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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

When he escorted her to the door some ten minutes later, Malvern said, “Let me know what you learn, Mrs. Adams. If you would,” he added, like a man recalling a phrase in a foreign tongue. “I’ll have the letters from Woodruff to-to my wife”—again he avoided calling her Mrs. Malvern—“sent over to you next week; I should like to read them myself again. You probably know as much as I do about—about my wife’s family—and in any case it is hard to see, after the lapse of nearly eight years, why someone from her past would choose to do violence against an innocent third party in her house.”

“I agree,” said Abigail quietly. “Yet the killer has to be someone she knows, and trusted.”

“Which doesn’t preclude Sam Adams or one of his ilk,” retorted Malvern grimly. “There!” he added. “That’s the three quarters striking! Ulee had best make a little speed, if you’re to be home when the Sabbath begins.”

Icy wind clawed them as he handed her down the step and into the chaise. Abigail had protested, while they’d waited for it, that the distance was barely five hundred yards to her own door, but in her heart she was grateful, as the glow of the vehicle’s lamps caught on flying spits of rain. “If he’s a few minutes late,” she replied, “I think we can argue, with our Lord, that it comes under the heading of pulling one’s ox from a pit. The Sabbath was made for Man, and not Man for the Sabbath.”

“Let me know what you learn,” he said. “And how I may help you find—Mrs. Malvern.”

Quietly, Abigail said, “I will.” But as the chaise rattled up King Street, Abigail reflected on how little she had learned, since she’d waked in the morning’s cold dawn. She had pulled no ox from any pit. And though a small part of her heart rejoiced at what she thought she had heard in Charles Malvern’s voice, she was well aware that she was no closer to knowing Rebecca’s whereabouts than she had been on Thursday morning, watching the Sons of Liberty mop Perdita Pentyre’s blood from Rebecca’s kitchen floor.

Eleven

Eleven

012

Mrs. Adams

Mistress Lisette Droux will come to the kitchen of my house to meet you at four o’clock this afternoon, having no day but Sunday, to leave her master’s house. I hope and trust this meets with your approval?

I remain,
Your obedient humble etc.
Charles Malvern

“I suppose it isn’t to be hoped that Malvern could arrange an interview with Richard Pentyre,” remarked John, when Abigail handed him the note that had awaited them on the sideboard on their return from morning service.