. “Nothing woke us, we heard and saw nothing. If we both hold to this, I think we shall brave the storm without capsize.”

Mosca followed Clent down the passage with her heart bursting. Goodlady Syropia regarded her with pitying wooden eyes. Goodman Trybiscuit hardly dared watch her through his painted fingers. Please I need to get away with this please please please . . .

The constable was a man in his forties with ragged red hair and tired-looking eyes that drooped downward at the corners. A bottle of gin stood on the table, suggesting that the Cakes had added a nip of comfort to his coffee to take away the chill of his morning walk. He was playfully tossing his hat from one hand to the other as he talked to her, and his laugh faded into formality only when Mosca and Clent entered the room.

“This is the gentleman who lodges with you regular, then?”

“I am Eponymous Clent, and the honor is mine. I fear I am unlikely to be of help to you, sir, but any trifling assistance I can offer you is indubitably yours.”

“That’s very gentlemanly of you, sir.” The constable seemed a little flabbergasted by Clent’s manner. “But I do not know why you should feel you cannot be of help.”

“Perhaps I have misunderstood,” Clent began again, quickly. Too quickly, Mr. Clent, careful, Mr. Clent . . . Mosca was horrified to find herself trying to advise a murderer to caution in her mind. “I apprehended that some blackguards tried and failed to rob this house, and cut the throat of some other poor devil later in the night. I fear that I was in too profound a sleep to have heard anything of use.”