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A lf’s directions took them via a route Solomon did not recognize to a house and a blue door that he definitely did.

When Constance would have stopped in front of it, he drew her on.

“Not yet. This is interesting. That’s where I saw Audrey Lloyd. Coming out of that particular door.”

Constance blinked at him. “So Alf saw a carpenter who might be Samuels go in there. And you saw Miss Lloyd come out? Since she doesn’t live there, perhaps he doesn’t either.

I’ll tell you what, though, it doesn’t look like the house of someone particularly poor and deserving of charity.

And if it is Samuels, we know he’s healthy enough to work a long and arduous voyage. ”

“And why did he give the alehouse address rather than this one to Captain Tybalt?”

“Well, let’s go and see who is there now…”

Constance was right about the house. In daylight, the surroundings were much more salubrious that they had appeared last night in the dark.

Rough sailors and the abject poor did not dwell here.

Tradesmen, clerks, and merchant seamen, even of the officer class, might.

There were similar areas in every port and close to every dock he had ever visited.

The building itself was a two-story cottage squashed between taller neighbors. There was a window on either side of the front door, which opened straight off the street. The upper floor had three windows.

Solomon rapped the well-polished knocker.

“I wonder if he’s the man who has already sailed,” Constance murmured.

But it seemed not. Solomon was just about to peer in the window when the door opened.

A fit, weather-beaten man stood there, looking curiously but not irritably from Solomon to Constance. It was hard to guess his age, for his white hair made him look older than his face. He could have been anywhere between forty and sixty.

“Yes?” he said.

“Mr. Samuels?” Solomon said, touching the brim of his hat.

The clear eyes never left his. If there was a shade of concern in the man’s expression, it did not appear to be personal. “No, I think you must have the wrong house. My name is Clarke. I don’t think I know a Samuels on this street.”

“The one we are seeking is a ship’s carpenter, recently aboard the Queen of the Sea , which docked at the beginning of the week.”

“Well, I am a carpenter—if you’re looking for one?”

“Not just at the moment,” Solomon said. “It is Mr. Samuels in particular we would like to speak to.”

Clarke did not ask why. But then, he wouldn’t, if Samuels was a stranger to him. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“You have the complexion of a seafaring man,” Constance said with a smile. Her hair and her bonnet were straight and respectable once more. “That must be the source of the confusion.”

“I do work outdoors often. Just back from a long job in Berkshire, building an elaborate summer house for someone with more imagination than sense.”

“We’re sorry to interrupt you,” Solomon said. “It was Miss Lloyd who told me you lived here.” It wasn’t precisely a lie.

“Miss Lloyd? But she knows my name is not Samuels.” He smiled, not without amusement, even fondness. “She can be very forgetful and vague, bless her.”

“Then she visits you often?”

“Oh, not me. My sister. We grew up on the Lloyds’ country estate and she still looks in on Hetty, especially when I’m away from home. My sister does not keep terribly well.”

Which did rather explain Miss Lloyd’s charity claim. It seemed they had solved one minor mystery by finding the wrong carpenter.

*

Returning to the office for luncheon, Constance was not surprised to discover Janey entertaining Lenny Knox as they munched through a plate of sandwiches.

“Well met, Lenny,” Solomon greeted him. “You’re just the man we were looking for.”

“I am?” Lenny had sprung up from the stool in Janey’s cubbyhole. “I just dropped in to see if you had any work for me. Miss Janey thought I could help her…”

“Oh yes, of course,” Solomon said. He picked up the plate, offered it to Constance, then took two sandwiches himself. “First, though, we want your professional opinion about a wooden chest in Mayfair.”

Janey glared daggers at Solomon, who didn’t even notice. Constance kicked her foot in warning, and she sniffed.

Lenny had once been a bit of a firebrand radical, organizing resistance to unlivable wages and unreasonable rents for tiny spaces in dangerous buildings.

Because of the latter, he had recently lost his wife and child.

Because of the former, he had lost his job.

He was in the process of beginning again on his own, both in his trade and his life, but it would take time for the fire to return.

Constance, who liked him, didn’t doubt that it would, but Janey was hoping for too much, too quickly, and Constance didn’t want her hurt.

Right now, it was his skills as a carpenter she and Solomon needed, Accordingly, after luncheon, they whisked him off to the Lloyds’ residence, where they asked for Mr. Lloyd.

“Is this the culprit?” Lloyd asked eagerly as he strode into the small reception room where Garrick had left them. He looked Lenny up and down contemptuously.

Lenny, in his workingman’s clothes with the lines of suffering on his face, gazed back without shame or much interest.

“No,” Solomon said. “This is Mr. Knox, an excellent carpenter of our acquaintance. Knox, Mr. Lloyd.”

Of course, Lloyd ignored the introduction. Lenny nodded curtly, as though to an equal, though Lloyd didn’t even notice.

Solomon continued. “We want his opinion of the chest in your strong room.”

Lloyd’s face was blank. “Why?”

“To give us a clue as to who built it. The chances of any man on your expedition just happening to possess a chest exactly like the one you dug up are not high. Someone must have made a copy deliberately, and it might be helpful to know whether or not that copyist was an amateur or a tradesman.”

Lloyd turned away. “Wait here,” he said. “Garrick will fetch you.”

Obviously, Lenny was not to be granted the privilege of seeing how to open the strong room door. Constance exchanged glances with Solomon.

At least they were not kept waiting for long before Garrick, clearly resenting the mundane task, summoned them to follow him upstairs, where Lloyd awaited them by the open strong room door. The ring of keys weighed down his coat pocket.

Constance stood back and Lenny walked into the strong room, ignoring everything but the chest. He examined every plank minutely, from inside and out.

Then he heaved it on to its side and inspected the bottom.

He poked around the joins and rubbed at the heads of few nails, even prying one up with a tool in his pocket to inspect it more closely before reinserting it and knocking it back in.

He half turned to look up at the others.

“Looks like a craftsman’s work to me, except the wood don’t match.

None of it. It was made from scraps of different trees and different ages.

One bit here looks to me like new wood, just dirtied up a bit to match the rest of it.

I’d say this piece and these two had spent a long time in seawater—part of a ship or a boat, maybe.

That nail is new, just with its head dirtied.

The rest seem to be old nails dug out of somewhere else and reused, rusted or not. ”

He rose to his feet, his fearless gaze moving between the three watchers. “Does that help?”

“Ask my investigators,” Lloyd said vaguely. He appeared to be deep in thought.

“I rather suspect it does,” Constance said. “It looks as if this chest was put together in a deliberate copy, as we suspected, and by a carpenter who knew what he was doing. Your ship’s carpenter, perhaps. I believe his name was Samuels.”

Lloyd’s face spasmed. Beneath his sun-bronzed skin, he seemed to have paled. “He would not have dared!”

“Did you know him well?” Solomon asked.

Lloyd waved a hand. “Of course not. He was just one of the crew. A sad old man who’d made nothing of his life.”

“And yet he probably stole your treasure,” Solomon said. “Or at least contributed to the theft. How well do you know Captain Tybalt? Do you trust him?”

“Implicitly. He has never let me down.”

“Have you ever let him down?” Constance asked.

Lloyd flared his nostrils. “The man is always paid his worth. We have always had a successful partnership. Why else would he keep accepting my commissions?”

“Why indeed?” Solomon murmured. “Thank you, Mr. Lloyd—I believe we have seen enough for now. Oh, that sad old carpenter, Samuels? You don’t happen to know where he lives when he’s ashore, do you?”

“Of course not,” Lloyd said with distaste. “Ask Tybalt. He knows them all.”

In which case, Tybalt had lied to them.

*

Jemimah, who was supposed to be supervising the studies of her younger sister for the afternoon, was quite happy to let Rachel run off and spy on Papa’s investigators.

Jemimah had seen them arrive with a workingman in tow and mentioned the fact to Rachel, who had immediately dashed off about her own investigations.

Very little happened in this house without Rachel’s knowledge, and she was always willing to share—which proved useful when she needed to know if Ben Devine had called. Not that he had. Papa’s return appeared to have cooled his ardor, which Jemimah took as a personal insult.

When he called next, she would definitely be very cool toward him.

No more assignations in the garden for him!

She might grant him one dance at Mrs. Grafton’s party next week, but she would be very offhand about it and talk mostly about other admirers—while looking so beautiful that he would ache for her to be as warm as she had been toward him before.

She wondered where Mrs. Silver bought her gowns.

Perhaps she would pop down and ask—just when the investigators were leaving, of course.