Abigail sniffed. “I wondered if ’twas something like that. The way she lied and prevaricated about having been in the alley, or having talked to you—”

“Miserable woman. I suppose,” she added, “that living under the same roof with Mrs. Tillet would make anyone miserable, let alone a thief and a liar. I remember talking to her, and going back into the house as the rain was starting, but nothing after that.”

“We think—John and I,” Abigail said slowly, “that Orion must have unlatched the window in the parlor when he was there earlier, and slipped back in that way while you were out talking to Queenie by the gate. Yours was the only house, you see, that he knew he could get Mrs. Pentyre to come to alone.”

It was the blood, Orion had said. I thought I could kill her without . . . But then I saw the blood. Smelled its smell . . .

Had Bargest told him, You’re a Weapon in the Hand of the Lord, but for God’s sake don’t go crazy and cut the woman to pieces like you did those others . . . ?

A Weapon in the Hand of the Lord.

Was Sam? Was she herself, as Lisette Droux had hoped?

“I dreamed—I don’t know even if this really happened,” whispered Rebecca. “I dreamed I saw him through the kitchen door, standing above her body . . . Blood all over his hands—”

“Don’t—”

She shook her head, pressing on as if driven to purge the scene from her thought. “Blood all over his hands, and he looked down at them, at her, as if he knew not for a moment how it had got there. Then he looked up, and in my dream I swear I saw the light of Heaven, falling from far-off on his face, and he cried, Why have you done this to me? Why did you create me this way? Abigail, why would God create a man that way? Will he be punished—is he now in Hell—for being as God made him?”

Abigail murmured, “Only God knows what was in his heart.”

“That’s no answer.” Her brown eyes blazed with anger, with helplessness—with a passion, Abigail thought, that would never let her rest.

“No more than ’tis to say, The man was born a monster, for reasons no one knows. But ’tis the only answer God gave Job, when he spoke to him out of the whirlwind. And poor Orion was not the worst monster in the case.”

She looked up as John walked into the kitchen, passed through it catching up his hat and greatcoat, and on out into the yard. “I see Lieutenant Coldstone has come to call,” she remarked.

An instant later, Thaxter appeared in the hall doorway. “Mrs. Adams? Lieutenant Coldstone is here.”