“You seem almost disappointed.”

“It’s too easy,” he complained. “This afternoon we’ll go into the city. I’ll pose as an uncle searching for medicine to mollify his niece’s sick headaches. You’ll meet me in the offices shortly after my arrival. If our killer fits the mold for intelligent killers, he’ll be socially capable with men, at least—as he’d have to be in order to get through medical school and hold a practice. But if he’s incapable of touching a woman who isn’t unconscious, with women he’ll be quite awkward.”

“It does seem simple,” Grace had agreed. “Why involve yourself at all if the ether so clearly indicates a medical man as the culprit? Can’t the police deduce that themselves?”

“One would think,” Thornhollow said, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “But George’s report at the station identified the smell as alcohol. He claims the girl drank herself into a stupor in the park, got herself roughed up—his words, not mine—and then expired in a coma. The death of a migrant kitchen worker is less than interesting to the police in a city such as this. Their police force isn’t large enough to investigate too deeply anything that isn’t potentially lucrative.”

“Lucrative?”

“Certainly. Expired liquor licenses, tax evasion . . . anything that actually brings revenue to the city you’ll see carried out to the letter of the law. Digging into a murder with few clues—again, their words, not mine—requires time, something policemen want to be paid for.”

“But not you,” Grace said, stopping to rest under a maple near the banks of the pond, its wide leaves red with the arrival of fall.

“No. I do it for the experience. The science of the matter.”

Grace had been silent for a moment, watching the ripples of the pond as fish fed on the early morning insects. “What was her name?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You said she was a kitchen worker, so she must have been identified.”

“Ah, yes. Uh . . .” Thornhollow’s brow creased as he tried to recall a fact less imperative to him than others. “Anka. Anka Baran. She was Polish. Something we’ll want to keep in mind as we move forward. Assuming we don’t catch our man today we need to make note that there may be some racial motivation. Perhaps a dislike of immigrants.”

“I don’t think so,” Grace argued. “There was nothing to show hatred. The method he used to kill, it’s almost as if he specifically did not want to hurt her.”

“A very good point. I’ll amend it to add that perhaps he only wanted to hurt her in a very specific way and did not have the time. Or was physically incapable. Either way, we’ll know soon enough. I imagine we’ll be face-to-face with him within a few hours.”

Grace remembered Thornhollow’s prediction as Mrs. Beem’s comb passed near her scar, the feeling of the teeth fading as it touched the numb skin there, then reappearing as it trailed down her cheek.

“Hold still now. No jumping when I work around your face. Don’t want to mar you any more, do we?”

The last delicate clips were done, her hair dried and curled, Mrs. Beem’s fingers expertly twisting a pile of curls complete with pins holding a few in place to hide the damage at her temples.

“All right, Miss Chancey,” Mrs. Beem said. “Take a look. Doesn’t my pretty quiet one look as good or better than any of the fancy ladies that walk the shops down below?”

“Better,” Miss Chancey said around a mouthful of pins as she worked with Nell’s heavy hair. “With those scars covered she’d pass for normal easy as the rest of us.”

Grace glanced in the mirror and silently agreed. She was ready to go to work.

“You’re turning into a regular criminal,” Thornhollow teased when Grace produced the hairpins she’d lifted from Mrs. Beem’s sink stand.

“A planner, for sure,” Grace agreed, looking at herself in the mirror of his office. “I knew you’d have all the details right when finding me a dress. It’s fashionably cut so that I don’t look out of place, but not too distinctive of a print so as to attract undue attention. You’ve matched the hat, but completely forgotten that I’d need pins to hold it in place. Unfamiliar with women’s garments, indeed.”

“Perhaps I’ve taught you a little too well,” he said, holding out his arm for her as they went to the carriage.

Ned was waiting for them, happy to drive the carriage two days in a row, his bright smile almost bringing an answering one to Grace’s face. Thornhollow produced a list of addresses once they were moving, the clattering of the horse’s hooves hiding their conversation from Ned.

“I made inquiry and came up with a little over twenty doctors in the city. We’ll try to visit them all today while your hair is twisted into this unnatural shape. Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that beauty is pain?” Grace asked.

“I’m much more familiar with the latter.”

“Yes, it does hurt a little. By the end of the day there’ll be no farce involved as we try to procure headache medicine.”

Thornhollow shook his head. “I’ll never understand.”

Grace pulled a hand mirror from her purse and inspected her reflection. “Yet women do these things in order to appeal to men.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t appealing. I said I don’t understand it.”

“Yes, well . . .” Grace put a hand to her unmoving hair, and the pins digging into her scalp. “Sometimes the actions of the sane make no sense.”

“Amen.”

They clattered to a stop on a busy side street, and Thornhollow handed her down from the carriage. “Our experiment today is twofold, Grace. As I explained before, I’ll go into each practice a few minutes before you, to judge the doctor’s social ability with his own sex.”

“And I come along after in the guise of your niece, to see if his demeanor changes around females.”

“Yes. And your free time is to be exactly that. Free. Go about town; you’ll find money in your purse. Shop. Buy things. Do whatever it is you want, but be Grace Mae, not the broken girl who lives on the hill.”

Grace’s face fell, her eyes carrying a shadow that had lifted during their conversation. “I don’t ever want to be Grace Mae again, Dr. Thornhollow. I don’t want pretty things in shopwindows, and I don’t want to playact at being carefree. I am that broken girl. She has a purpose, at least, and it’s hidden in the identity of the man whose address is somewhere on your slip of paper.”

He crumpled the paper in his fist. “Try. For my sake. Your whole life can’t be wrapped up in the endings of others.” He turned his back on her, and she went the opposite direction, assuming the false smile that he wanted to prove true.

Even though she’d tossed his words aside the moment he’d said them, the effect lasted. She caught the reflection of her pretended happiness in a window that she passed, looking every inch like a privileged girl enjoying a beautiful day. But she knew she had never been that, even before the scars on her temples had set her apart from others. Playacting was something she had perfected long before meeting Dr. Thornhollow, and at least the darkness that haunted her now was one she had the power to end.

She entered the doctor’s office to find Thornhollow in deep conversation with a bored-looking man who brightened up the moment she walked in. “Any luck, Uncle?” she asked.

“Not so much,” he said ruefully. “Doctor Maggill here was just saying how he’s about to close for lunch and doesn’t have a moment to help us.”

“Nonsense, nonsense,” Maggill said as he approached Grace. “I can certainly postpone something as pedestrian as lunch to help a lovely young creature such as yourself.” He beckoned for Grace to sit on a stool, but she shook her head.

“No, Doctor, I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your daily routine. We can return later, can’t we, Uncle?”

“Of course,” Thornhollow agreed, putting his hat back on and taking Grace by the arm. “Back in an hour, Doctor?”