She pulled it out, feeling it crackle—elderly paper, damaged by the passage of time. A tabloid newspaper page, folded tight. She ran downstairs to where Brill was waiting impatiently in the hall. “I got it,” she called.

“Got what?” Brill asked, her voice incurious.

“I don’t know.” Miriam frowned as she locked the door, then they were in the back of the car and Paulie was pulling away hastily, fishtailing slightly on the icy road.

“When your mother phoned you,” Paulie said edgily, “what did she say? Daughter, I’ve killed someone? Or, your wicked family has come to kidnap me, oh la! What is to become of me?”

“She said.” Miriam shut her eyes. “She hadn’t been entirely honest with me. Something had come up, and she had to go on a journey.”

“Someone died,” said Brill. “Someone standing either just outside the back door or just inside it, in the doorway. Someone shot them with a blunderbuss.” She was making a sing-song out of it, in a way that really got on Miriam’s nerves. Stress, she thought. Brill had never seen a murder before last week. Now she’s seen a couple in one go, hasn’t she? “So someone stuffed the victim in a barrel for Iris, went out and ordered a new door. Angbard’s men will have been watching her departure. Probably followed her. Why don’t you call him and ask about it?”

“I will. Once we’ve returned this car and rented a replacement from another hire shop.” She glanced at Brill. “Keep a lookout and tell me if you see any cars that seem to be following us.”

Miriam unfolded the paper carefully. It was, she saw, about the same fateful day as the first Xeroxed news report in the green and pink shoebox. But this was genuine newsprint, not a copy, a snapshot from the time itself. Most of it was inconsequential, but there was a story buried halfway down page two that made her stare, about a young mother and baby found in a city park, the mother suffering a stab wound in the lower back. She’d been wearing hippy-style clothes and was unable to explain her condition, apparently confused or intoxicated. The police escorted her to a hospital with the child, and the subeditor proceeded to editorialize on the evils of unconventional lifestyles and the effects of domestic violence in a positively Hogarthian manner. No, Miriam thought, they must have gotten it wrong. She was murdered, Ma told me! Not taken into hospital with a stab wound! She shook her head, bewildered and hurting. “I’ll do that. But first I need some stuff from my house,” she said, “but I’m not sure I dare go there.”

“What stuff?” asked Paulie. Miriam could see her fingers white against the rim of the steering wheel.