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Back The Ninth Daughter
Chapters (37)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Twenty-six
  30. Twenty-seven
  31. Twenty-eight
  32. Twenty-nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-one
  35. Thirty-two
  36. Thirty-three
  37. Thirty-four

“It isn’t a matter for jest.” In a low voice Abigail recounted what she had found in Rebecca Malvern’s house that morning, and what she had done about it. “I could have beaten Sam with a broom handle for going through the place as he did,” she finished, as she tucked the chicken into its place in the pot. “The more so now, that any trace of evidence that it wasn’t you has been destroyed. I went to Malvern’s after we left Hazlitt’s printshop.”

“You don’t think she’d have taken refuge with him?”

Abigail shook her head. “No. I think she’d have taken refuge with Revere, or with us, or with Orion Hazlitt. But she didn’t.”

John said, “Hmmn.”

“If she had,” Abigail went on slowly, drying her hands, “I wouldn’t put it past Malvern—I don’t think I’d put it past Malvern—to take her in, and then lock her up again, as he did before—”

He glanced back at her from the note, which he was studying by the stronger light of the kitchen window. “You truly think he would do something like that?”

Abigail hesitated. “I truly don’t know,” she said at last. “One hears of it—and not just in novels,” she added, seeing the corner of his mouth turn down. “He is—a man who will have his own way, no matter what he has to do to get it. Mostly, I wanted to speak with him before the Watch told him of the crime and Rebecca’s disappearance. I knew he’d see no one, afterwards.”

“You’re probably right about that. And much as I hate to admit it, if Sam and the others hadn’t cleared up the scene I suppose Coldstone would have had grounds to arrest me for sedition this morning, instead of being put off with a thirty-pound bond.” At that point in Abigail’s narrative, he’d snatched off his wig and thrown it at the wall; it lay like a dead animal now on the sideboard near his hand. Without it, his face looked even rounder, his blue eyes more protuberant. His mouse brown hair, short-cropped, was graying, and Abigail had to suppress the urge to kiss the thin spots above his forehead. “You say Sam didn’t recognize Mrs. Pentyre? Or know about her?” He turned the note over in his fingers. “Did you take a close look at this?”

She shook her head, set aside the dumplings she was making, and crossed to his side. “When he saw her body, he certainly didn’t have any candidates in mind. There can’t be that many wealthy women who were friends with Rebecca, who would have been using the code of the Sons.” Over his shoulder she studied the paper:

The Linnet in the Oak Tree. Cloetia.