“Not to my face that I remember,” the Cakes said slowly, “but I do start to think I might have overheard the name once, while I was passin’ their door. I keep my ears folded shut, mind, and I don’t go eavesdroppin’, but I can’t be held to blame if they will go shoutin’ at each other all the time. But they might have been talkin’ ’bout a partridge to put in a pie, or somethin’.”

“Do you often discuss recipes so loud you can be heard in the next room?”

“Well, no . . .”

“Is Mr. Clent in the house this moment?”

“I think so—he stays in most mornings.”

“Then I think I’d like to talk to him.” There was a sudden scrape of chair feet against the floorboards, as if someone had risen to his feet quickly. “What was that? I thought I heard a rustling outside in the passageway.”

“Oh, that’ll be nothin’ but some bundles of honesty I hung to dry in the Chapel of Goodman Pulk the Tardy. They make quite a din when the seedheads pop.”

Sure enough, when the constable pushed open the kitchen door and cast a curious glance up and down the corridor there was no one to be seen, and no movement but the gentle swinging of a row of honesty bundles in an unfelt draft. He walked the length of the corridor and knocked on the door at the end. A voice answered in calm tones, and when he pushed the door ajar he found Clent alone. Clent was reposing in the window seat in a pose suggestive of poetic abstraction, a roll of paper curling across one knee, a quill delicately imprisoned between the tips of his thumb and forefinger, his gaze adrift above the city as if the clouds were sharing their secrets with him.

When his gaze fell upon the constable, he rose and offered a gracious bow, blinking slightly as if he needed to refocus his eyes in order to look upon ordinary, worldly things.

“A welter of pardons, my good sir. I thought you were Bockerby’s girl servant with a dish of tea. Do take a seat.”

The constable sat himself down on the room’s only chair.

“Your own girl’s not about?”

“Ah, no, I sent her to buy ink.”

“Too bad. It was the girl I particularly wanted to speak to. No matter. I can tell you now that we have discovered the name of the dead man found at Whickerback Point. Have you heard the name Halk Partridge?”

Clent raised his eyebrows, and seemed to consider for a few moments.

“The name is faintly familiar, but the hook floats free and will not catch upon anything.”