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in a high, strained voice. “As with any meeting among relative strangers—I except yourself and me, my dear Eleanor—our talk has consisted mostly of casting agreeable literary flies at one another. If the prey responds with a reference to the same literary source, or with an otherwise appropriate trope, so much the better; the two are now happy to know that they are two members of the same social tribe. If the response is inappropriate, the caster of the fly must release his victim, not only unharmed but even appeased—by compliments, perhaps, which are as unpatronizing as possible.
    â€œA comfortable game, is it not?”
    â€œYes,” said Mr. Morrow flatly.
    Hoare found himself hard put to it to relate the evening’s conversation to Miss Austen’s description of it. A dreadful silence descended on the group. The lady essayed a plaintive smile; she blushed in unattractive patches. Tears appeared at the corners of each eye, crept down each cheek, and dropped simultaneously into her lap.
    The silence was blessedly broken by the appearance of the maid Agnes with a message for Mrs. Graves.
    â€œFrom Sir Thomas, mum,” Agnes said.
    Breaking the seal, Mrs. Graves read, and the color, already scant, left her face.
    â€œSir Thomas informs me that one of my assailants has died without regaining consciousness,” she said. She dropped the note on the floor before her. “So I have a man’s death on these hands.”
    â€œIn self-defense, ma’am,” Hoare said.
    Her husband nodded agreement; Mr. Morrow simply raised his eyebrows as if in surprise at her evident dismay.
    â€œOh, my dear!” Miss Austen cried, forgetting her disastrous disquisition and going to her hostess with arms outstretched.
    â€œDo not pity me, Jane,” Mrs. Graves commanded, sitting erect on her tuffet. “I will not be pitied.”
    Hoare saw it was time to take his leave, and Mr. Morrow offered to join him. Because of the lateness of the hour, the Canadian said, he, too, would be putting up at the Dish of Sprats instead of making his way home, four miles in the dark, up the steep declivity behind the town. They could share a borrowed lantern to light their way.
    Once down the ramp leading from Dr. Graves’s front door, Hoare turned once again to whisper another word of thanks to the couple silhouetted in the lamp-lit doorway.
    â€œA remarkable couple, are they not?” Morrow said as they walked down the cobbled slope through a light mist.
    â€œThere must be more to their story than we heard tonight,” Hoare agreed. “For instance, how does one account for the difference in their ages? What of the bullying brother? And what of the twin stepsons she mentioned to me this afternoon?
    â€œMind the gutter!” he added as loudly as he could, catching Morrow by the arm.
    â€œThank you, sir; I nearly misstepped,” Morrow said. “As it happens, I can enlighten you, for I have known the Graveses since I settled nearby. Dr. Graves has been kind enough to lend me his gifts as the inventor of novel instruments from time to time.
    â€œAs to the difference in their ages, I gather you already knew the present Mrs. Graves is the good doctor’s third wife. The two stepsons are not twins but both grown and gone, the one a captain on Sir Arthur Wellesley’s staff, presently at Alder-shot Barracks, the other at Bethlehem Hospital—an aspiring mad-doctor, mind you, not a patient. The twins to which you referred were born of Dr. Graves’ second wife; they were stillborn, and their mother followed them into the grave within hours, I am told.”
    By now, the pair had arrived at the Dish of Sprats.
    â€œPray continue, Mr. Morrow,” Hoare whispered, “while we share a nightcap at my expense.”
    â€œAs to the difference in the ages of the two,” Morrow said across a decanter of the inn’s muddy port, “after burying his second wife,