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somebody write this for her … a scribe, perhaps.
    Edmund smoothed out another piece, the smudged words “Eryn Mas is” appearing through Becky’s sticky saliva.
    Maybe she had a scribe write it for her when she was in Eryn Mas. They had to go there for Norb to become Lord of the Highlands.
    He cringed.
    “Lord Norbert. I should have shoved the Star down his damned throat.”
    You were trying to take the high road.
    I’d like to kill him.
    Kill … ?
    He thought about Pond again.
    Did he say that he—
    Becky barked and pawed at the door, where numerous claw marks had already been raked across the dark wood. Edmund ignored her. He separated yet another mangled portion of the letter and attempted to find a piece that fit with it.
    This is no good. I need a table.
    Clearing a spot, Edmund pushed aside the mounds of treasure on the glass table in front of the sofa. Thousands of rubies and emeralds and diamonds fell, clinking, onto the empty wine bottles cluttering the floor.
    Becky barked.
    “Give me a second, will you?”
    Start with the edges. Then work your way inward.
    He put together two pieces that formed the upper right-hand corner of the letter.
    Becky barked.
    “Hush!”
    Smoothing out more fragments, Edmund wiped away Becky’s slobber, smearing several words in the process.
    “Damn it!”
    Be careful!
    Becky barked again, this time adding a low snarl.
    “Who would write me?”
    It has to be Molly. Who else would?
    You’re an idiot. How would she know where to find you? You just got here yesterday. It has to be from somebody local.
    Maybe it’s from the lady of the manor. That makes sense.
    Maybe …
    Becky dug at the door, rattling its hinges.
    “All right!” Edmund shouted, immediately regretting the volume of his voice.
    Becky whined. The rattling quickened.
    “Half a moment, I said.”
    He shuffled through the pieces; there were scores of them, all wet and stuck together.
    There’s at least a couple pages here. Why would the lady of the manor write a long letter? She’d just slip a note under the door and ask to meet with me.
    Maybe it’s from somebody else.
    Who?
    Holding his splitting forehead in one hand, he searched the pile of shredded paper with the other. He found a piece with the word “you” on it, underlined twice.
    “Damned dog! If I can’t—”
    There was a tinkling of running water.
    Then an acrid smell met Edmund’s nostrils.
    He turned toward the door. A yellow puddle was growing under Becky, soaking slowly into an elegant rug.

Chapter Six
    Edmund sat in a gazebo not far from the main manor house. On the bench next to him, weighed down by many small stones, eighty-three tattered pieces of the mysterious letter had been arrayed in long columns. As he moved the scraps around the bench like pawns on a chessboard, screaming seagulls circled in the brilliant blue sky, drifting along on the gentle coastal breezes that constantly fluttered the papers’ edges.
    Across the expansive front lawn, Becky chased grey squirrels darting this way and that into the many topiaries dotting the estate.
    “Damned dog,” Edmund grumbled.
    He fit two pieces of the letter together. They seemed to form the last line.
    “… hear from you with all due haste,” he read aloud.
    He examined other fragments he’d placed together.
    “… at our last meeting …”
    At our last meeting? Who have I met recently?
    Nobody. At least nobody locally. The only person we’ve met was that doorman yesterday, and he wouldn’t write a long letter like this.
    “… hear from you with all due haste,” he read again.
    It sounds urgent.
    Urgent …
    “Who would know where I am? We just got here!”
    Obviously somebody knew you were headed this way.
    And if somebody knows we’re here, then Kravel and Gurding might know as well.
    “Kravel!”
    He stared at the yellow-striped bees buzzing from tulip to tulip.
    Would Kravel try to fake a letter from Molly, perhaps attempting to lure Edmund to some isolated place