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they?”
    “No, they won’t. They won’t bother about getting justice for Lady Halstead—won’t care about finding her murderer. All they’ll care about is the will and the estate.”
    “Getting their share of it—you don’t need to tell me. She’s known for years they’ve just been waiting for her to die.”
    “Exactly. They’d seemed to be waiting patiently enough, but now . . .” Violet looked down at the gentle old lady she’d come to love. “We can’t let her murderer get away.” She glanced at Tilly. “I don’t think I could live with myself if I . . . just let this be swept under the carpet.”
    “Nor me.” Tilly paused, then asked, “So what do we do? Send a boy for the police? Chances are they’ll just have us send for the doctor anyway, and he’ll say what you said, and it’ll all come to nothing.”
    Violet did not know where her certainty sprang from, did not know on what it was based, but she had no doubt whatever about her tack. “We send for Mr. Montague. Lady Halstead gave him a letter of authority—it’s reasonable for us to consult him over this. We’re only females, after all, and our sex is known to panic.” She looked at Tilly. “So we’re in a panic and we don’t know what to do—so we’ll summon Mr. Montague, because we know that her ladyship only very recently put her faith, and her trust, in him.”
    Tilly blinked, then slowly nodded. “But will he know what’s best to do next?”
    “Yes.” Violet thought of the solid assurance with which Montague moved through the world. “I’m sure of it.”
    Tilly nodded more decisively. “Right, then—you write a note, and I’ll go and fetch a boy to take it.” Tilly glanced at her dead mistress, reached out, gently stroked the back of one crooked hand, then, jaw tightening, raised her head, turned, and headed for the door.
    Her gaze on Lady Halstead, Violet slowly straightened, then, more slowly, more lingeringly, mimicked Tilly’s loving gesture, then followed the maid from the room.
    V iolet wrote the note in the sitting room, and was still sitting there in a daze when Montague arrived.
    Rising to answer the door, she glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was barely nine o’clock; he must have raced to have got there so quickly.
    Opening the front door, she registered the concern vivid in his face.
    “What’s happened?” His gaze raced over her features, returning to her eyes. “Are you all right?”
    “Lady Halstead is dead.” Violet heard her voice say the words, intonation flat, and she finally accepted it as real.
    “Dead?” Montague’s features registered his shock. “But . . .” He searched her face, her eyes. “Did she die peacefully?”
    Violet drew herself up, drew breath, and said, “I—we, Tilly and I—don’t think so.” She stepped back. “Please, come in.”
    Stepping over the threshold, Montague felt an unexpected urge to take her in his arms, to comfort her. She was pale, her expression, judging from their previous encounters, uncharacteristically closed in.
    Brittle. Fragile. In need of help.
    His help.
    He bludgeoned his brain into functioning. “Who else have you notified?”
    Turning from closing the door, she met his eyes. “No one—not yet. We know we’re supposed to notify the doctor, and I’m sure he will immediately send word to her family, but . . .” She paused, then, raising her head, went on, “He—Doctor Milborne—will be more interested in serving the interests of the family, the interests of the living rather than the dead.”
    Montague nodded curtly. “Yes. I see.” He glanced at the stairs. “Where is she?”
    “In her bed upstairs.” Violet waved him on, following as he strode for the staircase. “She went to bed last night as usual. Nothing seemed amiss, nothing at all. Tilly and I went to wake her this morning, as we always do, taking up her breakfast tray and . . . we found her.”
    Reaching the head of the stairs, Montague