Those names, already written down in Archie’s ledger, were the product of his sins, and I could feel the ghosts of some of them around me now within this shadowed space.

But I was thinking more of Maggie, yet untouched by him. Unbroken. And of Lily. Mostly Lily.

I told Archie, “She will be beyond your reach.”

“And who will keep her safe?” he taunted. “You?” He looked me up and down, and with a snort dismissed the notion. “Henry? Henry could not keep himself safe, when it counted.”

I had learnt to let an insult pass when it was aimed at me, but I did rise to that one, being it was aimed at one not there to make his own defense. “I would not mock his accident.” I gave the warning evenly, but Archie did not pay it heed.

“His accident?” His thin face crinkled in a smile. “Is that what he did call it? I gave the lad a leathering, that’s what. He let them go. He was supposed to be their keeper, and he let them go.”

Ever since I’d come into the transept, I’d been second-guessing my decision, reevaluating every angle of my plan. There’d been a moment, while I’d stood and waited here for Archie, when I’d studied that brass plaque upon the tomb and looked at Justice with her broken sword, and thought perhaps she did not need my intervention after all. Perhaps she would pick up her sword and see the matter to its end.

But each man has his breaking point, I’m told.

Henry was mine.

Henry, who everyone agreed had been the easiest to love of all the foundling boys within that house in Riddell’s Close. Who’d been quick to laugh and quick to love and so good-natured everyone remarked upon it. Who had wanted nothing more from life than a real family.

Who had lied to me, and said, “I was a carter, Sergeant Williamson,” to hide the truth that he had never worked outside the front room of that house, as Archie’s clerk. That it was Archie’s beating, not a horse and cart, that broke his bones so badly that the doctor had once thought he’d never walk again.

“He needed to be taught a lesson,” Archie told me, although as he spoke the words I think he caught his error. He was looking at my face.

I felt the rising rush of blood, and then the heightened sense of calm, and welcomed both. I was prepared when Archie took the pistol from his belt.

Coldly I struck it from his hand, and heard it clatter on the stone floor.

My voice was cold, too, without violence. “You should not have told me. Or at least you should have lied, as Henry did, and let me think it was an accident.” The time had come to finish things. He tried to back away from me. I took a step toward him. “Because then I might have found it in my heart to let you live.”