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may set out to thrash another and leave him lying alive in the mud, and his victim may still be dead of cold in the morning.”
    “Who found him?” asked Thaxter.
    “Governor Hutchinson’s stable boys, when they opened the mews gates. They thought he might have been a late-departing guest from the previous night, ran to him and turned him over, and recognized him at once. The coachman, Mr. Sellon, ordered him brought into the coach-house, hoping against hope that he might be revived with brandy by the tack-room fire. He had, of course, been long dead, though owing to the extreme cold he was not stiff. Sellon sent for Governor Hutchinson, who immediately sent for us.”
    “And you just as immediately arrested Mr. Knox?” concluded Abigail.
    “When a man is killed,” replied Coldstone primly, “it is difficult to keep one’s mind from leaping back to the phrase, I will kill you like a dog . The stablemen all informed me of Mr. Knox’s threat the moment I arrived, and seemed to take Knox’s guilt as a given, particularly as Miss Fluckner had been at the ball the previous night, and word had gone around that the engagement was to have been announced.”
    Abigail said, “Hmmm,” and Lieutenant Coldstone poured her out another cup of coffee. In the hall outside the doorway, the voices of the cubbyhole’s two other occupants, Stevenson and Barclay, could be heard, protesting Sergeant Muldoon’s dogged insistence that himself was after talking with a couple of mainland folks over Sir Jonathan’s murder—
    “Rot, Sergeant, I’ll bet he’s got a woman in there.”
    “Is she pretty?”
    “Bet you he’s snabbled all the tea and the sugar, too—”
    Thaxter asked, “When did the last guests leave?”
    “Shortly after two. The alley is a narrow one, but Rawson’s Lane is barely wider, unpaved, and in nasty condition this time of year. When sent for, the carriages went around by School Street to the mansion’s front door, so the body could have been lying where it was found as early as nine or ten, when the latest arrivals came in. At that time the lanterns around the gate were taken in and the alley would have thenceforth been quite dark.”
    “And I take it the tavern frequented by the footmen and grooms is in School Street rather than Rawson’s Lane?”
    The corner of Coldstone’s mouth twitched again at her deduction that such a thing existed, and he replied, “The Spancel, yes. I have made arrangements to question the coachmen and footmen of all the guests over the next few days, but I assume that had any encountered Sir Jonathan’s body that night they would have notified Mr. Sellon, if no one else. Sir Jonathan was clothed as he had been that morning at the wharves, and his watch, his silver penknife, and English coin to the value of nearly ten pounds were found on his person. The only things missing were his gold signet ring and the memorandum-book that he usually carried . . . a book that contained his findings here in Boston regarding smuggling and the Sons of Liberty, and whatever notes he may have taken while in Maine.”
    Abigail glanced up again at that, and the dark gaze that met hers was impassive, watching her take in the implications of this fact. But after turning the whole of what she had heard over in her mind, she said, “It began to get light at five. Is seven hours sufficient for a man’s body to turn quite cold? When my Grandpa Quincy died, I recall he was laid down on the cooling-bench for quite twenty-four hours. And at slaughtering-time on the farm, the pigs and calves are hung up for many hours before the heat goes out of the meat.”
    Thaxter—a city boy—looked a trifle disconcerted at these matter-of-fact speculations on the logistics of mortality, but Coldstone nodded. “A small man like Sir Jonathan would cool more swiftly, I think, particularly on such a night. He cannot have encountered his killer much sooner than nine, or even in darkness the commotion of the beating