“Hilliard’s a windbag, but he had the right of it. You can’t be out on the road with some rabid animal loose.”

  “No, Jack,” I pleaded. “Mrs. Moyle needs me.”

  “She’ll find someone else easily enough.”

  “No,” I repeated with more force. “I’ll make sure to be home well before dark from now on.”

  Thick, dark-red brows lifted over eyes the same pale shade of green as my own. “The light of day didn’t come between this fella and a bad end, did it?”

  We were just passing the spot where the body had lain, though the constable’s men had removed it by now. I was scared of whatever had killed Mr. Roscoe, but not as scared as I was of leaving my job. I didn’t know what would become of me if I had to go back to the way things were before. The silence of our empty cottage—the remembrances of what we’d lost there—might crush the life out of me.

  “What if I wait there for you every night?” I said. “Mrs. Moyle won’t mind. I can read her books until you get there. Then you can walk me home.”

  Jack scowled. “Both of us have better things to do than—”

  “Better things?” I snapped, glaring at him. “Like drinking at The Wolf’s Head?”

  “Now, I work hard, Mina, I shouldn’t have to tell you that. And I didn’t choose it, any more than you chose to take on the things our mother used to do. I’m the eldest, and she would want you—”

  “Eldest?” I let out a bark of laughter. Jack had emerged first from our mother’s womb, and he never let me forget it.

  “Mum and Da would want you to do as I say! Now you find yourself a husband, and then you can—”

  “Do what he says instead?” Loneliness had turned my thoughts to it many a time. But any man who would marry me would likely be a miner, too, and he might not want me at The Magpie any more than Jack did. It wasn’t as if I’d been turning down offers, anyway. There were plenty of girls in the parish with dark hair, or flaxen, and faces not covered in freckles. With easy smiles, soft eyes, and blunter tongues.

  “I’m tired, Mina,” Jack said, hard and flat. “And I want my supper. I’ll say no more about it.”

  We were home too late for me to do more than cobble together a meal. I made pasties every morning for the tearoom and for Jack to take to work, but I always held one out for when I returned from work. Tonight I halved my pasty and served it with slices of apple from the tree out back and cheese from the market, along with the last of the hevva cake from the night before.

  As we ate, I thought of a new argument to try. It occurred to me that Jack might need reminding that we were probably the only mining family in the parish no longer cooking over a hearth fire, thanks to Mrs. Moyle. She’d given me the cookstove she’d replaced after opening the tearoom.

  But Jack finished quick and went straight to his bed—the one that had belonged to our mother and father, behind a folding screen downstairs. I left the washing for the morning and went up to the loft and my own bed.

  Tucked under the covers, I prayed for sleep. Instead, I felt tears gather under my eyelids and squeeze onto my cheeks. I kept seeing Mr. Roscoe’s face in my mind—in the shop with his newspaper and tea, then on the heath with his staring eyes and blood-smeared cheek. The way his head had been turned, and with the twist of collar and coat at his neck, I hadn’t seen the wound. I was grateful for that now, though my imagination was doing plenty on its own.

  Had it truly been an animal? What animal was big enough to take down a full-grown man like that? As far as I knew, the only wolves to be found in Cornwall were the ones in stories, and no fox could ever manage such a thing. I supposed it must have been a large dog.

  Shuddering, I turned my thoughts to The Magpie, and Jack’s decision. In a way, I dreaded going back there. I wished to see no more auguries. I could always empty the teapots without looking into them, of course, but would I really be able to? What if I missed something that could help someone? Yet what help had I been to Mr. Roscoe? I recalled Mum and her tea guests and wondered—had she been able to help them?

  Weariness gradually slowed my thoughts, unraveling them until they no longer made any kind of sense. Still, as I was dropping off, there was a moment when a final clear thought did come to me: Though I had failed to make Jack understand about The Magpie—in losing our parents, we’d also lost the sympathy of feeling we’d shared all our lives—it was impossible for me to do what he wanted.

  I fell asleep wondering what the consequences would be.

  Chorus

  Like any other day, I woke to the peal of morning church bells and rose to make the pasties, boiling the onions, potatoes, swedes, and beef before filling the shortcrust, crimping the edges, and popping the pasties into the oven.

  Jack always rose as the aroma began to fill the cottage. He dressed, washed his face, and broke his fast with tea and bread with milk. It was my habit to wrap a pasty from the first batch and hand it to him as he walked out the door. I thought he might ask about the number of them I was making this morning, now that he expected me to give up my job. But Jack was usually too tired from work and foggy from the previous night’s drink to pay much attention to what I did—so long as meals appeared at the expected times—and today was no different.

  He never said much in the mornings, and today he kept silent, avoiding my gaze until I was putting the still-warm pasty into his hand.

  “You’ll be all right today?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, lifting my chin.

  A tiny, tired smile tugged at his lips. “There’s my girl,” he said, and this glimpse of the old Jack wrenched my heart. Never mind that the whites of his eyes were veined with red, and he looked like he’d hardly slept. “Nothing’s going to bother you if you stay close to the cottage,” he cautioned gently.

  I gave him a short nod, though my face grew hot.

  “I’m sorry things can’t be different.”

  He might have been referring to a hundred things, but I knew what he meant: Sorry about The Magpie. His words seemed to make plain what I had already feared—that he had no idea of letting me go back, even once the dog, or whatever it was, had been caught.

  Truth was, the attack on Mr. Roscoe had given him a reason for doing something he’d wanted to for a long time. I always figured Jack grumbled about The Magpie because it made me happier, and he couldn’t be happy. Maybe also because of how it had changed me. I felt like I understood the world a little better from being around people who were different. And certainly from reading Mrs. Moyle’s books.

  Jack couldn’t escape the life he’d been born to. I guessed he didn’t want me to, either.

  He turned and started for Wheal Enys, kicking a lone dandelion stalk that sprouted from the hardpacked road and setting the feathery seeds adrift like souls of the dead.

  Recalling that he’d likely be walking home alone from the tavern, as usual, despite his cautioning me, I shouted after him, “You be careful, Jack! Be home before dark!”

  He raised a hand without turning and then faded into the morning mist.

  Sighing, I closed the door against the chill and went back to finish the baking. I tried not to think about what would happen when Jack learned I’d defied him. If I took care to get home before he did, he might not discover it right away. And if I could stave that off until the danger had passed, he wouldn’t be able to use the same argument against me.

  I pulled a pan from the oven and slid the last one in. Mrs. Moyle always said our customers came as much for the pasties as they did for her scones. “Oggies,” Da had called them, and I made them the way Mum had taught me, though sometimes I changed up the fillings. In the spring I put in leeks and a few crumbles of yarg cheese, and those were a particular favorite at the shop. But the truth was Mrs. Moyle’s scones and jams were known all over the parish.

  She’d added pasties to the menu as the ladies who were regulars began bringing their husbands and children with them. My employer couldn’t do all the baking herself, so besides giving me the old stove, she paid me enough to cover the ingredients and my extra efforts. This had allowed me to put better food on our own table, too—a fact that seemed to have escaped Jack’s notice.

  Once the pasties had cooled enough, I packed them into a basket and covered them with a cloth. But as I was leaving the cottage, I hesitated, then went back for my paring knife and slipped it in with the pasties. Maybe it wasn’t much of a weapon, but I kept it sharp, which would count for something in a desperate moment.

  Though I didn’t regret my decision, I still felt guilty as I set out for work. I had never defied Jack outright before. But then he had never given me reason to.

  The day was bright, and as I walked, the golden autumn sunshine and brisk air gentled my troubled thoughts. People were going about their business; a few strangers rode past me toward the village, and two farm carts full of apples rolled toward Carbis.

  But as I drew near the place where I’d found Mr. Roscoe, uneasiness crept over me. I noticed where the weeds had been pressed down by his body and shivered. Like the victim, most of the scones that had spilled onto the heath were gone. A crow pecked violently at the last one, sending crumbs flying into the air. With a loud caw, a second crow lit beside the first, joining the feast. Mrs. Moyle’s basket lay on its side nearby. I left it there, thinking I might find the courage to pick it up on my way home.

  With less than half a mile of road between me and the tearoom, I hurried along and soon found myself safe inside the warm kitchen. I set the pasties on the long wooden worktable, where rows and rows of scones were cooling.

  “How are you this morning, Mina?” asked Mrs. Moyle, coming down the cramped staircase from her room above. Like every morning, she was neat as a pin, her apron crisp and her magpie hair—black streaked with white—neatly pulled back and coiled. She looked tired this morning, though—as, I was sure, did I.

  “I am well, Mrs. Moyle.”

  She eyed me doubtfully. “You know, you needn’t have come today. You’d certainly be missed, but I could have managed. You’ve had quite a shock.”

  I gave her a gentle shrug. “I guess I feel like it’s better to keep on with things.”

  She pressed her lips together and nodded. She crossed to the stove, picked up a towel, and opened the oven door, hinges protesting with a noise that was part creak, part groan. Removing a pan of scones from the oven, she said, “Mr. Hilliard came back again after you left last night.”

  “Oh?” A tremor lifted my voice. “Any news?”

  She set the pan down and met my gaze. “Mr. Roscoe was, indeed, Mr. Tregarrick’s solicitor. Down from Bodmin to see his client.”

  “I see.” Did he have a wife? Children? I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

  “He said Mr. Tregarrick was very distressed at the news, which of course he would be. Though, despite having lived here most of my life, I’ve never met nor even seen the man.”

  “Did the constable say anything else about how . . . how it happened?”

  Mrs. Moyle frowned, setting her towel on the worktable. “Both Mr. Hilliard and Mr. Perry seem to believe it was an animal attack. His body wasn’t much damaged, but it seems the neck wound was fatal. Only . . .”

  I waited, but she looked unsure whether she wanted to say more. “Only?” I prompted.

  “Well, the exact cause of death is believed to be a loss of blood, but the gentlemen are puzzled by the fact there wasn’t much blood where you found his body. Forgive me if that was more than you wanted to know.”

  “No, I wish to understand,” I replied, though my stomach was souring. “I suppose Mr. Roscoe couldn’t have been moved there from somewhere else?”

  “That’s exactly what I asked, but Mr. Hilliard said if an animal had . . .” She closed her eyes, shuddering visibly. “If an animal had dragged him, they would have seen some sign of it.”

  “What do they think, then?”

  Shaking her head, she said, “I don’t know, but with facts not quite adding up, I daresay there will be a coroner’s inquest.” She took a deep breath, eyes moving over the fruits of her morning labor. “What I’d be wondering, were I a member of the constabulary, is whether the poor man had been moved by somebody.”

  This sent a chill through me. “Though it’s awful enough, I think I’d rather it was only an animal.”

  “I have to agree.” More reassuringly, she said, “And I expect that’s what they’ll conclude.”

  Mrs. Moyle began moving scones from the cooling racks to a large platter, and I put on my apron and helped her. Soon I felt her studying me.

  “I’m going to guess you’ve done some fretting about what you told me yesterday, before all this started.”

  “I have,” I admitted faintly.

  “There was nothing you could have done, Mina. No way you could have known.”

  “I’ve told myself that, yet I wonder—what’s the point of it, then?”

  She nodded in sympathy. “That may come to you in time.”

  We heard the rattle of the front door, and Mrs. Moyle looked at the watch pinned to her apron and muttered, “Heavens.” She covered my hand with hers for a moment, and I managed a weak smile. Then she went to open the shop.

  I had hoped for a quiet day, but the tearoom filled quickly, everyone curious what their neighbors knew about the night before. At first I feared they’d stare at or even question me, but it soon became clear that Mr. Hilliard must have kept me out of the public account of the death. Likely it would come out at some point, but I still felt shaken and was grateful to be left in peace for a while.

  As much peace as could be had in a busy tearoom. Mrs. Moyle insisted on working the front room, leaving me in back making tea, arranging scones and pasties on pretty, mismatched china plates, and filling small bowls with clotted cream and jam.

  From the kitchen, I could still hear snatches of conversation, and some customers did seem to know that Mrs. Moyle was the one who’d sent for the constable. When they questioned her, she told them she’d been asked “not to share any information regarding the stranger’s death until the investigation was concluded.”

  Before long, my employer began falling behind. On most days, I served customers while she kept to the kitchen, as her aching joints protested all the trips back and forth. A tray with tea service for one had been sitting on the counter long enough that the spout had nearly stopped steaming, so I called up my courage and carried it out to the dining room, trying to both keep my head down and look for someone sitting alone.

  My breath caught as I noticed a man sitting at the same window table where Mr. Roscoe had sat, reading a book. My hands began to tremble, causing the teapot lid to clink.

  Steadying myself, I moved toward him. Though the dining room was busy and buzzing, it was almost as if I moved through a kind of tunnel with him at the end of it. A strange calm had stolen over me, yet something at the back of my mind warned me to beware of this feeling. As if danger were everywhere, and only the fools around me couldn’t see it.

  It’s the shock from yesterday. I drew a slow breath as I reached the table.

  The man looked up from his book—not a novel like those that lined Mrs. Moyle’s shelves, but a thick tome one would need both hands to carry. He wore spectacles with round, smoke-tinted lenses, and I wondered how he could see through them well enough to read.

  “Good day, sir,” I said. “Are you waiting for tea?”

  He tilted his head forward, eyeing me over the top of his spectacles, and my heart flopped strangely. Often, customers took so little notice of me that I thought they probably wouldn’t recognize me were they to pass me in the street. This man’s eyes were awake and keen. And their color . . . a dusty dark blue that reminded me of a prune plum. His hair was wavy and ashen brown, gathered and bound at the back of his neck. A few strands had worked free and hung alongside his sharp cheekbones. The angle of his jaw swept in strongly from his cheek, gentling at last to the blunted tip of his chin. His lips were very dark, like the stain of a blackberry. Or a bruise. They made a strong contrast against his skin, even-toned and pale.

  I realized then that I was staring at this stranger, and he was staring even harder back.

  “F-forgive me for disturbing you,” I stammered, dropping my gaze to the tray. “I thought this might be—”

  “Indeed, it is. You may set it down.” His bruised lips formed a tight, dry smile. Though I would have guessed he was near my own age, something in his manner made me think otherwise. There was a stillness to him. And watchfulness, too. He also sounded like a man well used to people following his orders.

  “Yes, sir.” Quickly I transferred teapot, cup, strainer, and milk pitcher to the table, noting that I’d brewed his tea in a pot patterned with clumps of blackberry fruit, leaves, and flowers.

  As I lifted the pot and poured, I frowned at the dark color and lack of steam. “I fear your tea has sat for too long, sir. It’ll be bitter and tepid. I’ll fetch you a fresh pot.”

  “It’s not necessary.” His voice was low and smooth, but I had no trouble hearing him, even with the din in the tearoom. I still had the feeling of being in a tunnel with him.

  “I’m afraid we’re not up to Mrs. Moyle’s usual standards today,” I said in a fluster. “I hope you’ll give us another chance. We’re that busy, what with everybody wondering about the . . .”

  “About the death.”

  “Aye, sir.” Why on earth had I brought it up? Sometimes nervousness made my mouth move when it shouldn’t.

  I gave him a short curtsy and was turning to go when he said, “You’re the one who found him, aren’t you?”

  I froze, hugging the tray to my chest. I glanced around the room, hoping no one had heard him. Moving close to the table, I said in a low voice, “Begging your pardon, sir, may I ask how you knew that?”

  He lifted his teacup and sipped, hand trembling slightly. “Mr. Hilliard told me it was a young woman walking home from her job at The Magpie.”

  “Mr. Hilliard?” I echoed, surprised. As I studied the stranger, a thought startled me. “You’re Mr. Tregarrick. Mr. Roscoe was your solicitor.” He was not at all what I had imagined. Even if I was wrong about his age, he was still too young to have closed himself up in a medieval tower.