Her father raised his glass. “Your health, sir. I am very glad you chanced upon my shop this day.”

“It was not chance.” I reasoned we’d grown friendly enough now for me to aim at the true purpose of my visit. “You were recommended to me by a woman who once worked for you, when she was but a girl. Lilias Aitcheson.”

I’d seen things in my life of fighting, and I’d watched the blood drain from a man’s face when he felt the crawl of fear.

I watched it happen now, to Mr. Bell.

His glass went down. His eyes grew hard. “What is your game, sir?”

I was genuinely at a loss. “I do not understand.”

He had turned from me. “Marion, give him his purchase. Our business is done.”

I’d been so busy watching her father’s reaction I’d failed to see hers, but when she pressed the wrapped parcel into my hands, I could feel her own shaking.

She, too, looked as pale as chalk, but when I opened my mouth to apologize, she frowned a warning.

“Not here,” she said, almost inaudibly. “In the close.”

And with that she turned away from me also, and unsure of what had just happened, I drained my own cup of ale, took up my newly bought blade, and went out again into the street.

* * *

The swordslipper’s shop ran the width of his house at its front, and its window and door opened onto the street, but it thankfully had no side window that faced Bell’s Close.

In fact, in spite of the houses that crowded and jostled for space in this cul de sac, there weren’t many windows.

There wouldn’t be much light for windows to catch, here. The rooftops leaned too high above the overhanging upper stories. Shadows waited on the stone steps that descended in steep runs along the walls because there was no place for them to turn within a space so narrow.

It was the sort of place where someone might commit a crime unseen. A place for secret assignations. Like the one that I was keeping now.

Behind the shop, the Bells’ house ran back a fair ways, with a short flight of steps leading up to a door that had one small, square window set high in the wall at its side.

I’d not been in the close more than five minutes when that door opened and Marion Bell quickly motioned me to come inside. I did, and found myself within a spacious kitchen that appeared to serve a broader function, for an elbow chair and footstool had been drawn up near the hearth, and on the end wall where might once have been a servant’s pallet was a proper bedstead with a canopy and hangings.

Beside the hearth, a door that led presumably into the other rooms was firmly bolted and secured with a large lock, and at my entry a brown, midsized dog of the mixed breed oft used for fighting half rose in a challenge till a calm word from its mistress made it settle once more into a deceptive slumber near the chair.