“Well . . . I don’t see that they can have failed to get in, sir. There was a boat tied up by the window, you see, sir, and if they didn’t get in that way . . . then how did they get back to the bank? There’s another thing, sir”—the constable reached out and broke off a single husk of honesty, and rubbed its papery disc between his thumb and forefinger—“there were lots of these in the dead man’s collar and hair. You don’t get them growing round here, not till you’re way downriver to Fainbless. I think our poor devil was in this house not so long ago.”

There was a small noise like a trodden fledgling. Mosca wondered at it for a moment until she realized that she had made it. The constable did not seem to have heard, but Clent gave her a wary glance.

“Then it would seem that I have tumbled into misapprehension,” he said with a smile, lowering his weight into a chair and resting his elbows on the table, where his hands began nervously tearing pieces of crust and arranging them in lines. “I am of course solicitous to answer your questions, but perhaps I might send the girl away. Her years are rather tender for matters of mortality, and she has her errands to perform.”

Too clever, Mr. Clent, too wordy. People don’t like you when you’re too knowing.

“Can I ask what errands are so urgent that she cannot pause to help track down a murderer?” The constable’s tone was cold.

Inspiration suddenly bit Mosca like a gnat.

“I got to deliver a message to Lady Tamarind.” She spoke reflexively, just as she might have slapped at an insect’s bite. “Mr. Clent works for Lady Tamarind.”

“Lady Tamarind . . .” The constable was shocked back into courtesy. “Can you prove this, sir?”

Clent went pale, then he evidently remembered Lady Tamarind’s letter introducing him as a poet in her employ, and sent Mosca to fetch it. The constable’s face relaxed as he read it, and soon he was wearing his jovial expression again.

He rolled the letter carefully and handed it back with a new respect. “Well, good sir, make no delay for me, I would not have Her Ladyship kept waiting on my account.”

“Then I shall write the message—if you will excuse us a few minutes, good sir.”

The constable nodded, affable once more, and Mosca followed Clent back to their room.

“Lady Tamarind, Lady Tamarind,” Clent murmured to himself. “It is a thought, a chance at least. I cannot stay here, waiting for the Locksmiths’ men to trace me. If we can only find sanctuary in the Eastern Spire before the storm breaks . . .”

Mosca fetched paper, ink, pen and sealing wax and stood behind Clent while he wrote.

Your most esteemed and radiant Ladyship,