“They won’t thank you for it.”

He lifted a hand in surrender. “Tell Anna to come along to the study, but I want to keep Sophie and Cap out of this for as long as possible.”

•   •   •

THE COMING AND going did not escape Sophie, who kept her place beside Cap at the head of the table while her uncle Adam talked. First Jack, then Conrad, and finally Anna had disappeared into the hall. She watched the door but none of them came back.

Cap didn’t seem to have noticed, which was proof of what she had known for the last hour: he could take no more. She herself was so weary that she could not formulate even the vaguest plan on how to put a polite end to the celebration.

Aunt Quinlan was saying, “On behalf of my beloved niece Sophie and her new husband, I thank you all for your good wishes and welcome company today. It’s time that the newlyweds withdraw. They need to get ready for the adventure just ahead of them, and then I invite you all to a garden party on Waverly Place.”

Aunt Quinlan had seen and understood and acted. Sophie commanded herself not to weep with relief and thankfulness.

•   •   •

WHEN THE ROOM was empty—even the servants had withdrawn to leave Cap and Sophie alone for as long as they wanted privacy—Cap let out a long, hoarse sigh. He was trying to smile, and Sophie was trying not to cry. They made an excellent couple.

The only time he had touched her today had been the moment he put the ring on her finger, but now as they rose he took her elbow. His grip was firmer than she would have expected.

“My body is failing me,” he told her. “But my mind is still as it ever was. Tell me what’s going on that took Conrad, Jack, and Anna out of the room.”

She grimaced. “I don’t know. Really, I don’t.”

“Then we have a mystery to solve. I suspect my study is the place to start.”

•   •   •

ANNA SAT AT the long worktable in Cap’s study and ran her hands over the polished oak. Once the whole surface had been covered with a riot of papers and pens and books; now a single sheet of paper had been laid in the middle. A summons, with her own name on it.

The men sitting at the table with her showed nothing of concern or worry, each of them so relaxed that they might have settled here to drink brandy and play poker. Anna took little comfort in this, because, as she had told Jack just yesterday evening, that aura of utter calm was a kind of camouflage that doctors had to employ too, lest they alarm patients and make things worse. Now she was learning what it felt like to want answers and get only a pleasantly blank expression.

The coroner wanted to see her and Sophie both. The idea kept surfacing like a cork in a stormy sea. Clearly the autopsy report had raised questions, and the coroner wasn’t satisfied with the cause of death. Mrs. Campbell had died on her operating table, but Anna knew without doubt that she had not caused the death or even contributed to it. Any competent doctor performing the postmortem would see that, too. The coroner was a very different matter.

In Albany and Boston and every city of any size, coroners were the source of countless stories. Anna had heard many over the years, sometimes troubling, sometimes amusing, but most often just irritating for the depth of incompetence of the work done. She said something like this aloud.

“That’s what happens,” Jack pointed out, “when you ask a man who manufactures boilers or runs a silk factory to gather twelve of his friends to interpret medical evidence.”

“Nothing they say or do is binding by law,” Conrad reminded her.

“But we still have to appear when summoned,” Anna said dryly.

At that moment the door opened and Sophie came in, followed by Cap.

He said, “Uncle Conrad, I hope you don’t mind if we join the party. Tell me, what is that official-looking paper on the table?”

•   •   •

CAP HAD COVERED his lower face with a gauze mask and now he settled far back from the table, listening intently as Jack first read the summons out loud. Anna studied him, but she could make out little of what he was thinking.

Sophie said, “I imagined a dozen things that might have disrupted this day, from old ladies throwing themselves across the church door to”—she hesitated—“to medical emergencies. I never imagined a summons. And I still don’t know what we’re being accused of. Malpractice?”

“No reason to jump to that conclusion,” Conrad said. “The inquiry is a nuisance and an inconvenience, but nothing more than that.”

Cap said, “Comstock is behind this, I just know it.”

“That may be,” Conrad said. “But more likely it’s the family who is agitating, in my experience.”

“They are looking for someone to blame,” Anna said.

Conrad inclined his head in agreement.

Today was meant to be a happy one for Sophie and Cap, but when Anna looked at them she saw exhaustion and weariness and worry. She was overcome by anger she could not give voice to, and so she leaned over and covered Sophie’s hand with her own. “This is nothing more than a delay. Do you hear me, Sophie? A delay.”

Sophie forced a small smile. “I have to ask again, what kind of charges might we see?”

“Nobody is being charged with anything yet,” Jack said. “The coroner can only send the case to the grand jury if he finds sufficient cause to suspect something other than natural causes. At that point the grand jury may issue indictments, for anything from—”

“It won’t get that far,” Cap interrupted.

“It will not,” his uncle echoed. “But until we know what the autopsy says, it’s difficult to know how best to approach the matter.”

He turned toward Anna. “We have to start somewhere. Can you tell me about the case?”

It was a question Jack would have asked before all others, had he had the chance to talk to Anna alone. She seemed to have been expecting it, because she sat up straighter and folded her hands in her lap.

“She was brought to the New Amsterdam by ambulance, near death. I took her straight into surgery but as soon as I began I knew there was nothing to be done. If you’re asking me for an exact cause of death, I’m sorry to say it’s not a straightforward matter. Cryptogenic pyaemia was certainly the immediate cause, and that was the result of damage to the uterus and intestines.”

Conrad started visibly, and Anna realized that he really knew nothing at all about what had transpired. The idea of being charged with malpractice had not evoked for him what it did for every practicing physician: abortion.

He said, “This Mrs. Campbell died of complications of an illegal operation?”

So he was familiar with the euphemisms.

“Yes,” Anna said. “An attempted abortion. Under the law it would be seen as a criminal abortion.”

“If she was with child at all,” Sophie volunteered.

“That’s a valid point,” Anna said. “So to be more exact, she died of a massive infection following from an attempted abortion. Some kind of probe or instrument was introduced through the vagina that punctured the cervix and uterus and the adjoining internal organs, most notably the descending colon. Something with a curved or oval head, with a keen but not an especially sharp edge. I am sorry to speak so bluntly, Conrad, but there’s no delicate way to describe these things.”

•   •   •

JACK WATCHED CONRAD Belmont shift in his seat, and he understood the man’s discomfort. In the privacy of a shared bed he could listen to Anna talk about anything, but in company it was quite a different matter to hear her use terminology only she and Sophie would consider technical and benign.

“A curette?” Sophie asked.

“Possibly,” Anna said. “Or a long-handled metal scraper or spoon of some kind.”

“Do I understand correctly that Mrs. Campbell may have undergone the operation to end a pregnancy that didn’t exist in the first place? And this was her own work? Self-induced?”

“I think it must have been,” Anna said. “But I can’t be sure; I was working as fast as possible. The doctors who did the postmortem will have more to say on that count.”

“Was she unbalanced, to have done this?” Conrad asked.

Anna said, “Desperate, certainly. Unbalanced is a different matter entirely.”

Conrad folded his hands on the table and was silent while he gathered his thoughts.

“I’m going to assume for a minute that neither of you has ever been questioned by the coroner before,” he began. “First, you will not be under oath and you don’t have to answer any question put to you. I’ll speak up if I don’t want you to answer. The other thing to remember—and it’s something most people don’t realize at all: the coroner himself and the lawyers who question you—during this hearing or at trial—are not under oath.”

Jack’s face was set in a grim smile, and Anna took note. She would have questions for him later, when they could speak freely.