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want to hear the reading of Gregory’s will.”
    So did Abby. Gregory had made promises concerning that will, but Gregory’s promises were more often earnest in appearance than reliable in fact.
    “The will should be read next week, after Gervaise and Lavinia have recovered from traveling out from London,” Abby said, rising and putting her mug of tea down. “You have been most kind, Mr. Belmont, exceedingly kind. You have my thanks.”
    She did not want him to leave, and she couldn’t wait to get rid of him.
    “I have been merely polite,” he replied. “Some would say not even that. Get some sleep, and call upon me should the need arise. I am not saying that for form’s sake.”
    “You’re not, are you? You have unplumbed depths, Mr. Belmont.”
    “And a murder investigation to complete.”
    * * *
    The Stoneleigh Manor servants had congregated in their parlor, black armbands in evidence on the livery, tankards of ale or cups of tea for any who weren’t stepping and fetching for the gathering upstairs. Madeline Hennessey wondered if her employer, the estimable Professor Axel Belmont, might have been more comfortable below stairs on such a day.
    He’d asked her to keep an ear out for the odd snippet of talk, and Lord knew, the talk was flying. To facilitate loitering among her peers, Hennessey kept her plate full—the Stoneleigh cook had a lovely hand with the roasted beef—and her eyes down.
    She could do nothing about her red hair, which got her noticed at any gathering.
    “Mrs. Stoneleigh claims the colonel left me his pipes,” Robert Ambers said, not for the first time. He never referred to himself as the head stable lad, he was the
stable master.
He affected a neck cloth even on weekdays, and had his clothing made in London, and according to Mrs. Turnbull, the Candlewick housekeeper, Ambers had once mentioned titled family among his antecedents.
    He might be a baron’s by-blow. Had the public school diction and the London tailoring of the Quality, and apparently gave orders like they did too.
    “Nigh ten years of service,” Ambers went on, “and he left me a perishing lot of stinking pipes.”
    He shot a look at Shreve, who was too old to be on his feet for hours at a time, though too conscientious to desert his post above stairs for long. That look was resentful, and commiserating too.
    “Some of the colonel’s pipes are quite ornate,” the housekeeper observed from her seat by the hearth. Mrs. Jensen was reported to be a strict but fair supervisor, a fussy way to say she made a relentless pest of herself to the maids, just as a housekeeper ought.
    Hennessey took another sip of her winter ale, a bitter brew for a bitter day.
    “Did Missus say anything else?” Heath asked. He was an underfootman and had asked Hennessey to walk to services with him more than once.
    She’d declined, of course. Raising a man’s hopes when she was abundantly happy with her post at Candlewick would have been unkind—also a nuisance.
    “We do not gossip,” Jeffries, the head footman said, helping himself to more of the sliced beef on the sideboard. Jeffries was a strapping blond specimen who’d made it through the foolish years of young manhood without losing his hair or his common sense.
    Hennessey had collected a few kisses from him at a harvest gathering or two. A nibbler, not the worst approach a man could take to kissing.
    “Meaning no disrespect, but we can worry for our positions,” Heath retorted around a mouthful of beef. “We can long to know if we’ll have bread in our bellies and a place to sleep at night. Times are hard, and Missus might decide to take a repairing lease at some spa town.”
    To go husband hunting? Hennessey didn’t know the lady well, but doubted Mrs. Stoneleigh was anxious to replace the colonel any time soon. He’d been a cold fish, full of his own consequence, and stinking of dogs and pipe smoke even when Hennessey had run into him in the Weasel.
    Jeffries paused in his