THE MAFIA BOSS HEARD VANESSA THREATEN HIS MAID'S JOB OVER 120 DONATED DINNERS, BUT NATALIE REFUSED TO ABANDON THE HUNGRY FAMILIES.

"My mother was buried wearing that exact bracelet."

Godric Blackwood said the words so quietly that I heard the ice settle in the champagne bucket behind him. Octavia's painted mouth opened, then closed. There were two hundred guests in the ballroom. I knew that because I had polished two hundred champagne flutes before the party, and because for nearly an hour I had felt two hundred pairs of eyes refusing to acknowledge what was happening to me.

The scratches along my cheek burned. I pressed a clean corner of my apron against them and stared at the velvet case. A moment earlier the bracelet had been on my wrist. Now it looked like a tiny body laid inside a coffin of its own.

"Lisette," Godric said. "Tell me exactly what you saw."

Octavia let out an incredulous laugh. "You're asking the girl who stole the thing? Really?"

"I'm asking the person I just watched you hit." He turned toward the head of security. "No one touches Lisette. And no one removes anything from this room until the police arrive."

Several men at the tables exchanged glances. In the world Godric inhabited, calling the police instead of his own people was an unexpected move. Perhaps it surprised him too. He stood beside the jewelry case, his dark suit immaculate, his expression controlled in a way that made me feel how much control it was costing him.

"I didn't steal it," I said. My voice was thin. "Miss Hale fastened it on my wrist herself. Around four o'clock."

"In my dressing room," Octavia said sharply, "where you were supposed to be cleaning."

"You called me there."

"And you expect anyone to believe that?"

Godric held out one hand without turning his head. The gesture silenced her. "What else?"

I looked past him to the side doors. A man in a dark green coat had slipped in and out twice that afternoon, though I had never seen him on the guest list. He carried a rectangular case, the kind technicians use for instruments. His boots had left damp brown grit along the service corridor even though the gravel outside the mansion was pale and dry.

"There was a man at the back entrance," I said. "He brought something upstairs. I saw mud outside Miss Hale's dressing room. And she shut a small wooden box when I came in. I thought it was old jewelry."

Octavia's hand tightened around her champagne glass. "You thought. There is the trouble with servants. They think when they should work."

A woman near the fireplace stood. She wore a gray dress and a small silver cross. I recognized her as Dr. Miriam Kessler, a guest who had once treated the late Mrs. Blackwood. "That will be enough of that language," she said. "The girl is bleeding."

Godric glanced at my cheek. "Daniel, have someone bring a first-aid kit. Ask Dr. Kessler to examine her if she's willing." Then to me: "You can sit down."

I couldn't. My knees felt boneless, but sitting at the Blackwood engagement table in a stained uniform seemed more dangerous than standing. Godric seemed to understand. He drew a chair away from the crowd near the curtained windows, set it beside a small reading lamp, and stepped aside.

"You don't owe anyone a performance," he said.

That was when I started to cry. Not loudly. I couldn't afford loud tears. I had learned to make distress small enough to fit into a laundry closet. But my face twisted and I could not stop it.

As Dr. Kessler cleaned the scratches, she asked how I was feeling and whether I had somewhere safe to sleep. I said I lived in a rented room above a bakery in Westbridge, that the rent was due on Tuesday, and that I was afraid the Blackwood agency would cancel my placement. Octavia had a habit of calling managers late at night. People disappeared from the staff by breakfast.

"You will be paid for tonight," Godric said, overhearing. "And you will not be punished for reporting an assault."

I wanted to believe him. Across the room, Octavia was already whispering into someone's phone.

Godric went back to the case. He lifted the bracelet with a folded napkin, not his bare hands, and studied the underside. The diamonds were old European cuts, each held in a delicate platinum setting. Between them ran a narrow line of tiny leaves. His thumb paused over one damaged link.

"Mother broke this clasp when I was eleven," he said. "She insisted a jeweler repair it without replacing the link. The repair left a small half-moon scratch." He held it toward the light. "There it is."

Octavia shook her head. "Someone made a copy. She owned more than one bracelet."

"My mother owned one. I took the photographs when the funeral director closed her casket eight months ago."

An uneasy murmur traveled around the guests. The Blackwoods had a private mausoleum at St. Agnes Cemetery. A cemetery supervisor was among the people invited tonight. I had seen his name, Bernard Voss, on a place card, though the card remained in its holder and his chair was empty.

Godric turned to Daniel. "Call the cemetery. Ask for the head of grounds. Nobody is to enter the Blackwood vault before investigators document it."

"Godric," Octavia said, suddenly gentle. "Your mother has only been gone eight months. You are upset. This is a terrible misunderstanding."

"Then explain the bracelet."

"I was going to surprise you with it. A replica commissioned from a jeweler."

"Which jeweler?"

She hesitated half a second too long. "A man in Paris. I don't remember the name."

Godric looked tired. "You don't remember who made a replica of the jewelry buried with my mother."

"We could discuss it privately."

"You accused Lisette publicly. You struck her publicly. You can answer publicly."

A middle-aged man near the piano made a small movement. I recognized him from the photos in Octavia's room: Edmund Hale, her father, owner of a string of auction houses and restoration studios. He wore a narrow tie and an expression that suggested money usually solved his problems.

"I think we should all remember the significance of tonight," he announced. "Engagement parties are not courtrooms."

"You're right," Godric said. "Courts require evidence. We're going to preserve it."

Edmund's expression hardened. He reached for Octavia's elbow. She pulled away from him and glared at me, as if my skin had invented the scratch on the clasp.

A uniformed police officer arrived twenty minutes later with a detective named Mara Chen. She was small, direct, and clearly unimpressed by the ballroom. She photographed the bracelet, the case, my scratches, and the faint red mark on my wrist where Octavia had twisted it. Then she asked Godric whether he could show her the funeral photograph.

He opened his phone. From where I sat, I could see a picture of an elderly woman lying peacefully in a white-lined coffin. Her hands were folded, and on the right wrist was the same leaf-patterned bracelet. There was no mistaking the little repair mark.

Detective Chen studied it without speaking. "Who had access to the vault?"

"My family. The cemetery. The funeral director. And anyone holding a valid maintenance permit."

At the word permit, Octavia's father glanced toward the ballroom doors.

I remembered the mud again. Dark brown grit and a tiny white chip embedded in it. I had swept it from the dressing-room threshold into a dustpan because it stained the cream rug. Instead of throwing it away, I had left the dustpan beside the service stairs when the chef called me to prepare the reception.

"I still have something," I told the detective. "It may be nothing."

"Nothing is all right," she replied. "Tell me."

I explained about the dirt and the green-coated man. I expected another look of pity or disbelief. Instead she asked Daniel to escort her to the service stairs while another officer remained with the bracelet.

Godric stayed behind with me. It was the first time we had spoken for more than twenty seconds in the six months I had worked in his house. I knew his preference for black coffee, his habit of reading before sunrise, and the birthdays he never celebrated. I knew almost nothing about the man behind those habits.

"My mother used to wear that bracelet on days she was afraid," he said.

"Why?"

"Her father gave it to her when she opened her first gallery. He told her that courage didn't have to look grand." His gaze rested on the case. "The day she decided to expose a forgery ring, she wore it. The day she testified against one of my father's partners, too."

I looked at him sharply. "She exposed forgeries?"

"She was an art conservator before she was Mrs. Blackwood. Better at spotting a false painting than I am at spotting a false friend." A bitter smile crossed his face. "Apparently."

I didn't know what to say. It was dangerous to comfort a man with his reputation. It was equally dangerous not to.

"She sounds brave," I managed.

He nodded. "She was."

The ballroom had emptied halfway when Detective Chen returned. She held a clear evidence pouch containing the dirt from the service stairs. "We found a scrap of printed paper caught under the edge of the dustpan," she said. "Part of a work order. There's a reference to St. Agnes."

Octavia made a sharp sound. Edmund reached for his coat.

"Stay," Chen told him. "I have questions for you as well."

Godric leaned against the back of the chair beside mine. For the first time that evening he looked less like a feared man and more like a son who had just discovered someone had broken into his mother's resting place.

"What did they want?" he asked aloud.

I remembered another thing: the wooden box Octavia had hurried to close. There had been a blue paper tag sticking from its hinge, no bigger than a postage stamp. One number was written on it.

Seventeen.

"Mr. Blackwood," I said, "when Miss Hale fastened the bracelet on me, she kept looking at the clasp. She wasn't checking how it looked. She was looking for something inside it."

He stared at me. "Inside?"

I swallowed. "She seemed disappointed when it wouldn't open."

Detective Chen approached the velvet case. Without touching it, she studied the damaged link under the light. Then she said something that turned my fear into a colder, sharper feeling.

"There is a compartment here," she told us. "And it looks as though someone has already tried to pry it open."