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Isn't that how it's done?"
       The policeman's pale brows stand out, light smudges against a face that is growing more heated. "The tales I could tell you of the craftiness of criminals—"
       "Well, this one wasn't so crafty. He left his hat upstairs. I noticed it straightaway."
       The policeman tries to hide his surprise with a cough, but Mr. Cartwright smiles.
       "Yes," he continues, "the hat on the stand upstairs is not Mr. Bentley's. I'm intimately acquainted with all his apparel. And that hat is not his. Indeed, Mr. Bentley's hat that was hanging there is gone. So I should say that the burglar took off with the wrong one, wouldn't you, Constable?"
       Only now does Jane lay her hands flat on the table and say, "Yes—that's right. There was already a hat on the stand."
       "Mr. Bentley's second best."
       Above them on the wall a bell rings. The labels are so dark with dirt that even if Jane turned around she would not be able to read which room it was for. Mr. Cartwright purses his lips. "Mrs. Robert Bentley," he announces, "needs me." He stands. "If you would like to view the hat—"
       With a grunt the policeman pushes away his plate and gets up. He takes a moment to brush the crumbs off the front of his uniform, then he follows Cartwright to the stairs.
       Mrs. Johnson takes up the plate and the half-eaten slice of pie. "Well, now," she says to Jane. "I daresay you're getting thirsty, love. How about a cup of tea?"

    U pstairs Mina Bentley goes to the bedroom window and lifts the sash. The air is cold and smells of soot, but she leans both hands on the sill and takes deep breaths anyway. Her eyes are on the street below, but she doesn't see the people and horses and carriages moving through the deepening dusk. No, she's breathing in painful lungfuls of air to calm herself. This ridiculous burglary— one of the servants must be involved, for how else did the man know it would be the new maid who'd answer the door? Was it Sarah? If not, then who?
       He was in the morning room too, she is sure of it. Going through the papers. That mess in the study as though a storm had blown through—a ruse. Because whatever he wanted wasn't in there. No. The papers in the desk in the morning room must have been gone through. She imagines him carefully picking through them and wonders what he read, what he might have taken away with him that will not be discovered for weeks. For months even. Only, she thinks, he might use what he found before then.
       But there's nothing of her old life here, she tells herself, nothing that could have stowed away with her to London. Does this mean that Lizzie was innocent? Or that she didn't find anything and this man had to come to finish the job? She leans her head against the wooden frame of the sash. Maybe that's not what he's after. Yet what else could he have hoped to find?
       This morning she was going over the accounts, calculating how much money she and Robert have left, how long it will last them if they move to a smaller apartment in Paris. Was it her account book he was after? It is still safe in her portable desk upstairs. But she remembers using an old envelope for her calculations—names on it of her landlord in Paris, and her dressmaker. Where is it now? Taken away by one of the maids to be thrown on the fire? Or folded into his pocket? She cannot know. Such information seems suddenly dangerous. Would a little cleverness be enough to pull on such a small thread and unravel her life? Could he trace her back not only to Paris but from there to who she was before? She hadn't thought it possible. And yet, if he's clever—
       She looks up. Across the street a woman is outlined against the brightness of a window. She wears a cap and, as Mina sees as the woman steps back into the light, a white apron—a maid. It takes Mina a moment to understand that she must be visible to anyone who chances to look over to this side of Cursitor Road, and