Either the murderer had found William after he had wandered back to meet us, before we found him, and killed him there—

Or, a degree worse, if hell has degrees—

Someone choked the breath from his body and then placed him on the blanket for us to discover.

I could not cleanse from my mind his ruined neck, the ink-dark bruises that marked his parting from this world. The end, they had written in fingerprints across his unblemished skin. But why? Why murder a child? I had been in that meadow, as had Judge Frankenstein, asleep and vulnerable. Why William?

My hand drifted to my throat, and dread sank its terrible claws into my soul.

The necklace.

The child had been wearing a necklace of gold that I, in my impatience to distract and quiet him, had given him.

I would have pretended to question whether it was motivation enough for someone to kill a child, but I knew better. My caregiver on Lake Como certainly would have murdered me if there were any profit to be had in it. I had no doubt. And somewhere out in those woods was someone equally callous, equally uncaring of the value of a life when compared to the value of a bit of gold.

I tasted acid at the back of my throat. I knew exactly such a person. I had stabbed his wrist with my hatpin.

All the times I had felt watched since returning here rushed back as I ran from the sitting room and out to our barn. Two men stood guard, dripping water from the pouring rain. They tried to bar me entrance, but I pushed them aside and ran in.

Judge Frankenstein turned, along with the constable and several men I did not know. They shifted to block my view of William’s carefully laid out body. As if I had not already seen it. As if I would ever be able to unsee it.

“I have murdered him!” I cried, the guilt of it a millstone around my neck. This child, whose life I never cared enough about, but whose care had been given to me by his dying mother—he would have been better had he never met me.

“What is the meaning of this, Elizabeth?” Judge Frankenstein said, catching me by the shoulders and shaking me. “You were with me the entire time.”

I wished I could slap him. “A necklace! William wore a necklace. A gold locket that opened to reveal a portrait of his mother. I let him wear it. It is my fault.”

The men turned and, as respectfully as they could, searched the tiny body. “It is not here,” one said.

The constable nodded grimly. “I will send word for them to look where his body was found to make certain it did not fall off. And we will alert every merchant in the area to be watchful for someone trying to sell it.”