John added, quietly, “As I’ve told you.”

“And she is not an intimate friend to Mrs. Pentyre, so far as you know?”

“Not so far as I know.”

“Does she share your husband’s political opinions?”

Abigail’s glance went to John again, and this time the tension in him was unmistakable. Not a chess game. A fencing-match, she thought, like the one in Hamlet: the rapiers unbuttoned, and one blade poisoned. “We met at church,” she said. “Like both of us, and many others, Mrs. Malvern believes that the colonies have the right to a voice in their own government, though what that has to do with such a crime being committed beneath her roof I am at a loss to imagine.”

“Are you, m’am? At what time did your husband come in last night?”

“He did not,” replied Abigail. “He has been pleading a case in Essex County since Monday. He was to have returned last night, but I presume was delayed until after the time that the gates are shut and the ferry closed down for the night. When I left for the market this morning he had not yet come in.”

“As I told you also,” added John, whose cheeks had developed red blotches of anger. “I expect my children will say the same, if you care to interrogate them.”

“John,” said Abigail sharply, “what does—?”

Coldstone held up a staying hand. “What time was that?”

Queenie saw me outside Rebecca’s door. “Nearly half past seven. Daylight.”

“And you have only just returned from your marketing?”

“I went first to Mrs. Malvern’s house to see if there was anything I might get for her, and found a slate by her door, saying, No School. I thought she might have been ill, and walked on to return a book I had borrowed from a friend in the North End; I returned by way of Fish Street again, to see if she was awake and in need of anything. ’Twas then I heard that a woman had been found in her house, dead, and no one could say what had happened to Mrs. Malvern or where she might be. I have been seeking word of her.”

“In preference to a reunion with your husband?”

“My dear Lieutenant,” said John, with a half grin that did not reach his eyes, “Mrs. Adams is the original Eve for curiosity. She knew where she would be able to locate me, when she needed me.”

Past the Lieutenant’s shoulder, Abigail saw a man cross the window on the outside, a distorted shape in the uneven diamonds of glass. The fourth or fifth to do so, she thought, in five minutes—unusual for Queen Street at this time of a weekday morning.

“As I have told you already,” John went on, “I spent last night at Purley’s Tavern in Salem, my horse having strained a fetlock a number of miles from the ferry—”