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unsynchronized crunch of the shared pair of pattens sounded like the footsteps of a drunk repeatedly attempting and then abandoning a difficult dance step.
    When he had walked quickly down the narrow lane that was Wych Street to his own front door, he looked back as he dug the key from his pocket. The woman had stepped in under the overhanging upper floor of an old house a dozen yards behind him.
    His hands were shaking but he was careful to twist the bolt back as quietly as possible, and then he paused to reach down and push the knotted strip of scarf forward off his boot; ordinarily he would have stepped straight into the parlor and yanked the bell-pull to summon Mrs. Middleditch from her little top-floor bedroom, but tonight he wanted to recover from whatever it was that he had just participated in, without extra witnesses.
    He swung the door open, lifting its weight against the hinges, and stepped into the unlit entry hall. He waited until the woman had hurried in past him, then shut the door and rotated the bolt knob. The rattle of the rain on gravel was shut out, and the only sound was panting breath and the dripping of water on the waxed wooden floor.
    The woman was carrying her shoes now, and laid them carefully on the hall table.
    â€œThis way,” he whispered, and stepped into the parlor.
    The fire in the grate was just glowing coals, but he propped a couple of fresh logs in there and tucked some crumpled newspapers under them, and after he had fetched a decanter and two glasses, he and his unknown companion sat on the carpet in front of the reviving fire and took the first, restorative gulps of whisky. The warm liquor burned its way down his throat and began to loosen his tensed muscles.
    The fire was flickering brightly now, and he pressed water from his hair and beard and then held his chilled palms out toward the heat. He exhaled, and for the first time looked squarely at his companion. She was younger than he had assumed, perhaps twenty. She had pushed her dark hair back from her forehead, and her face was pale and narrow.
    The windows rattled, and the woman’s head whipped around—the noise wasn’t repeated, and after a few seconds, she slowly turned back toward the fire.
    â€œWind funnels down this street,” Crawford said. That was true, and probably it had been the wind. But he sighed and glanced at the clock on the mantel and saw that it was well after one in the morning. “I have a guest room, here, with a bath,” he said. “My housekeeper can show you where it is.”
    She nodded. “Thank you.”
    â€œWhat,” he began at last, giving her time to stop him; but the wide dark eyes simply held his, so he went on: “was that?”
    Her abrupt laugh was quiet but jarring. “The gentleman wants to know what it was,” she said. “This isn’t your first drink of the evening, is it? Let’s see, it appeared when you and I were close enough that we could have touched each other, and you knew to get us into the river, and—and your parlor reeks of garlic! What do you, now that you can ponder it, imagine that it was?”
    Crawford drained his glass and refilled it. “The garlic,” he said weakly, “is a disinfectant. Prevents mortification. I’m a veterinary surgeon.”
    â€œA veterinary surgeon.” She looked around at the tidy room by the flickering firelight: the framed prints, the old-fashioned vine-patterned wallpaper, the street-side curtains. “Smells like you treat a lot of mortified horses right in here.”
    What he smelled was river water, and it occurred to him that his watch was probably ruined. “You can’t expect me to explain medical—”
    â€œA waste of time, I’m sure. Let’s talk about what happened just now. The thing on the bridge, the river—”
    â€œListen.” He shifted around on the carpet to face her more squarely. “Two years ago,” he