“Did anyone not see who was the last person to visit her house that evening?” Abigail made herself look shocked, and Mrs. Kern, Mr. Ballagh, and three other neighbors poured out a confused tale: it was a lady, at about the time Mrs. Kern was setting out to find where Nannie had got to—no, no, it was a man in a green coat (only Lettie Grace said it was gray) who’d come in a chaise, she thought—No, that chaise belonged to that French feller stopping at the Bull. Mrs. Russell said it was a Negro, but then Mrs. Russell had no use for Negroes on the whole—

As Abigail had coached her, Surry, upon being shown the few effects that Mrs. Kern (and several other neighbors) had taken from the house once the constables of the Watch had been there, asked, “Did no one find among her things a coral necklace? There was a gold bead on it. It was my mother’s, that she’d brought from Africa when they came over,” which gave Abigail the chance to describe both Rebecca Malvern and Perdita Pentyre, as the possible thieves.

It was a bow drawn at a venture, and if either of those women had visited the tiny shop that Zulieka Fishwire had kept on the ground floor of the little house, nobody had particularly noticed them. Given the proximity of the Bull, and the wide variety of Mrs. Fishwire’s clientele, this was scarcely surprising. Mrs. Gridley, whose husband now rented the shop, added that it had costed the landlord six months’ rent, that killing had, as no one would rent the place, and she and her man wouldn’t have, neither, except the asking price came down so cheap, and then they’d got Father Scully that looked after the Irish in His Majesty’s Forces to come over from Castle Island and say prayers, and Mrs. Gridley still wouldn’t go into that room after dark, not for ready money.

“Slack your fire, lass,” said Mr. Gridley easily, from where he sat beside the front window stitching a waistcoat of yellow silk. “There’s no such a thing as ghosts.” He nodded a genial greeting to Abigail and the rest of the procession that followed her in, agog to display their knowledge of the old crime.