“Before, when my father was alive and master of the house, the staff all called me miss. Now they call me ma’am. Each time serves as a reminder that I am now mistress of this house. Juliette, what am I going to do? I know nothing of business or money matters. How can I possibly see to my father’s affairs? Ha, affairs. I didn’t even know he was on the verge of proposing to a woman I had never met. What else don’t I know? What other shocks lurk around corners?” She sagged back into her chair.

The door opened a few inches. “Ma’am?”

Mr. Mifflin, the aged and proper secretary to Mr. Montgomery, edged into the room. He carried a small strongbox on his palms, like a magus offering a gift.

“What is it?” Agatha sounded as if she couldn’t bear to be bothered by one more trivial question.

“Ma’am, it’s gone. All of it.” His voice cracked.

“What’s gone?” Juliette asked.

“All the household money. I went to pay the hearse driver, and when I looked, there wasn’t so much as a shilling left. The box is empty.” He set it on a side table, opened the lid, and tipped it up to show nothing inside. “There was more than a hundred pounds in here this morning. I fear one of the guests must have stolen the money.”

Agatha’s bleak eyes met Juliette’s. “I guess one more surprise lurked today after all.”

The day after the funeral, Daniel set out from London with Owen in tow. Carlyle’s mill was located in the hamlet of Wattleford Hill, some three miles upstream from Montgomery’s mill in Hammersmith. Nearly identical in design, his mill rose in stone and wood high above the houses clustered at its base.

As Daniel approached, this time in Cadogan’s cab, the thumping sounds of a mill at work overcame the rattle and clatter of the horses’ hooves. A bready, woodsy, watery smell surrounded him. He realized he was tense, anticipating another explosion, and he forced himself to relax.

“So we finally have a suspect?” Owen tugged on his jacket sleeves, which were inches too short. Clearly it was the best he had, and was cleaned and pressed, but he’d outgrown it some time ago.

“Possibly. Let us say he is a person of interest.” Daniel cautioned himself not to get ahead of the investigation.

“But this fellow argued with the victim. He challenged him to a duel, which means he was ready to shoot him.”

“We have the word of one mill employee, who admits the mill was terribly loud and that he was hurrying by the office in order to find a quiet place to drink alcohol during the workday. He’s hardly a stellar witness, and what he heard—or thought he heard—could be completely different from what was actually said.”