“Miss Darla wanted you to have it. I ain’t gonna lie to you. I hexed it, and I hexed it hard.” She looked up at me, and I don’t know what she saw, but her pinprick eyes welled up with tears. “And I reckon it won’t do you a damned bit of good, you pig-headed young fool.”

She dropped the necklace, turned and raced stomp-stomping away.

I watched her go, open-mouthed, as my door banged shut and hers banged in swift reply.

“Thank you, Miss Darla.” I picked up the Angel Malan, let him swing before my eyes. “Guardian of soldiers, defender of the weary.” I remembered a line of Church, in old Father Molo’s voice. “He walks before you, in the dark,” he’d mumbled. Malan hadn’t been his patron. “Clears the way, makes wide the path.”

I slipped the necklace in my pocket, finished my sandwich and hurried to the Park.

I went by Darla’s, but she wasn’t home. So I told the cabbie to head for the Park, and he obliged, though with far less aplomb than Halbert.

Long shadows fell across us as we rode. I tried not to mull over Mama’s ramblings, but I found myself handling my Malan unconsciously and chided myself for it. Death comes to us all. Mama’s right about that. But I didn’t for a minute believe she knew the place, or the hour.

Still, I was taking precautions. My army knife was tucked in a belt-sheath under my jacket. My old Army-issue flash-papers were in the breast pocket. And as I was heading to talk to a man who sold birdseed to ladies of leisure, I felt I was adequately armed.

The Park was beginning to empty out. Couples streamed past, hand in hand. Some were flanked by hooting, scrambling children, their knees soiled green from a hard afternoon of tearing up the Regent’s turf. I dodged and wove and finally made out the stooped figure of a thin, white-haired man pushing a rickety two-wheeled cart, just cresting the next hill.

I huffed and puffed and caught up with him halfway down on the other side.

“Ho there,” I said. “Hold up.”

He turned and scowled and let go of his cart.

He was sixty or better, with a thick head of long white hair, skin the approximate color and texture of an oft-used saddle, and bright clean false teeth made for a much bigger mouth.

“Bit late for bird-seed.” His false teeth clattered and clicked when he spoke.

“I’m not wanting any,” I replied, and without missing a beat he turned, hefted his cart and was on his way.

“Two bags,” I shouted. “Two bags then.”

He stopped again. I caught up to him, saw him stifle the ghost of a snow-white grin.

I held out a pair of copper jerks.

“You the finder?”

“I’m the finder.”

He squinted at me, laughed, opened the top of his cart and pulled out two fist-sized paper bags stuffed full of broken corn swept from the loading ramp of one of the mills that line the Brown.

“Way she talked, I thought you was a good-lookin’ man. Reckon your lady-love needs spectacles?”

I took the bags. “Ha ha. I take it you are Mr. Varney?”

“I am.” He mopped his bald brow and put his elbows on his cart. “Your lady said you wanted to talk about that pretty little New People seamstress.”

“You knew her?”

“Naw, can’t say I did.” He paused long enough to nod at a lady who passed. “She bought some feed, ’bout once a week. Kept to herself mostly. Except when that thin fella started nosing around.”

I made myself breathe, made myself nod agreeably. The last thing I needed to do was scare the old man with the intensity of my stare.

“Been about a month, I reckon. He first started coming round, hauntin’ that bench, right over there,” he said, pointing to a stone bench set center in a white gravel circle not thirty feet away. “Cheap young crow. Bought a bag, never fed no birds ’til he saw her a comin’. He’d sit right there, all sour and glares, ’til she topped the hill. Oh, then he changed, right enough. Then he was all smiles and how-do-you-do’s.” Young Varney spat. “Crow-nosed prick.”

“You didn’t like him much,” I said, when he went silent. “Did she?”

He laughed. “Oh, she weren’t stupid. She’d speak to him, kind enough, at first. But it didn’t take long, ’til she’d figured Mister Fancy Pants out. Then she took to doing her readin’ on the other side of the Park, she did.” He shook his head. “Course, that didn’t stop Mister Fancy Pants.”

“He followed her?

Young Varney nodded. “He was a persistent fella, give him that. She even hid behind them oaks one day. But he always found her, no matter what. ’Til she just stopped comin’.”

I nodded. “He did too, didn’t he? Stopped coming.”

He scratched his head. “Yeah, I ain’t seen him since.”

I took a deep breath. “This is important. Did my lady friend tell you why I’m here?”

“She said that nice lady was gone, and that you think that fancy young man is the one what took her.”

“Someone took her,” I replied. “And yes, I think it was him.”

He shook his head. “Well, mister, I wish I could tell you more about him. I don’t know his name. He was tall, thin and dark-headed. Can’t recall much else.”

“Was he young?”

Young Varney squinted, back across time, I suppose. “Younger than you. Twenty and five? These old eyes-hell, I wasn’t paying much attention to him, no how.”

“I understand.” Another pair of ladies passed, and Young Varney’s eyes moved with them, and I decided on a different tack. “Tell me about the young lady then. What can you recall about her?”

“Oh, she was a daisy. Soft-spoken, smiled all the time.” He cackled. “She had a accent. Drawled her words. Couldn’t understand her, at first. Kind of pretty, after I got the hang of it. And them clothes! Angel Bolo, she wore some duds. Ain’t none of these ladies dressed as fine as that young un’. No, sir.” He smiled. “I reckon you think I’m a sad old fool.”

I laughed. “Put the right dress in front of a man, and we’re all sad old fools. Go on.”

He mopped his head again and pondered. “Well, she always had a book with her. A book or a sewin’ case-that’s how I knowed she was a seamstress. Sometimes she’d read. Sometimes she’d sew.” His face darkened. “Until that there man showed up.”

“What then?”

“Well, she quit sewin’ then. Sometimes she’d read to him, out of her book. I couldn’t make no sense out of it. Reckon he could though. Lord, how they’d argue some days!”

“Argue? About what?”

“Oh, angels and heavens and whatnot,” said Young Varney. I decided then and there that not one, but two, men had been trailing around Miss Hoobin those days in the Park. “She’d be all patient and kind, and he’d get all red-faced and start waving them great long arms.” The old man lifted an eyebrow in disdain. “I knew then he didn’t have no sense. I don’t care what she read in that there book-any man with sense would just be smilin’ and noddin’, and that’s a damned bare fact.”

I felt cold. Angels and heaven and whatnot. Martha Hoobin had been reading Balptist verse to the same man who’d put Allie Sands under the cobbles.

“She’s in trouble, ain’t she?”

I didn’t think he’d seen.

“She is. Think hard. I’ve got to find this man, Mr. Varney. I’ve got to find him soon.”

He fell silent. “When your lady came around, I tried to remember. Tried to think of something. I couldn’t. He was just a tall man. He wasn’t wearin’ no church robes, wasn’t wearing one of them big rings them bastards-” he spat toward the Hill “-wear. He wasn’t talkin’ funny or giving out foreign money. He was just a man.” He looked down at the ground. “But I been thinkin’, and I reckon there’s one thing I didn’t remember then that I do recall now. Don’t know if it means anything.”

I wanted to shake him by the shoulders, but I didn’t. “Tell me,” I said, with my best warming smile. “Her name is Martha. She’s a nice lady.”

He nodded. “It ain’t nothin’ he done, you understand,” he said, his eyes wandering briefly to follow a pert young nanny as she strolled past with a gaggle of shrieking tots in tow. “But it’s something I reckon he didn’t do. He’d meet up with your Miss Martha pretty near every sunny day, but he weren’t never here on Wrack Days. Not a one.”