He glanced around the room again. He’d even had up the carpet, looked inside the grate, under the bed—

He knelt again by the bed. Nothing, only a thin coating of dust, sifting down gently since Mrs. Trepol’s last visit.

The frame. The slats that held the springs. Above that the mattress, sagging a little in the center. The bedclothes—

The slats? What could you hide on a slat? A key, perhaps ...

He went under the bed, on his back, mindful of his coat and careful not to scrape his head on the springs as he used his arms on the side boards to propel himself. Claustrophobia caught at him, and he had to shut his eyes against the wave of terror that ran through him. He coughed hard, the dry dust sucked into his drier throat. The springs were all but pressing into his face, not as high as he’d first thought!

With eyes still shut tight, he forced his breathing back to a normal rhythm. What you don’t see can’t fall in on you! he told himself sternly.

After a moment, searching with his memory rather than his eyes, he ran shaking fingers over the nearest slat, between the springs and the wood, barking his knuckles and collecting fine splinters. Nothing but more dust. There were five slats in all. He felt for the others, and began again, moving his shoulders and hips across the floor until he could reach each slat. Nothing. It was useless, he might as well give up. The last slat now—

Only the slight rustle of sound warned him in time, but the object still clipped his ear, falling, and he banged his head as he recoiled.

Slithering swiftly out from under the frame again, he turned and looked back. The springs were a good fifteen inches above the floor, not face high.

And a small book was lying, spine upward, in an inverted V on the floor. He reached for it, and managed to fish it out without going back under the bed again.

A prayer book, pages thin as rice paper, the tiny print old and ornately lettered, the cover worn black leather, the edges of the pages once gilded.

There was on the front cover an outline in raised leather, and Rutledge recognized it as the figure of St. Patrick, staff lifted to cast out the snakes.

On the flyleaf inside, in a spidery scrawl in fading ink, he read, “Presented to Patrick Samuel FitzHugh, on his first Communion, June, 1803. From his loving Sister Mary Joseph Claire.”

FitzHugh, not Trevelyan or Marlowe or Cheney. The FitzHughs had been Irish Catholic, the Trevelyans and Marlowes and Cheneys Church of England. This had been hidden, but not for reasons that had anything to do with murder. As a boy, had Stephen had Catholic leanings his family didn’t know about?