She laid out the samples she'd isolated from the body of the murdered boy: earth, fingernail clippings, scraps of his clothing and scrapings from the steps on which he had died. She piled each sample in
a shallow watch glass placed in one of the isolation circles. Those smaller
peripheral circles also held beakers of clotted blood and an Erlen flask of rainwater, along with samples of hair that she had retrieved from the toiletries of the missing individuals—a bit of everything she meant to eliminate from the parameters of her spell. At the very center of the circle, over the gas flame, a crucible warmed. A low table set beside it held a small heap of candles brought from the victims' house and several more watch glasses.
Three of these shallow dishes each contained a bit of the waxlike substance. The last one cradled splinters from the gouges in the blue wooden door.
By seven o'clock, Garrett was on her second pot of tea. Mike had come in to find her after his supper and was dozing in his basket. Straightening from her bench, she had just thought of pausing for her own meal before the evening's real work when a familiar tap on the door brought her head around. Mike pricked up his ears and hopped to his feet as she opened the door.
"Supper already, Mary?" Garrett asked the dark, narrow-shouldered housekeeper standing in the hallway.
Mary's eyes twinkled. "If it please you, m'Lady, there's a right handsome gentleman caller to see you. I've invited him in." Mary extended an ornate silver tray so that Garrett could pick up the visiting card lying on it.
"Ah. Indeed?" She didn't think she needed to glance at the name—the slightly oily feel of parchment between her fingertips told her everything. "Engraved. Very nice. Send Don Sebastien in, please. I will receive him in the laboratory." Mike wagged his coiled plume happily after Mary; she ducked her head and left.
Mary must have taken the gentleman detective's overcoat and hat, but Garrett noticed that the shoulders of his coat were damp through. "Is it raining again, Don Sebastien?" Absently, her hand came up to press the place between her breasts where a sigil tattooed in crimson marked her training. She felt as if his gaze burrowed through cloth to notice it.
"Indeed," he said, bowing over her hand, making no comment on her stained smock. Again, his lips brushed the back of her fingers—ungloved, this time—and sent a shiver down her spine.
Her terrier withdrew to his basket and watched the tall stranger warily. She snapped her fingers for Mike's attention, and his tail flipped twice, but he merely lay there, watching with disturbing, alert eyes.
"Have you had any success, my dear Crown Investigator?"
She sighed and turned away, gesturing toward the circle. "As you can see, I am just about to commence. What have you discovered, Don Sebastien? As I recall, when we parted company, you were on your way to research the boy's family."
"And so I was. May I sit?"
"As it pleases you," she answered. He selected a wingbacked chair against the wall, pushed away from Garrett's equipment and opposite Mike's basket, not far from the hearth.
When he was settled on the olive brocade and had refused tea, he began to speak. "The lad's name was Bruce Carlson, home on Easter break from a school in Westchester. His family, as you no doubt noticed from the house, were not without resources, which proved fortunate for them, because the lad seems to have been something of a troublemaker."
"Really?" Garrett turned up the flame under her crucible and began breaking the candles into it. "What sort of trouble?"
"Well." The handsome Spaniard rubbed his hands together, leaning toward the fire. "There were whisperings—nothing proven, you understand, or even openly charged—that he was less than honorable to a maidservant who left their employment last year."
"English girl?" Even a servant should have been able to go to the Colonial Police if her master's son laid hands on her.
"Irish," Don Sebastien answered, his frown raising him an inch or two in Garrett's estimation. Her own history gave her a certain sympathy to pariahs of any stripe—Irish, Negro, even the Romany and Indian halfbloods who were welcome nowhere—but few aristocrats harbored fellow-feeling for their 'inferiors.' "No family I've been able to locate. Not even a last name."
"What became of her?" What is your agenda, Don Sebastien? What is it you want of me? Of New Amsterdam?
He shrugged expressively, smoothing his damp hair behind his ear. "I