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Leo peered through the bakery window. The young boy who had been helping Mary’s husband was serving at the counter.

“Ye think Tabitha’s in danger?” Mrs. Hobson asked Jasper, seeming to recall what he’d said in the bakery.

“We think she is hiding,” Jasper answered. “Do you have any idea where she might be?”

The woman shook her head. “I knew she’d get ‘erself into trouble, stupid girl.”

“Why do you say that?” Leo asked.

“Because she were steppin’ out with another man. An East Rip, ‘e was too. She weren’t careful ‘bout it. People were talkin’.” Anguish pulled at Mrs. Hobson’s brow. “And ‘er, with a baby on the way too.”

Leo stared at the woman, her ears suddenly chiming. “Baby?”

“Tabitha is with child?” Jasper asked, sounding just as shocked as Leo felt.

Mrs. Hobson nodded. “About four months gone, she told me. She were sure the father were the other ‘un.”

Leo’s concern for Tabitha ratcheted even higher.

“Mrs. Hobson,” Jasper said. “The man Tabitha was seeing has been found dead. That is why we think she is in danger. Can you think of anywhere she would go to feel safe?”

The older woman pinched her lips in distress. “The church, maybe. St. Emmanuel’s. She didn’t ‘ave many friends; Desmond wouldn’t allow it. But ‘e did let ‘er go to church.”

Mrs. Hobson backed up. “I been out ‘ere too long. I ‘ope ye find ‘er. Poor girl.” She dashed into the shop, and Leo dropped her shoulders, disappointed they hadn’t received more of a lead.

“Andrew said nothing about a baby,” Jasper said. “I doubt he knows.”

“Perhaps the Carters won’t harm Tabitha if they think she is carrying Cillian’s child,” Leo suggested. Jasper scowled.

“I don’t believe the Carters care about that sort of thing.”

He would know best. Jasper once confessed to Leo that his mother had been several months with child when his Uncle Robert, one of the late Patrick Carter’s brothers, had beaten her to death. Jasper didn’t speak often of his mother; however, he had revealed that when his father, another of Patrick’s brothers, had died, he and his mother were taken in by Robert and his wife, Myra. Later on, his mother had gotten with child. Leo could be wrong, and Jasper had never said as much, but she presumed Robert had been the baby’s father.

It must have been awful for Jasper as a boy to see his mother treated in such a way and not be able to do anything to help her. Perhaps that was one reason why he was so protective of Leo now.

She handed him his currant bun. “Come. St. Emmanuel’s can’t be too far from here. We could speak to the reverend.”

“I suppose it’s something,” he agreed.

After asking a woman standing in the bakery line for directions, they arrived at the church within minutes. Its Portland stone exterior and stained glass windows needed a scrubbing, and as they came upon parishioners leaving the morning sermon, Leo observed that the congregation was mostly poor and working-class.

She entered the church with some hope of finding Mrs. Pierce, especially when she spied a woman kneeling in prayer in a back pew. A faded blue scarf covered the woman’s head and obscured her profile. As Leo moved closer toward her, however, the floor beneath her feet groaned loudly. The sound cracked through the hushed church.

The woman turned at the noise. It wasn’t Tabitha, but instead an older woman, her chapped face lined with age.

“Careful, miss.” A man’s voice echoed from the front of the nave. A tall reverend in a white cassock came toward her and Jasper. “That glass is in need of repair.”

Leo looked down to see she stood on a strange portion of glass floor. Underneath appeared to be a chamber of sorts. It held a white marble coffin decorated with a gold cross and other ornamentation. Quickly, she moved off the glass, rejoining Jasper.

“Reverend Julius Hawthorne is entombed in our crypt,” the reverend said as he reached them. “He was first to lead the parishioners of St. Emmanuel’s at its inception in 1789. We are collecting to reinforce the glass, if you care to make a donation.”

Beside her, Jasper barely stifled a groan, but Leo opened her purse and withdrew a shilling. It might encourage the reverend to discuss Tabitha Pierce. He accepted the coin, but when Jasper asked if Mrs. Pierce had been seen at church in the last week, he shook his head.

“She has not been here for nearly a fortnight,” he said, then looking between Jasper and Leo, he inquired, “How is she known to you?”

Jasper held up his warrant card. “Inspector Reid from Scotland Yard. We believe Mrs. Pierce may know something about a crime, and it has put her in a fair amount of danger. I’d like to speak to her and get at the truth, but she seems to have disappeared.”

“I see. That is quite serious.” The reverend clasped his hands together before him, as if in prayer. “I wish I could help, Inspector. But as I said, she hasn’t been in church for some time.”