“Oh, I’ll work, m’am,” provided Gomer, hurrying her steps to close the distance between them. “Just please don’t lock me up with the rats. I got so hungry up there in the attic, and cold. I’ll even sew for you, but I’m no good at it.”

Abigail thought about the single slice of thinly buttered bread, the jug of water. Even the harsh laws of Leviticus enjoined the Hebrews to look after their beasts, and to treat the lowest of their households with common humanity. Which obviously—since the frugal Tillets had smuggled her into their attic while the rest of the household was in turmoil on the day of the murder—they had had no intention of doing, even from the first. Free labor, and the cheapest possible food . . .

At least the slave Philomela, thought Abigail, was worth four hundred dollars to somebody.

She stopped, and laid a hand on Lieutenant Coldstone’s arm. “Lieutenant,” she said, “might I impose upon you for one more favor? And this one,” she added, “will advance us on our way, to finding the murderer of Mrs. Pentyre.”

She had the notes from both Philomela and Lucy Fluckner still in her pocket, but the Fluckner butler Mr. Barnaby barely glanced at them. “A shocking thing it was, m’am,” he said. “Well, there’s always young men who’ll try to get up an affaire with a maidservant, especially one as beautiful as Miss Philomela, and some of them do send poems. Terrible lot of tosh, most of them.” He glanced back at Coldstone, who followed them up the stair—a broad and handsome flight, open in the fashion of wealthy English houses where presumably there was more money to be spent on heating. “But this, sir—m’am—there was something about these, after the first two or three, that made my blood run cold. I didn’t know Miss Philomela had kept that last one. Terrible frightened she was over it—and no wonder! The first few weeks after she got it, I thought she was like to faint, going outside the house.”

He opened the door to the maid’s room, which was a narrow chamber on the main bedroom floor, between the overdecorated demipalaces allotted to Mrs. Fluckner and her daughter. Philomela’s room was very like the girl herself, Abigail thought. No frills, no fuss, though she probably could have gleaned any number of gaudy castoffs from either of her mistresses. On a little table beside the bed lay a book of Sir Philip Sidney’s poems.

The more sinister poem in question was, as Philomela had said, under the loose floorboard beside the head of the bed.