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Ursula was accused, they changed their tune. Claimed to have nothing to do with her then.”
    John Waite paused to refill his cup. Matthew listened carefully. He had not realized the depth of the Waites’ involvement, but of course it stood to reason. It was, after all, their barn and their servants who had been allegedly bewitched. The wonder was that the couple had escaped being accused themselves.
    “They thought they would be implicated,” the nephew said, picking up on the constable’s own thoughts as though he were a mind reader. “Their solid reputations saved them—that and testifying against Ursula themselves.”
    “You said your aunt and uncle were . . . patrons ... of Ursula’s. What would they have had from her—some charm or familiar to advance their fortunes?”
    John Waite smiled and shook his head. “My uncle could well have used spiritual advice on his investments, but it wasn’t that. My aunt had a brother once, much beloved of her, who was murdered ten or twelve years ago. You may remember him. Philip Goodin was his name.”
    “I think I do,” said Matthew. “A tavern brawl, was it not?”
    “A robbery, according to the evidence. His body was found a week after. It had been deliberately covered with leaves so as not to be found until the spring following. Now, as I said, my aunt loved this brother and ever after mourned his death. She wanted nothing more than to know whether he was in heaven or hell. Ursula promised to conjure his spirit and put her doubts about his redemption to rest.”
    “And did she?”
    “According to my aunt, she did, but not at once. Ursula said conjuring was not easy work. She said that if it was an ordinary familiar my aunt wanted, then she could provide that easily enough, but a member of the family was a different matter. That took time, she said, and the performance of good works.”
    “Good works?” exclaimed Matthew. “That’s curious terms from a necromancer. What good works were these?”
    John Waite took another long drink and then smiled grimly. “Ursula called them evidences of good faith. She meant money, of course. My aunt was to give her money and other valuables. A silver bowl and a set of spoons and a lace handkerchief she had of my aunt, as though my uncle’s business losses were not a sufficient misfortune. Oh, it was all a gross imposture, the lot of it, but my aunt is very credulous, you see. The town sent the wench to the gallows for witchcraft, but in my book she was a common mountebank who, had she lived, would have been able to set herself up nicely in London on the ill-gotten gains of superstitious women.”
    The nephew laughed bitterly, and asked the constable if he would have more wine. Matthew declined politely and reminded John Waite that all of what he had said was prologue to the tale his aunt had told, which Matthew was waiting eagerly to hear.
    “Oh, yes. Forgive me. But the background is important. You see, according to my aunt, my uncle was frightened to death.”
    “Frightened to death. By what?”
    “It seems a ghost, sir.”
    A wry smile played about the nephew’s mouth. Matthew was astonished. “Whose?”
    “The girl’s. Ursula Tusser’s.”
    “Ursula’s!”
    John Waite nodded, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He was about to speak again when they were interrupted by footsteps in the passage. Both men turned.
    “How do you do, Aunt Margaret?” John Waite said.
    Margaret Waite was dressed in a loose shift that revealed white shoulders and thin forearms. Her long, sensitive face was haggard and drawn and bore no paint or other attempt to hide her blemished cheeks and her present distraction. Her nether lip was swollen and trembling, and the dark shadows beneath her eyes were accentuated by the lamplight into whose circumference she now glided like a spirit herself.
    “I do as well as any wife so newly come to her widowhood,” she said. She nodded a greeting to Matthew and then