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questions and I had this dreadful thought of a sudden—”
    “And very clever of you to make the connection.” Mélanie Fraser pressed a cup of coffee, liberally laced with milk and sugar, into the girl’s trembling hand. “And brave of you to tell us.” She paused for a moment. Roth applauded her technique. You never got far flustering a witness. “Who was he, Polly?” Mrs. Fraser asked.
    “A deliveryman from Hatchards. I saw him in the mews when I was hanging out the laundry. He tipped his hat—ever so much the gentleman—and then he said wasn’t it a fine day and it would have been proper rude not to answer—”
    “Just so.” Mélanie Fraser’s hands were white-knuckled, but her voice was coaxing. Roth stayed silent. She was handling this interrogation much better than he could have done. “What then?” she said.
    Polly took a gulp of coffee, sloshing it into the saucer. “He asked me was this a pleasant house to work in and how long had I been here and was the family large. Then he said he’d best be off, but—” She drew a breath and spoke in a rush. “He said did all the houses hereabouts have gardens because he was afeared the gate might be locked. I said—I said I couldn’t answer for the other houses, but our garden gate was always unlocked.”
    “It’s all right, Polly.” Mrs. Fraser put her hand over Polly’s own. “All you did was tell him the truth. Did you see him again?”
    “A week later. Just two days since. He said he was going a bit out of his way, but”—she colored—“he couldn’t help stopping in the hopes I’d be out with the laundry again. He said he’d had a hard morning, he’d had to take a load of books up to a schoolroom clear in the attics and why was it children were always packed away out of sight. And I said—Oh, ma’am, I’m sorry.”
    Mélanie Fraser swallowed, but her voice and gaze remained soothing. “You said it wasn’t that way in our house?”
    “I said you and Mr. Fraser liked to have the children nearby. I—God forgive me, I pointed out Master Colin’s and Miss Jessica’s windows.”
    Roth saw the full realization register in both Frasers’ eyes—one of the men who had taken their son had been so close they could have stepped into the garden and looked him in the face. Instead, he’d had all the information he needed handed to him on a silver salver.
    Charles Fraser looked at Polly and smiled, the first genuine smile Roth had seen from him. It lit his cool eyes with unexpected warmth. “They’d have learned what they wanted one way or another, Polly. At least this way we know how they came by the information.”
    “Can you tell me what he looked like, Polly?” Roth asked.
    Polly raised her head and fixed her gaze on him. The Frasers’ tacit forgiveness had wiped some of the strain from her face. She was a pretty girl and her eyes, cleared of weeping, were bright with intelligence. “He was tall. Not so tall as you or Mr. Fraser, but taller than Mr. Addison.” She nodded toward Fraser’s valet, who was sitting quietly on the sidelines.
    “Hair?” Roth asked. “Eyes?”
    Polly’s level brows drew together in an effort of memory. “His hair was brown—darker than yours, Mr. Roth, but a bit lighter than Mr. Fraser’s. I suppose his eyes must’ve been brown, too—No, they were blue.” She colored again. “I remember thinking they looked just like a bed of larkspur in the spring.”
    “Right.” Roth jotted down the description and gave her an encouraging smile. “Anything else? How old would you guess he was?”
    She frowned again. “Older than William and Michael, but younger than Mr. Addison.”
    “William and Michael are one-and-twenty or thereabouts,” Charles Fraser said. “Addison’s thirty-two, like me.”
    Polly stared down at her hands, still frowning. “He had a dimple in his right cheek when he smiled. And his voice—I don’t think he was London-born. He had a bit of the sound of a