“Orion Hazlitt has been desperately in love with Rebecca Malvern since they met over printing work he was doing. He’s an intelligent young man but he was not well educated. Mrs. Malvern, who teaches a dame school, helped him with the spelling and arrangement of manuscripts he was given to print. I suppose it’s the fashion to believe calumny rather than innocence, but I have been friends with Mrs. Malvern for six years, and there was no more between them than his longing for someone in his life other than his execrable mother, and Mrs. Malvern’s determination to remain faithful to a husband who treated her like a dog. I take it another of the accused was my husband?”

Coldstone inclined his head.

“As too close a party to the case any testimony of mine would be disbelieved,” said Abigail, “so I will not waste your time with trying to prove a negative. And the third, I suppose, was Mr. Tillet—”

“Who owned the house she lived in, which he could have rented for considerably more than she paid him—”

“Had his wife not had in her so convenient a slave for sewing shirts. Mrs. Queensboro is a woman who lives in furtiveness and spite, Lieutenant. I would weigh very carefully any testimony she gives you.”

“Including the fact that you were at Mrs. Malvern’s door Thursday morning, long before the Watch was called?”

“I had contracted with Mrs. Malvern to do some sewing for me,” replied Abigail steadily. “And, as I said to you that morning, I passed by to ask, was there anything I could purchase for her at the market, as I knew it was difficult for her to do so because of teaching.”

Coldstone regarded her in silence, his head a little on one side. He still bore a bruise on his forehead, where he’d struck his head when his horse had come down with him Tuesday; its edges were starting to turn yellowy green. Pattie knocked at the parlor door, then entered bearing a tray nobly laden with coffeepot, bread and butter, new cream, and a small dish of hunks of brown Jamaican sugar. The girl laid her burden on the small table that she drew up between them, curtseyed, and withdrew again, and it was some moments before Coldstone spoke.

“Mrs. Adams,” he said, “I apologize if I have angered you. I did not mean to do so. I came here seeking your help—”

“To put my husband’s neck in a noose?”