The man bowed. “Indeed, miss.”

Tristan waved Leonora before him; she led him out of the kitchen. In the front hall they found Jeremy waiting.

He looked distinctly pale. “Is it true?”

“It must be, I’m afraid.” Leonora went to the hall stand and lifted down her cloak. Tristan had followed her; he took it from her hands.

He held it, and looked down at her. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to wait with your uncle in the library?”

She met his gaze. “No.”

He sighed. “I thought not.” He draped the cloak about her shoulders, then reached around her to open the front door.

“I’m coming, too.” Jeremy followed them out onto the porch, then down the winding path.

They reached the front door of Number 16; Daisy had left it on the latch. Pushing the door wide, they entered.

The scene was exactly as Leonora had imagined it from Daisy’s words. Unlike their house with its wide front hall with the stairs at the rear facing the front door, here, the hall was narrow and the head of the stairs was above the door; the foot of the stairs was at the rear of the hall.

That was where Miss Timmins lay, crumpled like a rag doll. Just as Daisy had said, there seemed little doubt life had left her, but Leonora went forward. Tristan had halted ahead of her, blocking the hall; she put her hands on his back and gently pushed; after an instant’s hesitation, he moved aside and let her through.

Leonora crouched by Miss Timmins. She was wearing a thick cotton nightgown with a lacy wrapper clutched around her shoulders. Her limbs were twisted awkwardly, but decently covered; a pair of pink slippers were on her narrow feet.

Her lids were closed, the fading blue eyes shut away. Leonora brushed back the thin white curls, noted the extreme fragility of the papery skin. Taking one tiny claw-like hand in hers, she looked up at Tristan as he paused beside her. “Can we move her? There seems no reason to leave her like this.”

He studied the body for a moment; she got the impression he was fixing its position in his memory. He glanced up the stairs, all the way to the top. Then he nodded. “I’ll lift her. The front parlor?”

Leonora nodded, released the bony hand, rose and went to open the parlor door. “Oh!”

Jeremy, who’d gone past the body, past the hall table with the breakfast tray and onto the kitchen stairs, came back through the swinging door. “What is it?”

Speechless, Leonora simply stared.

With Miss Timmins in his arms, Tristan came up behind her, looked over her head, then nudged her forward.

She came to with a start, then hurried to straighten the cushions on the chaise. “Put her here.” She glanced around at the wreck of the once fastidiously neat room. Drawers were pulled out, emptied on the rugs. The rugs themselves had been pulled up, slung aside. Some of the ornaments had been smashed in the grate. The pictures on the walls, those still on their hooks, hung crazily. “It must have been thieves. She must have heard them.”

Tristan straightened from laying Miss Timmins gently down. With her limbs extended and her head on a cushion, she looked to be simply fast asleep. He turned to Jeremy, standing in the open doorway, looking around in amazement. “Go to Number 12 and tell Gasthorpe that we need Pringle again. Immediately.”

Jeremy lifted his gaze to his face, then nodded and left.

Leonora, fussing with Miss Timmins’s nightgown, rearranging her wrapper as she knew she would have liked, glanced up at him. “Why Pringle?”

Tristan met her gaze, hesitated, then said, “Because I want to know if she fell, or was pushed.”

“Fell.” Pringle carefully repacked his black bag. “There’s not a mark on her that can’t be accounted for by the fall, and none that looks like bruises from a man’s grip. At her age, there would be bruises.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the tiny body laid out on the chaise. “She was fragile and old, not long for this world in any case, but even so. While a man could easily have grabbed her and flung her down the stairs, he couldn’t have done it without leaving some trace.”

His gaze on Leonora, tidying a vase on a table beside the chaise, Tristan nodded. “That’s some small relief.”

Pringle snapped his bag closed, glanced at him as he straightened. “Possibly. But there’s still the question of why she was out of bed at that hour—somewhere in the small hours, say between one o’clock and three—and what so frightened her, and it was almost certainly fright, enough to make her faint.”

Tristan focused on Pringle. “You think she fainted?”

“I can’t prove it, but if I had to guess what happened…” Pringle waved at the chaos of the room. “She heard sounds from this, and came to see. She stood at the top of the stairs and peered down. And saw a man. Suddenly. Shock, faint, fall. And here we are.”

Tristan, gazing at the chaise and Leonora beyond it, said nothing for a moment, then he nodded, looked at Pringle, and offered his hand. “As you say—here we are. Thank you for coming.”

Pringle shook his hand, a grim smile flirting about his lips. “I thought leaving the army would mean a humdrum practice—with you and your friends about, at least I won’t be bored.”

With an exchange of smiles, they parted. Pringle left, closing the front door behind him.

Tristan walked around the back of the chaise to where Leonora stood, looking down at Miss Timmins. He put an arm around Leonora, lightly hugged.

She permitted it. Leaned into him for a moment. Her hands were tightly clasped. “She looks so peaceful.”

A moment passed, then she straightened and heaved a huge sigh. Brushed down her skirts and looked around. “So—a thief broke in and searched this room. Miss Timmins heard him and got out of bed to investigate. When the thief returned to the hall, she saw him, fainted, and fell…and died.”

When he said nothing, she turned to him. Searched his eyes. Frowned. “What’s wrong with that as deduction? It’s perfectly logical.”

“Indeed.” He took her hand, turned to the door. “I suspect that’s precisely what we’re supposed to think.”

“Supposed to think?”

“You missed a few pertinent facts. One, there’s not a single window lock or door lock forced or unexpectedly left open. Both Jeremy and I checked. Two”—stepping into the hall, ushering her ahead of him, he glanced back into the parlor—“no self-respecting thief would leave a room like that. There’s no point, and especially at night, why risk the noise?”

Leonora frowned. “Is there a three?”

“No other room has been searched, nothing else in the house appears disturbed. Except”—holding the front door, he waved her ahead of him; she went out onto the porch, waited impatiently for him to lock the door and pocket the key.

“Well?” she demanded, linking her arm with his. “Except what?”

They started down the steps. His tone had grown much harder, much colder, much more distant when he replied, “Except for a few, very new, scrapes and cracks in the basement wall.”

Her eyes grew huge. “The wall shared with Number 14?”

He nodded.

Leonora glanced back toward the parlor windows. “So this was Mountford’s work?”

“I believe so. And he doesn’t want us to know.”

“What are we looking for?”

Leonora followed Tristan into the bedchamber Miss Timmins had used. They’d returned to Number 14 and broken the news to Humphrey, then gone to the kitchen to confirm for Daisy that her employer was indeed dead. Tristan had asked after relatives; Daisy hadn’t known of any. None had called in the six years she’d worked in Montrose Place.

Jeremy had taken on the task of making the necessary arrangements; together with Tristan, Leonora had returned to Number 16 to try to identify any relative.

“Letters, a will, notes from a solicitor—anything that might lead to a connection.” He pulled open the small drawer of the table by the bed. “It would be most unusual if she has absolutely no kin.”

“She never mentioned any.”

“Be that as it may.”

They settled to search. She noticed he did things—looked in places—she’d never have thought of. Like the backs and undersides of drawers, the upper surface above a top drawer. Behind paintings.

After a while, she sat on a chair before the escritoire and applied herself to all the notes and letters therein. There was no sign of any recent or promising correspondence. When he glanced at her, she waved him on. “You’re much better at that than I.”

But it was she who found the connection, in an old, very faded and much creased letter lying at the back of the tiniest drawer.

“The Reverend Mr. Henry Timmins, of Shacklegate Lane, Strawberry Hills.” Triumphant, she read the address to Tristan, who had paused in the doorway.

He frowned. “Where’s that?”

“I think it’s out past Twickenham.”

He crossed the room, lifted the letter from her hand, scanned it. Humphed. “Eight years old. Well, we can but try.” He glanced at the window, then pulled out his watch and checked it. “If we take my curricle…”

She rose, smiled, linked her arm in his. Very definitely approved of that “we.” “I’ll have to fetch my pelisse. Let’s go.”

The Reverend Henry Timmins was a relatively young man, with a wife and four daughters and a busy parish.

“Oh, dear!” He abruptly sat down in a chair in the small parlor to which he’d conducted them. Then he realized and started up.

Tristan waved him back, handed Leonora to the chaise, and sat beside her. “So you were acquainted with Miss Timmins?”

“Oh, yes—she was my great-aunt.” Pale, he glanced from one to the other. “We weren’t at all close—indeed, she always seemed most nervous when I called. I did write a few times, but she never replied…” He blushed. “And then I got my preferment…and married…that sounds so unfeeling, yet she wasn’t at all encouraging, you know.”