Chapter 60: Ella, weaving together the web

Lieutenant Bain excused himself to help Charlotte with the washing up. He stacked the laden trays and left the library humming ?It's a long way to Tipperary,?and I briefly wondered if he was thinking of the sweetest girl he knew. As the library door snicked shut, my mind returned to the issue of witches. I digested the new information and then grasped a tenuous strand of spun silk. The web began to make a pattern I could discern, and this particular fibre could hold the missing patch in a larger question.

I turned to Reverend Mason, the idea still spinning in my head. "Are you able to trace genealogies?"

His eyes lit up and he rubbed his hands together. "Of course. Nothing the clergy likes better than to keep records of births, marriages and deaths. Or hatched, matched, and dispatched, as we say. What did you have in mind?"