Miles gulped. "Wouldn't the district magistrate be better qualified…?"

The Count smiled slightly. "For this case, I can think of no one better qualified than yourself."

The messenger and the message all in one; Times have changed. Indeed. Miles wished himself elsewhere, anywhere — back sweating blood over his final examinations, for instance. He stifled an unworthy wail, My home leave…!

Miles rubbed the back of his neck. "Who, ah… who is it killed your little girl?" Meaning, who is it I'm expected to drag out, put up against a wall, and shoot?

"My husband," she said tonelessly, looking at — through — the polished silvery floorboards.

I knew this was going to be messy…

"She cried and cried," the woman went on, "and wouldn't go to sleep, not nursing well — he shouted at me to shut her up -"

"Then?" Miles prompted, sick to his stomach.

"He swore at me, and went to go sleep at his mother's. He said at least a working man could sleep there. I hadn't slept either…"

This guy sounds like a real winner. Miles had an instant picture of him, a bull of a man with a bullying manner — nevertheless, there was something missing in the climax of the woman's story.

The Count had picked up on it too. He was listening with total attention, his strategy-session look, a slit-eyed intensity of thought you could mistake for sleepiness. That would be a grave mistake. "Were you an eyewitness?" he asked in a deceptively mild tone that put Miles on full alert. "Did you actually see him kill her?"

"I found her dead in the midmorning, lord."

"You went into the bedroom -" Count Vorkosigan led her on.

"We've only got one room." She shot him a look as if doubtful for the first time of his total omniscience.