By six o’clock, the fog had come ashore far enough to wet the station steps.
Imogen found Sera in the corridor outside the holding room, sitting beneath the frosted window with her hands clasped between her knees. Ferro had not charged her. He had not released her either. Harbor Point preferred its injustices provisional.
“You’re coming to Quill House,” Imogen said.
Sera looked up. “Am I being arrested?”
“Not yet.”
“That is a poor invitation.”
“It’s the one I have.”
Sera rose. She had been wearing the same gray dress since the night of the murder, though the collar had been mended with black thread. Her face had lost some of its defiance in the last week. Not enough to make her meek. Enough to show what the uncertainty was costing her.
At the end of the corridor, Ferro watched them leave.
“You have until noon,” he called to Imogen.
She did not ask until they were outside whether he meant noon for a recommendation or for Sera’s freedom. The answer would have been the same.
Quill House stood behind its iron gates, its windows pale with reflected fog. The police seal on the study door had been replaced twice. Each time, someone had needed to enter. Each time, the room had offered another explanation.
Imogen began with the bedroom.
The wardrobe was empty except for three suits, two waistcoats, and a row of cedar hangers. She searched the linen press, the dressing room, the servants’ hooks, and the narrow cupboard beneath the stairs. Sera followed without being asked, opening drawers and shutting them again.
“Where would he keep a coat he did not want found?” Imogen asked.
“He wouldn’t keep it in the house.”
“Why not?”
“Because he disliked damp. A coat left in an unheated room would smell of it.”
“You worked here two years.”
“I cleaned the rooms. I didn’t admire him.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“It is the answer.”
Imogen examined the row of pegs beside the back entrance. One held a child’s yellow rain cape left behind by some long-dead relation. Another bore a gardener’s canvas jacket. The third was empty, its brass hook polished by use.
“Did Quill leave through here?”
“Sometimes.”
Next
With the key ring recovered but the weapon still missing, Imogen must determine whether Quill left the house after Petra’s visit—or whether the coat was planted to make her believe he did—before Ferro’s noon deadline.
The small lie came too quickly. Imogen heard the familiar tightening in it—the instinct to conceal a detail before deciding whether the detail mattered.
“You heard something.”
“I heard the front door.”
“After Petra left?”
“I heard it once.”
“Quill leaving?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did you do?”
Sera’s mouth hardened. “I stayed where I was.”
There it was. Not innocence. Not guilt. Fear of having been useful to the wrong story.
Imogen left her by the kitchen and searched the service passage. The passage ended at the coal shed, a low stone annex built against the house. The padlock hung open.
“Who opened this?” she asked.
“Sweepers,” Sera said from behind her. “The constables searched it.”
“They searched for a weapon.”
“They searched for anything.”
Imogen stepped inside. Coal dust covered the floor in a soft black crust. Shovels leaned against the wall. A broken wheelbarrow occupied the far corner, beneath a tarpaulin stiff with salt. There was no coat.
She stood still.
The room had one high window. Its sill was clean except for a line of pale grit. Not coal dust. Sand.
“Who uses this shed?”
“No one now.”
“Who used it?”
“Mr. Quill kept the old rowing gear here.”
“Where is it?”
“Gone.”
“Taken when?”
Sera looked toward the tarpaulin. “The week before he died.”
Imogen crossed the room and lifted the cover. Beneath it was not a boat or oars but a stack of empty crates. The lowest crate had a lid nailed across it recently. The nails were bright.
Sera came closer. “That wasn’t there before.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure of the things I noticed.”
“Not the things you hid.”
A pause.
“No,” Sera said. “Not those.”
Imogen took the iron poker from beside the stove and pried at the lid. The wood broke with a damp crack. Inside lay a dark wool coat folded around itself.
Sera made a sound that was almost a laugh.
“He put it there?”
“Did you?”
“I’m not that stupid.”
“That is not the same as innocent.”
“I know.”
Imogen lifted the coat. It was Quill’s: heavy black wool, velvet collar, one brass button missing at the throat. The shoulders were dry. The hem was marked with fine gray sand, but there was no mud, no rainwater, and no coal dust on the folds. It had been placed in the crate after someone had brushed it clean.
The inner pockets were empty.
She ran her fingers along the lining. The left pocket had been opened with a knife and sewn shut again with black thread. The stitching was recent, uneven in one place where the needle had caught the wool.
“Look,” Sera said.
She pointed to the cuff. A dark stain marked the inside of the right sleeve, no larger than a coin. Imogen touched it with a gloved finger. It was brown at the edges, almost black in the center.
Blood, perhaps. Too little to tell them anything.
“Why hide the coat?” Sera asked.
“Because it had been seen on him.”
“Petra saw it.”
“Petra saw him wearing it.”
Sera looked toward the sealed study door, visible through the passage. “Then he left the house.”
“Or someone wanted us to believe he did.”
“You think he put it here himself?”
“I think the coat was hidden after it was worn and before it was searched for.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
Imogen turned the coat upside down. Something struck the floorboards with a small metallic sound.
The key ring lay beneath the crate.
Four iron keys hung from it, one marked with a strip of blue thread. The ring was dark with handling. A short length of waxed black filament remained caught around the bow, its end cleanly cut.
For several seconds neither woman spoke.
Sera bent first, but Imogen stopped her with an arm.
“Don’t touch it.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
“I wanted to see whether it was real.”
“It is real.”
“Then it was in his coat.”
“It was placed in his coat.”
Sera’s eyes moved over the ring. “That was what she said. Petra. That she saw him put it there.”
“Yes.”
“Then she told the truth.”
“About one thing.”
Imogen crouched beside the crate without touching the keys. The coat had been folded with the inner lining outward. The ring had not fallen from a pocket. It had been set beneath the fold, wrapped once in filament. Whoever had placed it there had wanted the next searcher to find it.
The same hand, perhaps, that had pulled it from beneath the desk.
But the coat itself complicated the timeline. The sand on the hem was from the shore path behind the house, not from the front drive. Quill could have walked there after Petra left. He could have carried the weapon with him. He could have hidden the coat and returned to the study in shirtsleeves.
Or someone else could have done all of it while the house waited for Sera to discover the body.
“Where is the weapon?” Sera asked.
Imogen looked at the empty pocket and the cut filament.
“Not here.”
“Then what have you found?”
“A reason not to recommend charges against you.”
Sera’s expression did not soften. “Reasons are not much use in court.”
“No.” Imogen rose. “But arrangements are.”
At the doorway, she looked back at the crate. The coat, the ring, the thread: a neat answer to the question she had been instructed to ask. Quill’s missing keys were no longer missing. They had been waiting in the first place she would search once she understood the coat mattered.
He had not merely left evidence behind. He had anticipated the order in which she would find it.
Outside, a church bell sounded nine times through the fog.