by Anne Perry
Dr. Thurgood was unable to give any further assistance. There was nothing medical to add to the bare fact that Serafina had died of an overdose of laudanum so huge that it was impossible that she had given it to herself accidentally.
He caught a hansom to go to Dorchester Terrace. On the journey he turned over in his mind the practical facts, which severely limited the number of people able to administer such a dose.
The most obvious person was Nerissa Freemarsh; not that he seriously thought it was Nerissa, unless her lover had built up the nerve, or the desperation, to force her into it. What could have caused that? A sudden, urgent financial need? The longing to marry before it was too late for children?
Then why now? Why not sooner? Was it really coincidental that Serafina’s death had happened just before Duke Alois’s visit? It was not easy to believe.
He arrived at Dorchester Terrace, alighted, and paid the cabbie, then walked up the pathway to the door. He was admitted by the footman and gave him his card.
“Good morning,” he said quickly, before the man could protest that the house was in mourning and would receive no callers. “I need to speak with Miss Freemarsh. I hope she is still at home?” He was certain she would be. She was very traditional in her manner and dress, and, so newly bereaved, he was certain she would not leave the house for some time.
The man hesitated.
“Will you inform her that Lord Narraway is here, on business to do with the recent death of her aunt, Mrs. Montserrat.” He did not pitch his voice to make it a request. “I shall also need to speak with the housekeeper, the maids, the cook, yourself, and Miss Tucker.”
The man paled. “Yes … yes, sir. If you …” He gulped and cleared his throat. “If you would like to wait in the morning room, my lord?”
“Thank you, but I would prefer to use the housekeeper’s sitting room. It will make people more at ease.”
The man did not argue. Five minutes later Narraway was seated on a comfortable chair by the fire, facing the plump, pink-faced housekeeper, Mrs. Whiteside. She looked angry and bristling.
“I don’t know what you are thinking, I can tell you that much,” she began, refusing to sit, even though he had asked her to.
“You are in charge of the house, Mrs. Whiteside. You can tell me about each of the servants employed here.”
“You can’t imagine that any of them killed poor Mrs. Montserrat!” she accused him. “I’m not standing here while you say wicked things like that about innocent people, lordship or not, whoever you are.”
He smiled with amusement at her indignation, and with quite genuine pleasure at her loyalty. She looked like an angry hen ready to take on an intruder in the farmyard.
“Nothing would give me more pleasure than to prove that true, Mrs. Whiteside,” he said gently. “Perhaps with some detail, you can assist me in that. Then we widen the circle to include others who might have observed something of meaning, even if they did not realize it at the time. The one thing that seems impossible to deny is that someone did give Mrs. Montserrat a very large dose of laudanum. If you have any idea who that might be, or even why, then I would be obliged to you if you would tell me.”
It was the last sort of response she had expected. For several seconds she could not find words to answer him.
He indicated the chair opposite him again. “Please sit down, Mrs. Whiteside. Tell me about the members of your staff, so that I can imagine what they do when they are off duty, what they like and dislike, and so on.”
She was thoroughly confused, but she did her best. A quarter of an hour into her description, she began to speak naturally, even with affection. For the first time in his life, Narraway was offered a vivid picture of a group of people utterly unlike himself, all away from the homes and families in which they grew up, slowly forming a new kind of family, with friendships, jealousies, loyalty, and understanding that gave comfort to their lives, and a certain kind of framework that was of intense importance. Mrs. Whiteside was the matriarch, the cook almost as important. The footman was the only man, Serafina not requiring a butler, and therefore he had a place of unique privilege. But he was young, and not above bickering with the maids over trivia.
Tucker, as the lady’s maid, was not really either upstairs or downstairs. Her position was senior to the others, and as Narraway listened to Mrs. Whiteside’s descriptions, he came to the conclusion that Tucker’s position was an oddly lonely one.
“I don’t know what else you want,” she finished abruptly, looking confused again.
Narraway was quite certain that none of the staff had had anything to do with Serafina’s death. Their own lives had been sadly disrupted by it; now, even their home was no longer assured. Sooner or later Nerissa might choose to sell the house, or might have to, and they would be separated from one another and without employment. Then again, if she suspected them of disloyalty, or of speaking out of turn to Narraway, she might dismiss them without even a reference, and that would be worse. He became suddenly sensitive to the fact that he must phrase his questions with care.
“I would like to speak to them one at a time,” he responded. “And see if anyone has noticed anything out of the ordinary in the house. Something not in its usual place, moved, or accidentally destroyed perhaps.”
She understood immediately. “You think somebody broke in and killed poor Mrs. Montserrat?” Her face was horrified.
“The more you describe the people here, the less likely I think it is that one of them could have gone upstairs, found the laudanum, and given Mrs. Montserrat a fatal dose.”
“I must stay right in this room while you talk to the maids,” she warned him.
“Of course,” he agreed. “I wish you to, but please do not interrupt.”
His questioning proved fruitless, as he had expected, except to confirm in his own mind that Serafina’s staff was ordinary, an artless group of domestic servants, capable of occasional idleness, gossip, and petty squabbling, but not of sustained malice or evil. For one thing, they seemed far too unsophisticated for the degree of deception required to poison someone and hide all traces. For another, they confided in one another too freely to keep such a secret. Mrs. Whiteside’s estimate of them was reasonably accurate. He made a mental note that if he was ever involved in detective work again, he would pay more attention to the observations of housekeepers.
Tucker was a different matter. She had been with Serafina for decades. She looked pathetically frail now, and somewhat lost; she would be cared for now, but never needed in the way Serafina had needed her. She sat in the chair opposite Narraway and prepared to answer his questions.
He began gently, and was amused to find her observations of the other servants very similar to Mrs. Whiteside’s, if a trifle sharper. But then she did not have to work with them anymore. She no longer had a position to guard.
She was not without humor, and he regretted having to move his line of inquiry to more sensitive areas.
“Miss Tucker, I have heard from Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould that Mrs. Montserrat was losing her ability to remember exactly where she was, and to whom she was speaking. Did you know that she was afraid of letting secrets slip that might affect other people very adversely?”
She sighed and looked at him carefully. “Of course I was aware. If you had asked me five years ago, I’d never have believed such a thing could happen to a lady like Mrs. Montserrat.” She had difficulty controlling her grief, and her eyes blazed at him through tears.
“Someone killed her, Miss Tucker. I am thinking it less and less likely that it was someone already in this house.”
She blinked and said nothing.
“Who has visited Mrs. Montserrat in the last three or four months?”
She looked down. “Not many. People like to feel comfortable, to be entertained or amused. If you are of a certain age yourself, seeing a living example of what can happen, or what may yet happen to you, is unpleasant.”
Narraway winced internally. He had
many years before he reached Serafina’s age, but it would come soon enough. Would he bear it with grace?
Then he realized with a chill like ice that perhaps he too would be terrified of what he might say, and might even be murdered to ensure his silence. Suddenly Serafina became of intense importance to him, almost an image of himself in a future to come.
“Miss Tucker, someone killed her,” he said with a catch in his voice. “I intend to find out who it was, and to see to it that they answer to the law. The fact that Mrs. Montserrat was old and had very little family is irrelevant. Whoever she was, she had the right to be cared for, to be treated with dignity, and to be allowed to live out the whole of her life.”
Miss Tucker now let the tears roll down her thin cheeks, which were almost colorless in the late winter light.
“No one here would hurt her, my lord,” she said in barely more than a whisper. “But there were others who came into the house, some to visit her, some to visit Miss Freemarsh.”
He nodded again. “Of course. Who were they?”
She pursed her lips slightly in concentration. “Well, there was Lady Burwood, who came twice, as I recall, but that was some time ago.”
“To visit whom?”
“Oh, Mrs. Montserrat, although of course she was very civil to Miss Freemarsh.”
Narraway could imagine it: Lady Burwood, whoever she was, being polite and indefinably condescending; and Nerissa hungering for recognition, and receiving none, except secondhand through her relationship to Serafina.
“Who is Lady Burwood?” he asked.
Miss Tucker smiled. “Middle-aged, married rather beneath her, but happily enough, I think. She has a sister with a title and more money, but fewer children. She found Mrs. Montserrat more interesting than most of her other friends did.”
Narraway nodded. “You are very observant as to the details that matter, Miss Tucker,” he said sincerely. “Why did she stop coming?” It was a cruel question, and he knew it, but the answer might be important.
Tucker’s face flushed with amusement. “Not what you assume, my lord. She fell and broke her leg.”
“I stand corrected,” he said wryly. “Who else?”
She mentioned two or three others, and a fourth and fifth who had come solely to visit Nerissa. None of them seemed to have the remotest connection with Austria, or past intrigues anywhere at all.
“No gentlemen?” he inquired.
She looked at him very steadily. She had kept decades of secrets, and many of them were probably of a romantic or purely lustful nature. A good lady’s maid was a mixture of servant, artist, and priest, and Tucker had been superb at her job. A maid to Serafina Montserrat would have had to be.
“Please?” he said gravely. “Someone murdered her, Miss Tucker. I shall repeat nothing that is not relevant to the case. I am good at keeping secrets; until a few months ago, I was head of Special Branch.” It was still painful to say that.
Perhaps she saw it in his face. “I see.” She nodded very slightly. “You are too young to retire.” She did not ask the question that lay between them.
“One of my own secrets came back and caught me,” he told her.
“Oh, dear.” There was sympathy and the very faintest possible humor in her eyes.
“Who visited the house, Miss Tucker?” he asked.
“Lord Tregarron came to see Mrs. Montserrat, twice I think. He did not stay very long,” she replied. “Mrs. Montserrat was not very well on either occasion. I did not hear their conversation, but I believe it was not … not amicable.”
“How do you know that, Miss Tucker? Did Mrs. Montserrat tell you?”
“Mrs. Montserrat knew the first Lord Tregarron, in Vienna, a long time ago.”
“Tregarron’s father?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the circumstances of their acquaintance?”
“I surmise them, but I do not know for sure. Nor will I imagine them for you.”
“Did Tregarron speak with Miss Freemarsh?”
“Yes, at some length, but it was downstairs in the withdrawing room, and I have no idea what was said. I know it was some time only because Sissy the housemaid told me.”
“I see. Anyone else?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Blantyre both came, separately. Several times.”
“To see Mrs. Montserrat?”
“And Miss Freemarsh. I imagine to discuss Mrs. Montserrat’s health, and what might be done to make her happier and more comfortable. I think Mrs. Blantyre was very fond of her. She seemed to be.”
“Mr. Blantyre also?”
“He is very fond of his wife, and very concerned for her health. Apparently she is delicate, or at least he is of that opinion.”
“And you are not?” he asked quickly.
She smiled. “I think she is far stronger than he appreciates. He likes to think she is delicate. Some men are pleased to believe themselves protectors of the weak, caring for some beautiful woman like a tropical flower that needs to be defended from every chill draft.”
Narraway had never thought of such a thing, but it seemed obvious after hearing Tucker say it.
“So you believe Blantyre came in order to ensure that Adriana was not distressed by her visits to Mrs. Montserrat?”
“I think that is how he wished it to appear,” she said carefully.
He noted the difference. “I see. And Miss Freemarsh?” he asked. “Would she say the same?”
“Most certainly.” A tiny flicker of amusement touched her mouth.
“Miss Tucker, I think there is something of importance that you are deliberately not telling me.”
“Observations,” she said quickly. “Not facts, my lord. I think you do not know women very well.”
He was now realizing this for himself.
“I am learning,” he said ruefully. “A difficult question, Miss Tucker, and I ask you not from personal curiosity, but because I need to know. Does Miss Freemarsh have an admirer?”
Tucker’s face remained completely impassive. “You mean a lover, my lord?”
Narraway watched her intently, and still could not read the emotion behind the words.
“Yes, I suppose that’s what I mean.”
“Yes, she does. But I know that because I have been a lady’s maid all my life, and I know when a woman is in love: how she walks, how she smiles, the tiny alterations she will make to her appearance, even when she is forced to keep the matter secret.”
He nodded slowly. It made perfect sense. Tucker would know everything; those who had grown up with servants in the house came to look at them as furniture: familiar, useful, to be looked after with care, and treated as if they had neither eyes nor ears.
“Who is it, Miss Tucker?”
She hesitated.
“Miss Tucker, whoever it is may, knowingly or not, be behind the death of Mrs. Montserrat.”
Tucker winced.
“Please?”
“It is either Lord Tregarron or Mr. Blantyre,” she said, in little above a whisper.
Narraway was stunned. His disbelief must have shown on his face, because Tucker looked at him with a disappointment that verged on a kind of hurt. She started to speak again, then changed her mind.
“You surprise me,” he admitted. “I considered both men to be very happily married, and I gather Miss Freemarsh is … not …”
“Attractive to men,” Tucker finished for him.
“Quite,” he agreed.
Tucker smiled patiently. “I have known of perfectly respectable middle-aged men who have been uncontrollably attracted to the strangest women,” she answered. “Sometimes very rough women, laborers with their hands not even clean, and most certainly ignorant. I have no idea what it is that appeals, but it is true. With Mrs. Montserrat, men loved her courage, her passion, and her hunger for adventure. And she could make them laugh.”
Narraway believed it. Briefly, for a swift, perfect moment, he thought of Charlotte, and knew why he found her in his own thoughts
far too often. She had courage and passion too, and she made him laugh, but he also loved her so much because of her fierce loyalty, and the fact that she would never betray Pitt, would never even wish to.
Then he thought of Vespasia and what made her so appealing. Curiously enough, it was not her beauty. Even in her youth it had not been her beauty, dazzling though she was. It was the fire in her, the intelligence and the spirit; and, more recently, a vulnerability he would never have perceived in her, even a year ago.
“Thank you, Miss Tucker. You have been extraordinarily helpful,” he said. “I promise you I will do everything I can to see that the truth of Mrs. Montserrat’s death is discovered, and that whoever is responsible is dealt with justly.” He did not say “according to the law.” In this case, he was not certain that the two were one and the same.
WHEN NARRAWAY FINALLY SAW Nerissa, he had already been at Dorchester Terrace for three hours. He had eaten a luncheon of cold game pie and pickles, with a dessert of suet pudding and hot treacle sauce, the same as had been eaten in the servants’ dining room.
Nerissa came in and closed the door behind her. She was wearing black, with a brooch of jet. Her face was bleached of even the faintest color, and she looked tired. The skin around her eyes was shadowed. Narraway felt a moment of pity for her. He tried to imagine what her daily life had been like, and the picture he conjured up was monotonous, without light or laughter, without thoughts to provoke the mind or a sense of purpose. Had she been desperate to escape that prison? Wouldn’t anyone, but especially a woman in love?
“Please sit down, Miss Freemarsh. I am sorry to have to disturb you, but there is no alternative.”
She obeyed, but remained stiff-backed in the chair, her hands folded in her lap.
“I assume you would not do so if you did not have to, my lord,” she said with a sigh. “I find it very difficult to believe that any of the staff here would have contributed to my aunt’s death, even negligently. And I … I cannot think of anyone else who might have done so. But since you seem convinced that it was neither an accident, nor suicide, then there must be some other explanation. It is … distressing.”