[Some time shortly after Rose gave notice ...]

Zechariah had bought an apple the day he was to hear from his informant. He had had it sitting on his desk for just that moment, biting into it the moment the door opened.

An address. He had an address. An address … and an excuse.

Oh! He hoped that scared little former Ward had to open the door for him.

It was midday when Zechariah found himself at the Appleton farm, as brightly dressed as ever – and certainly in far better spirits. A bored carriage driver flipped open a book as soon as his employer’s back was turned, waiting.

There was a firm knock at the farmhouse door.

The air smelled of animals and mud and fires. Zech would have had to open the farm gate to enter a little farm yard. On one side there was an old modest sandstone house, its roof tiled with the same red tiles often found in Whitby. There were two windows looking out on the yard on either side of the door, and three on the other floor. The stables were right beside the house, touching it. Across the yard there were other smaller buildings for small animals and gear. Behind the house rose a tall shed for machinery, and behind that, there were fields.

The same three random piano notes sounded from within the house over and over, until they stopped abruptly when Zech knocked. If he had looked while passing the window, he might have seen redhaired girl sitting behind an upright piano, her eyes staring off into the distance.

It took a moment before the door finally opened and a young blonde girl opened. "Can I help ye, ser?"

Shockingly, the man who came to gawk at her misery gawked at her misery. Was she miserable? Concentrating? Miserable and concentrating?

Oh, he hoped she was miserable. He hoped she was stuck playing with one, single finger for the rest of her damned life, and he hoped Tobias laid awake at night listening to it in regret!

Zechariah was all congenial smiles when the blonde answered the door.

“What … music!” he said. “I was just here to see if you have any eggs for sale? There is a banquet coming up.”

His voice carried.

Jenny looked at his clothes and then back at his face, rather confused. "Y-"

She was disrupted by a resounding cacophony of tones coming from inside the house, as if someone was jamming all ten fingers down on the keys with force. Again and again and again, every time Jenny tried to speak.

He caught the questioning look, and he had thought ahead to what he would say to any questioning.

BRNNGkrrrDNNDNNBRRN

… Though he looked a little baffled as to how to answer it, impeded.

“Ah!” he laughed, as though he had heard her over the cacophony. “Do not mind this. The maid fell pregn-… ill,” he hastily ‘corrected’. “And I meant to come out this way anyway.”

It smelled pretty damned rank out there. Zechariah was glad for an excuse to invite himself in. He nodded toward the room behind the blonde with an expectant smile.

“May I sit?”

Jenny looked over her shoulder uncomfortably. She cringed when another salvo of dissonant tones resounded through the house. Then she turned back to the gentleman, stepped out and shut the door behind her to soften the din. "Please, ser. T' mistress is not well. T' eggs are in t' kitchen. This way." And she moved ahead to go round the house. Taking a gentleman through the servants entrance was inappropriate, but Mr. Appleton probably wouldn't appreciate her exposing a stranger to his 'domestic bliss'.

There was a glitter in his eye when the young woman mentioned Alice’s being unwell. Unwell, accompanied by discordant music and a maid too afraid to pass through the same room as her. He cast her a ‘sympathetic’ smile, gears churning as he fell into step behind her.

“My apologies for what the family must be going through,” he said as soon as they were in the passage. “We had an … unwell member of the family, too. My deepest regret is not getting him help before he disappeared.”

Actually, his deepest regret was letting Menachem on that couch. He had had to get a damned seat cover commissioned to cover the blood.

Alas, Jenny was no gossip. "I'm sorry to hear that, ser," she said. She led him through a door into the scullery. There, in the corner stood a basket with eggs. She turned to Zech. "Eh, but ye 'aven't brought a basket, ser."

Zechariah side-eyed her. Hm. He would have to ply his “have the crazy woman committed” ploy harder to the man of the house.

His gaze landed blandly on the eggs. Ah. Yes. Scrambled and hard boiled eggs for weeks. Maybe he could even rope Benny into cooking instead of doing literally anything that got him out of the cottage and Zechariah’s nose back undisturbed in a book.

“That will do,” he said without so much as pausing. “How much?”

"How many do you w-,"

Loud disharmonious tones rose from elsewhere in the house once again. Then a sudden bang of the piano being shut. Jenny cringed and then blushed.

"How many do ye want, ser? 'ave ye owt to carry it?" she asked timidly.