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“Most of the work was done by Detective Inspector Pierce.”

“Violet says he is investigating the Delacourt case, and you are helping him.”

“Yes. Unofficially.” Electra did not mind confirming her involvement if Violet Delacourt had already shared that detail. She dearly wished she’d seen anything that might help solve the Collier case.

“So we were wondering, miss,” Mr. Collier said, “if you could help us. We have brought something that belonged to my girl.” He glanced at his wife, who withdrew a pretty hair comb from her reticule.

“This was very dear, but I saved up and bought it for her last birthday. Not knowing it would be her last, of course. I thought if you could hold it, you might see something, know something. I’m not sure how it works, miss.”

“I don’t know if it will work.” Electra gingerly took the comb into her gloved hands.

“Could you at least try? We’ll pay you whatever you ask.”

Electra laid the comb in her lap, removed her gloves, closed her eyes, and focused on the young woman she had seen in Sam Potter’s memories. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a lively smile.

And there she was in front of Electra, but she wasn’t in front of Electra. She was in Calliope’s memory, and Calliope was in front of a mirror, looking at herself as she unbuttoned her bodice.

The room she was in seemed lit by candle glow, the warm light flickering over her skin.

To the side of her body, Electra could see the edge of a bed. A floral coverlet. Perhaps a quilt. A man approached behind her. Electra could see his shoulders. He was taller than Calliope, and everything above his jaw was cut off by the top of the cheval mirror’s frame.

Then his hands came around, peeling back Calliope’s bodice, dragging it down her arms. He dipped his head to kiss her. But it was so dim that Electra could hardly make out his features. She saw only dark hair, and then the glint of spectacles.

He stepped away, out of view. The bed dipped behind Calliope. She continued to stare at herself in the mirror as she worked the busks on the front of her corset. Her stare was fixed now on herself. She refused to look at him, it seemed. Electra noticed that her eyes didn’t sparkle in the way they had when Electra had seen her in Samuel Potter’s memories.

Her lips quivered as she continued to undress, but a tear dampened her lashes. She lifted her head and stared at the ceiling, as if trying to keep it from falling.

The image faded. Electra heard the gentle scrape of the teacup placed back in its saucer.

She opened her eyes, and found the Colliers watching her breathlessly, their own eyes flared wide.

What could she tell them? How could she explain that she had just seen their daughter taking off her clothes when she clearly didn’t wish to be doing so, in a dimly lit room with a man who wore glasses?

Her pulse kicked up at that detail. Four men they had spoken to in the last two days wore glasses. But only Kerrigan and Wakefield had dark hair. Though even Nicholas Frye’s sandy hair might look dark in the dimness of that room.

She needed to speak to Gideon. She needed to give the information to Detective Hardy.

“Miss Poole, can you tell us what happened to our daughter?” Mrs. Collier asked, her tone hesitant, as if she feared the answer as much as she wanted it.

“Did you see the man who killed her?”

“No,” Electra rushed to say. Had she? Was the man who had been in that room with Calliope also been her killer?

“You saw something, though?”

Electra swallowed thickly. “I saw Calliope in a room with a gentleman, but I could not see him clearly.”

“Was he hurting her?”

Yes, Electra thought he was. Or that Calliope was hurting herself by subjecting herself to his company for some reason.

“What was he doing to her?” Mr. Collier pressed.

Electra resisted telling them the implications of what she’d seen. Why put such images in their mind? “I saw him very briefly. Just a flash. I could not identify him if I saw him in front of me.”

Mrs. Collier dropped her head and dabbed at her cheeks. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed, and Mr. Collier wrapped an arm around her.

“So it did not work?” he asked, not with accusation, just a sorrowful sort of resignation.