might crack. “I was worried sick about you. Where have you been?”
“I was visiting with a cousin,” she said weakly.
Mary-Ruth gave her a long look before turning to the little boys and bending down to offer them a penny. “Why don’t you two take this to Greene’s and pick out a sweet to share.”
When the boys had shyly accepted the coin and scampered out of the grimy room that served as both kitchen and parlor, Mary-Ruth picked up her sponge again and began gently dabbing dirt and blood away from the body. The woman on the table might have been anywhere from twenty-five to fifty, so careworn was her face, so sunken her eyes. “Childbirth,” Mary-Ruth said without looking up. “Poor woman lost too much blood as well as the babe, and now there’s two little boys with only a drunk father to raise them.”
They fell into respectful silence as Mary-Ruth worked. Finally, she put down the sponge and turned around. “You don’t have a cousin, and you wouldn’t have gone all the way to Rockport without telling me first.” When Tabby didn’t say anything else, she sighed. “Well, you don’t have to tell me, but you might have at least given me the courtesy of letting me know before you disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“I’m sorry,” Tabby said, but she did not offer any more details about the past weeks or why she had been hiding at home.
Mary-Ruth moved around the body, rubbing it down with a silk cloth as carefully as if she were polishing marble, while Tabby stood in awkward silence.
“I’ve been thinking, and...” Tabby toed at the worn carpet with her shoe, trying to put her words in order. “I’d like to do some watching.”
Mary-Ruth’s eyes lit up, any lingering sourness about Tabby’s lies evaporating. “Oh, that’s such good news! You’ll be wonderful at it, and I’ll get to see more of you.”
Tabby wasn’t as enthusiastic, but she managed a smile. The hours would be long and fraught, giving her mind time to wander to all those places she tried to avoid: spirits, death, and now Caleb. But at least she would always have a place at night, so long as she had a patient to watch.
“You know,” Mary-Ruth said without looking up, “I saw that Caleb Bishop the other week.”
Tabby’s chest went tight. “You saw him?”
“I have to say, Tabs, I don’t know that I trust him.” Mary-Ruth slid her a sideways look.
Tabby worried at her lip. “When did you see him exactly? What did he say?”
“During my search of the city for you, after you never came for the laying out. When I informed him that you were missing, he acted surprised.”
So, before he had escaped. Tabby desperately wanted an account of every word Caleb had uttered, but something in Mary-Ruth’s closed expression told her that she would only get half the story.
“Now he’s the one missing,” Tabby said gloomily.
Mary-Ruth shot her a look. “What do you mean?”
“He escaped from prison.”
“Escaped from prison!” Mary-Ruth straightened from her washing and wrung out the sponge in the basin. “I knew it. They must be convinced of his guilt in the Hammond case. I can’t say I’m sorry to hear that. I only hope that they catch him quickly.”
“He didn’t have anything to do with it!” Tabby’s words came out more forcefully than she intended. She took a deep breath. “It was his father’s business partner, a Mr. Whitby. That’s where I was... I found evidence that implicated him in the murder, and he caught me. I only just managed to escape with my skin.”
“Tabby, you didn’t!” Mary-Ruth looked over her shoulder as if worried that the corpse might hear. “Is it safe for you to be out around the city? Do you think he’ll come after you, looking for Mr. Bishop?”
Tabby closed her eyes. She was so weary of running and hiding her entire life, of being afraid. “I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s likely, so don’t tell anyone.”
She stood and threw one last glance at the corpse on the table. “Next time there’s need for a watcher, send for me. And whatever you do, don’t go near Eli. The last thing I want is for him to know anything about this.”
17
IN WHICH AN OLD FOE IS FACED AND A FRAUD EXPOSED.
TABBY SLUNK THROUGH the city, hating that she felt like a rat, clinging to the shadows and scurrying with her head down. She despised Mr. Whitby for everything he had done, and