When they had finished, the ladies knelt before Mrs. Morrigan’s coffin before stepping away to the churchyard gates. I caught sight of Mona O’Connor, who embraced each tenderly as they passed. The last of them brushed Mona’s curls of red hair back behind her ear, and kissed her on the forehead, like a kindly aunt. Mona held her hand a moment longer, and then the woman stepped out of the churchyard gates, vanishing into the bright daylight.

All through the crowd handkerchiefs appeared, and tears were wiped away as the people began to disperse. Before withdrawing, the young woman with blond ringlets I had seen outside the Emerald Arch stepped timidly forward and set a white carnation on Arthur Bragg’s coffin. A few more came up to offer similar tokens: flowers, silver coins, and even a box of cigars on the late Mr. Henderson’s casket. Only one coffin remained bare.

“Shall we resume our discussion over lunch?” I suggested to my employer, but Jackaby’s gaze was fixed on the front of the crowd. “I’d like to swing by Chandler’s Market on the way if you don’t mind,” I persisted. “I do still owe a troll a fish.” My employer made no indication he had heard me, instead taking sudden, deliberate strides toward the head of the assembly. I followed, squeezing past the exodus of mourners like a trout swimming upstream.

As I reached the front, Jackaby stood before Swift’s coffin. “Let’s not have a scene, Jackaby,” Marlowe was saying. “Just let it go.”

“It’s an insult,” Jackaby said. He gestured to the coffin. “It’s a dishonor to the dead!”

“Jackaby . . .” Marlowe growled. His muscles tensed, and I could see he didn’t want to have to forcibly remove the detective from a quiet memorial service. “These nice families just want to say their good-byes in peace.”

“But it isn’t right,” continued my employer, opening his little brown satchel, “that our dear, honorable commissioner should be the only friendless corpse without so much as a lily at his head. Let me see, I’m sure I have some appropriate token in here.”

Marlowe looked dubious, but he stood down as Jackaby made a show of rummaging. “Ah, here we are. He was so fond of these.” It took a swing of his arms to get them up onto the box, but the echoing clank of the redcap’s impossibly heavy iron shoes as they crunched into the wood was satisfying. A bent and charred piece of the leg brace still clung to one, fastened by a rivet at the ankle. Jackaby left the explaining to Marlowe and marched away.

I caught up just outside the gates. “I know, I know . . . ,” he said before I could comment. “I don’t need to make things difficult for Marlowe.”