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well—it’s a long story, but I had this opportunity, and—”
    “And someone—I bet it’s that Jesse Riley—thought you’d be able to find out what happened to Eddie.”
    Maisie sighed. “That’s about the measure of it, Mrs. Pettit.”
    The woman took out her handkerchief, covered her eyes, and crumpled forward, resting her forehead against her hands.
    “Perhaps I’d better go. I can come back another time.”
    “Sit there, Maisie. Just let me have my moment.”
    The woman soon sat back, whereupon her friend placed an arm around her shoulder.
    “She’s had it rough, Maisie,” said Jennie. “Eddie was her life.”
    “I know. Truly I know. He was a lovely man, so gentle,” said Maisie.
    “And he had a gift. I was blessed with that boy.” Maud cleared her throat. “Now then, here’s what I’ve got to say. There’s talk that my Eddie was . . . was murdered. There’s them what reckon someone had it in for him, and so the next thing you know, there’s an accident, only it’s not really an accident. I don’t know what to think, but here’s what I do know—and I used to work down at Bookhams, on the rag vats, until not that long ago before the rheumatism got to me—I never heard of an accident caused by them big belts going or tipping. There was accidents, of course there was; there’s always someone who don’t pay attention, getting their fingers in the way of the guillotine, that sort of thing. But no one was ever crushed under a roll of paper.” She paused again, looking directly into Maisie’s eyes. “So if you want to look for the reason why it happened, more power to you. Every single day that’s passed without Eddie, I’ve felt like topping myself so I could be with him up there in heaven, but I’d stay right here to see someone brought to justice.”
    Maisie nodded. “Then can you answer some questions for me, Mrs. Pettit?”
    “ Maudie . You’re a grown woman now, Maisie Dobbs, so you can call me Maudie.”
    Maisie took a clutch of index cards from her bag, and a pencil. “Right, let’s start with Bookhams.”
    “Then you’ll have to start with me, Maisie, because I worked there on the afternoon shift before I had Eddie. About nine months before I had Eddie. Three different jobs I had, in those days.”
    B y the time she left Maud Pettit’s house in Lambeth, Maisie had learned several things she hadn’t known before.
    She knew that Maudie had been assaulted while walking from the factory to the brewery; it was dark, so she had never known her attacker—the father of her child.
    She discovered that Eddie had only ever been bullied by one person, a boy who made fun of him at school. In fact, Jimmy Merton had made Eddie’s life a misery, mimicking his voice, his walk, his simple way of being. She had a recollection of Merton from childhood. Her mother had warned her to keep away from the Merton children because they were all trouble, every single one of them. Jimmy was older, Eddie’s age, but she still passed to the other side of the street if she saw him in the distance. Apparently, Jimmy Merton had lately come to work at Bookhams.
    But of the notes she had penned while sitting with Maudie Pettit, the one that she would come back to, would underline again and again, even after adding it to the case map that she knew Billy would start as soon as his interviews ended, was the note that repeated Maud’s words: “I can’t put my finger on it, but my Eddie seemed to have changed lately—in the past month, perhaps more.” Eddie’s mother had gone on to speculate that Jimmy Merton might have started bullying him again, and she wondered if Eddie was hiding some physical ailment, perhaps a pain or discomfort he didn’t want to talk about. Or if he had lost a horse. “Took it hard when a horse went, did my Eddie,” Maud Pettit had told Maisie. And Maisie had nodded. Yes, gentle Eddie would have taken it hard.

Chapter Two
    T he afternoon sun was casting shafts of light