“What else would he have done with it?” countered Abigail. “Left it for the Watch? Handed it back to Sam?”

“But in Rebecca’s house—”

“Where else,” asked Abigail softly, “could he be sure of getting Mrs. Pentyre alone? These other women whom he—he fixed upon, to whom he was drawn in some unholy fashion—these women he convinced himself were the Daughters of Eve. They were, as Lieutenant Coldstone said, common women. Women whom any man could come to and find unprotected . . . or in poor Philomela’s case, a woman whose access he could purchase, though thankfully it was beyond his price. Perdita Pentyre wasn’t. Yet to him she was Jezebel the Queen.”

“Jezebel—?”

“Remember Bargest’s sermons that I told you of? About the Nine Daughters of Eve, that lie in wait to destroy a man’s soul? The serpent, the witch—we know Mrs. Fishwire had any number of serpents in her shop, besides her poor cats—the harlot. The succubus—the demon female who torments a righteous man’s dreams. Or would he consider Philomela a nightmare? Poor Mrs. Pentyre, riding at the Colonel’s side to review the troops, with her face painted and her head tir’d like Jezebel—”

They walked on, Abigail’s pattens clinking on the cobbles of Kilby Street and her heavy skirts flapping against her legs. Fort Hill loomed before them, pricked with spots of yellow where the few soldiers left on the mainland manned the guns. At the wharves below, ships stirred and creaked, restless wooden animals in the dark.

“Saying it is Orion,” said John quietly. “And saying that he wouldn’t have killed Rebecca . . . How can you be sure that she’s in hiding?”

“I looked in his attic.”

The lantern-light flashed as John turned his head. “You thought then—?”

“No. It was nowhere in my mind. But I’d just realized she might be being held prisoner somewhere, when I went into his house and he sent me upstairs for laudanum for his mother. I had to look up into the nearest attic, to see how possible it would be. I think at that moment I would have run down the street looking into the attics of every house in turn. It’s only a tiny space up there, you know. One can’t stand up in it, even right under the ridgepole, and there’s no other space in the house, where a woman could be kept.”