The man pushed open the gate of the house I stood in front of, and strode through. He climbed the few steps to the front door and rapped. A man opened the door. He was tall and thin, with white hair and a beard. Despite the heat, he was dressed in a black suit, with his jacket buttoned. He grunted a surly hello at the younger man.

“Just stopped by to see if you folks are feeling any better,” the neighbor said.

“Feeling better?”

“Yes, your wife came over this morning, said you’d both been up all night with stomach complaints. She thought someone might have put something in your food—”

“In our food? That’s preposterous. Abby would never say—”

“Oh, you know how womenfolk are. They get to worrying sometimes. She seemed fine to me—”

“She is fine,” the man said. “We’re all fine, and if you go charging us for this visit—”

“Now, Andrew, you know I’d never—”

“You’d better not,” Andrew said, and slammed the door.

The doctor shook his head, hefted his bag, turned, and walked through me again. There was a movement in one of the main-floor front windows, a young woman washing the glass. Her face was bright red from exertion and the heat. From her simple outfit and the size of the house, I assumed she was a maid.

“Crack open a window,” I said. “You got rights, girl. No one should be working in this heat.”

The young woman’s eyes went round. She dropped the rag and bolted.

“Shit!” I said. “Am I not supposed to do that?”

An exterior door slammed. Kristof gestured toward it and we both took off, following the sound around the house, past the side stoop. There we found the maid puking into the back garden.

“Oh, geez, they really are sick,” I said. “They’re making her work when she feels like this? Isn’t there a labor board in this town?”

“Not in real Colonial America,” Kristof murmured.

“Which is where I suspect we are.”

“In the past?”

Before he could answer, the maid retched and hurled. I patted the poor kid’s back, but I knew she couldn’t feel it.

“You sick again, Bridget?” a voice asked.

Another young woman, also simply dressed, leaned over the side fence. She shook her head. “That’s what you get, having to dump those slop buckets every morning. Bound to make anyone sick. Cheap old bugger. He can afford a water closet. Just too bloody cheap.”

Bridget moaned and wiped her sleeve over her mouth. “It’s not the slop buckets. It was supper last night. I told him that mutton stew wasn’t no good no more. Not after three days sitting out in this heat. But he said—”

“Bridget?” A plain dumpling of a middle-aged woman appeared on the side stoop. “Bridget! What are you doing out there, chitchatting the day away? I want these windows cleaned.”