Silence in the Library

by Katharine Schellman

  “And I will examine the bed and nightstand,” Lily agreed, moving in that direction.

  “What are you looking for?” Mrs. Harris whispered, shadowing them, still nervous.

  “We shan’t know until we see it.” Lily tossed back the linens of the bed, which were old and worn but pristinely clean, then crouched down to peer at the floor underneath. “Anything out of place. Anything surprising.”

  “Not much to go through,” Jack said, his voice equally quiet, while he searched the drawers.

  “Do you notice anything that strikes you as odd, Mrs. Harris?” Lily asked, standing and dusting off her skirts while she eyed the sparse room.

  The housekeeper turned in a circle, her mouth drawn into a thin, frustrated line. “Nothing. And there was nothing Ellen said or did that …” She sighed, clearly frustrated, and Lily could see tears in her eyes. “She just went so sudden-like. It didn’t seem natural. And what with Sir Charles being killed, and folks spreading rumors about Master Arthur …” She swallowed, her voice growing hoarse. “The doctor said young people’s hearts can give out all of a sudden, same as old folks’. But I just can’t quite credit it.”

  “Tell me how it happened.”

  Lily listened with half an ear while the housekeeper related to them how Ellen’s complaints had grown more severe from one day to the next, until she was in agony during the hours before she died. When Mrs. Harris fell silent, she glanced over to find Jack looking at her.

  “That sounds more like …” He hesitated.

  “Poison?” Lily held back a shudder.

  “But she never ate or drank anything but what anyone else did,” Mrs. Harris pointed out. “I don’t see how it could have happened.”

  “But you still thought something was odd?” Lily asked.

  “Something just felt wrong. And with Mr. Wyatt giving her body to the undertaker before them Bow Street men could even look around …” Mrs. Harris shivered. “Why would someone do such a thing?”

  “Do you remember Ellen doing anything odd the day after Sir Charles’s death? Or the day after that?”

  The housekeeper frowned. “Not that I can … well, yes, as a matter of fact. I saw her coming out of the library at one point. And I don’t think it struck me at the time, because I’m so used to seeing maids go in and out to clean throughout the day. But Ellen’s duties shouldn’t have taken her in there.” She glanced between Lily and Jack, wringing her hands. “Why would she do that, do you think?”

  Lily had stopped searching while the housekeeper spoke; now she shivered, glancing at Jack. “She was looking for something, perhaps.”

  “Or someone thought she was,” Jack added. “Maybe she saw something the night Sir Charles died. Or heard something afterwards.”

  “Or maybe someone only thought she did and feared exposure,” Lily agreed. She finished with the bed and turned to the nightstand. The drawer was empty, while the top held a candle and a tattered volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  “Was there anyone Ellen might have confided in?” Jack asked, turning back to his examination of the maid’s things.

  Mrs. Harris shook her head. “If she didn’t tell her brother nothing, I can’t imagine who else she’d have whispered secrets to. She didn’t have much time to spend with the other staff her age, not since she moved up here and took over with Master Arthur. She and Edie—another of the housemaids—was good friends, once upon a time. But Edie left over a year ago. I don’t know where she’s ended up.”

  “And what did Ellen’s brother think of her death?” Jack asked.

  “The poor boy was too shocked to think anything at all, I fear. He hasn’t said a word since she died except that he’ll be taking his letter of character and going home. Wants to be there to comfort his mother.” Mrs. Harris sighed, looking at the book in Lily’s hands. “She liked reading, our Ellen did. Wanted to learn everything.”

  “She sounds like she was a clever girl,” Jack said gently, closing the last drawer and standing. He glanced at Lily and shook his head. Nothing odd to report.

  “She was. Spent what she could on books but saved most of her wages to send to her parents. She and Thomas come from Devonshire, like most of the staff.”

  The look Lily gave Jack was torn between sadness and anger. She didn’t for a moment believe Ellen’s death had been an accident, not coming so soon after Sir Charles’s. But if the doctor had declared it due to natural causes, there would be no inquest, no investigation. And Ellen’s family—a brother in service, relatives in another county—would be unable to press for more.

  She set the book down and was about to ask the housekeeper another question when a mark on the top of the nightstand caught her eye.

  The furniture in the room had likely been gathered piecemeal, some of it from sellers of secondhand goods, other items from family or guest rooms once they had become too worn. The nightstand was well made, but its finish was nicked and dented, with several long scratches across its top. Against the marred surface, a single circle stood out, the mark of a drinking glass set down one too many times in nearly the same spot.

  It was possible that the mark had been made when the table was in another room. That could have been why it was moved here, to a maid’s room. But if it had been made by Ellen …

  Lily could picture her reading at night, her candle burning and a glass next to her bed. A glass none of the other staff would have drunk from, that it would have been easy for someone to remove from the room with no one the wiser.

  Bending closer, she held her breath and put her eyes level with the top of the nightstand. There was nothing there.

  But when she pulled out the drawer and looked closely, the inside edge, just under where the glass would have been, held a faint trace of white powder.

  Lily straightened abruptly, glad she had been holding her breath and that she hadn’t taken off her gloves.

  “What is it?” Jack asked, touching her arm as he came to stand by her side.

  Lily glanced sharply down at his hands, suddenly afraid. But he still wore his gloves as well. She breathed a sigh of relief and pointed wordlessly at the edge of the nightstand, noticing as she did so that her hand was shaking.

  It was one thing to be suspicious of Ellen’s death; it was another matter entirely to be confronted with what was likely evidence that someone had callously murdered her. Someone who didn’t care that she would die in confusion and pain.

  “Careful,” Lily whispered as Jack bent over just far enough to see the powder before he, too, stepped quickly back.

  They stared at each other, wide-eyed.

  “What is it?” Mrs. Harris asked, peering over their shoulders.

  Jack, after one glance at Lily’s stricken face, took charge of the situation. With a gentle hand on Mrs. Harris’s shoulder, he steered the housekeeper toward the door. Lily, her skin crawling, followed.

  “It might not be safe in here,” Jack said, quietly and urgently. “It looks like you were right and that Ellen was poisoned. But we cannot be sure until Mr. Page of Bow Street has returned. He can seek out a chemist who will be able to tell him one way or another.”

  “In the meantime, do not let your staff in there, not to clean or to fetch any of Ellen’s things. Not even her brother,” Lily said, pulling the door firmly shut behind her.

  “What … what do you think it was?” Mrs. Harris said, glancing from one of them to the other.

  It seemed too awful to voice her suspicions out loud. But the housekeeper had risked her position to let them look around. She deserved some kind of answer.

  Every few years, the papers reported one gruesome story or another about poisoning deaths. Lily could remember three since she and Freddy first married: a woman who murdered her husband because she wanted to marry another man; a servant in the country who unwittingly prepared dinner using water from a rocky spring and ended up killing an entire family; an old man who was slowly poisoned by the green dye in the wallpaper of his bedroom.
<
br />   The writers of such stories focused on the sensational nature of the deaths. But even they had to admit that there was a single poison so commonly found, so easy for a murderer to use, that the real surprise was that it wasn’t used more often.

  Lily swallowed and tried to make her voice as steady as possible. “Do you keep white arsenic in the house?”

  Mrs. Harris’s eyes grew wide, and she raised a hand to her mouth, then pressed it against her heart. “For rats,” she whispered, looking as ill as Lily felt. “It’s kept in the storeroom.”

  “Who has access to it?” Lily asked.

  The housekeeper’s voice was faint as she replied. “The upper staff, mostly. And Lady Wyatt has keys, of course. Sir Charles had one, but I don’t know where his ended up.”

  Jack put a steadying hand on the woman’s arm. “We ought not to linger here,” he said, gesturing for Jem to return from his lookout a few doors down the hall.

  “I have to go in search of Lady Wyatt,” Lily said, wishing for nothing more than to go home and rage in private. The cruelty of Ellen’s death almost took her breath away—even more so because the murderer clearly expected that the death of a housemaid, however odd, would go unremarked and unexamined. And it might have had it not been for the housekeeper.

  Lily glanced at Jack, grateful for his steadying presence. “Captain, will you go immediately to Bow Street and find Mr. Page?”

  “After I take Mrs. Harris back downstairs.”

  Mrs. Harris straightened, her chin taking on a firm, almost mulish set. Clearly, as horrified as she had been, she was not a woman to be easily cowed. “I’ll be sure the staff stays away. And if you tell that man from Bow Street to come to the kitchen door on the southwest corner of the house rather than the front door, I’ll see that he’s brought up here.”

  Lily nodded. “Thank you for your trust in us, Mrs. Harris. We will do our best with what you have helped us learn.” She turned to leave, then stopped. “By the way, what do you know of any repairs that were supposed to be done to the house?”

  * * *

  Once the others disappeared down the servants’ stair, Lily had to run. Glancing around to make sure there was no one else in the hall, she hurried down toward the second floor, trying to move quickly without making too much noise. The stairs between the second and third floors, going as they did into the more remote part of the house, were not carpeted. Her slippers were soft, but her rushed steps still felt too loud in the chill silence of the house. When she finally gained the second floor, she didn’t pause, turning the corner and trying to slow both her breathing and her steps.

  But she was still panting as she found herself face-to-face with Lady Wyatt, whose eyebrows rose as she approached the stairs and found Lily coming down rather than—as a guest should have been—going up.

  “Mrs. Adler.” Lady Wyatt stared at her in amazement. “What were you doing up there?”

  CHAPTER 18

  “You are too kind to call on me once again, Mrs. Adler.” Lady Wyatt’s rich voice was heavy with grief and fatigue as Lily took a seat by the window, but the sentiment seemed genuine enough.

  Though her expression had been frankly skeptical at first, she had seemed to accept Lily’s explanation that she had become lost while coming upstairs—“Not very well done of Frank, to neglect sending a servant to show you the way. But then, I suppose we are all a little distracted these days.” Now they were settled into the small sitting room that attached to Lady Wyatt’s bedroom. Lily schooled her face into polite sympathy, hoping that the hectic pace of her heartbeat was noticeable only to her and trying to tuck away her anger over Ellen’s death to face when she was alone once more.

  “I hope you will convey my apologies to your father that I am unable to receive him,” Lady Wyatt continued. “One day I should dearly love to make Mr. Pierce’s acquaintance. Sir Charles always spoke so highly of him, though I rather got the impression that they were as much rivals as they were friends.”

  The day was cloudy outside, and heavy with the dust stirred up by the innumerable feet, carriages, and carts passing below. But there was enough sunlight coming through the glass panes to make the corner of Lady Wyatt’s room in which they were seated a pleasant enough place to linger. She was dressed in mourning, with a black silk shawl around her shoulders, upright and regal as ever. But the untouched tea service before her and the crumpled edge of her shawl—as if she had been unconsciously pleating and unpleating it while she sat—made Lily suspect that Lady Wyatt’s thoughts were in far more turmoil than her outward appearance.

  “I am not sure my father knows how to have any other kind of friendship,” Lily said, pulling her thoughts back to the conversation. “Though what they had to compete over, I could not tell you. Mr. Wyatt told us you were lately with your mother?”

  “I think you will not be surprised, Mrs. Adler, if I say that I have not felt entirely comfortable here since my husband’s … death.” Lady Wyatt’s voice quavered a little.

  Lily waited a moment, then prodded gently, watching Lady Wyatt out of the corner of her eye for any cracks in the facade of her grief. “Do you feel unwelcome? Or something else?”

  Lady Wyatt smiled sadly. “Unwelcome, certainly. I am sure you can imagine that Frank is …” Her lips tightened. “Well, he has always only barely tolerated me. But there is …”

  “But there is more to it than that,” Lily suggested. “It is not unreasonable, ma’am. I can only imagine how terrified I would be to live in a home where someone I love had been slain.”

  Lady Wyatt took a deep breath, gathering her composure once more. “Frank assures me that no one in this household could have done such a thing. But two days ago, I left because I could not shake the feeling that someone here had …”

  “Forgive me, but are you saying you think Frank—that is, Mr. Wyatt—are you saying you think he could have harmed his father?”

  “Frank? No, of course … that is …” Lady Wyatt frowned, as if reconsidering, while one hand rose slowly to her heart. Then it fell as she shook her head. “Little as I like him, Mrs. Adler, I could never see him raising a hand against his father. No, it is just a feeling …” She shivered and broke off. “I never thought I would say it, but I shall be glad to return to my mother’s home in Hans Town.” She smiled sadly. “I had once hoped never to go back there. But I’ve no wish to stay here any longer. I have returned only to pack my things. After Sir Charles’s funeral, I’ll not come back again.”

  “I am sorry to hear it,” Lily said quietly.

  “I am not.” Lady Wyatt’s tone had a sudden bitter briskness. “I shan’t have to see these boys anymore. I shan’t have to deal with that impertinent man from Bow Street.” Her expression grew a little wily. “I have heard a rumor, Mrs. Adler, that you were acquainted with these constables.”

  Lily’s heart sped up again, but all she said, as calmly as possible, was, “I told you as much, if you recall.”

  “Yes. But was standing by your friend all there was to it?” Lady Wyatt’s gaze was verging on accusatory.

  Lily, weighing her options, decided that outright denial was dangerous without knowing what Lady Wyatt had heard. Instead, she took a deep breath, affecting unconcern as she poured herself another cup of tea. “Rumors are odd things, ma’am. For example, I heard a rumor that you lied to the constable, that you and Sir Charles had a terrible quarrel the day he died.”

  Lady Wyatt’s gasp was nearly a hiss. “Who said such things?”

  “Rumor, as you said. It creeps in everywhere. Perhaps the servants heard shouting? Or perhaps one of them mentioned that you did not spend the evening with your husband as you claimed.”

  “It was not … Charles might have shouted some … but you know how men are …” Lady Wyatt trailed off, then swallowed, her eyes darting around the room before coming to rest on Lily once more. “I was not lying,” she insisted, tears springing up in her eyes. “Yes, we had a small argument that evening, and I went to bed early. I can
not bear that we had been fighting just before he died, and over something so stupid, and now there is no chance of resolving it.”

  Lily sipped her tea, trying to look sympathetic. “If it was a small argument, I am sure it is nothing you need feel guilt over leaving unresolved,” she said, her voice soothing. “Surely it could not have been that bad. What was it about?”

  Lady Wyatt’s fingers fiddled with the fringe of her shawl. “I barely even remember. Something about leaving for Devonshire sooner than we had planned. With everything that has happened, it has truly flown from my mind.”

  “There, you see?” Lily’s quiet voice gave away none of her thoughts. But she remembered what Mr. Page had said. Unnatural, Mrs. Harris had heard Sir Charles yell. Disgusted. That didn’t sound like a small argument over leaving London. “Doubtless he had forgiven you before you even made your way upstairs.”

  Lady Wyatt sighed. “I am sure you are right.”

  Lily eyed the other woman, hesitating. But she forced herself to ask the question, though she kept her voice as gentle as she could. “Did you love him?”

  Lady Wyatt drew in a sharp breath. But there was no judgment on Lily’s face, and Lady Wyatt’s shoulders slumped. She pressed her hands to her eyes, and for a moment her shoulders shook. Then she lifted her face, and her expression was so calm and regretful that it made Lily’s heart ache. “No. I respected him. I enjoyed his company. I think he loved me, and when he asked me to marry him, I hoped I would grow to love him too. It seemed like it would have been enough. And I didn’t know what I was to live on otherwise.” Her voice grew a little defensive. “Half the women in England are equally mercenary in their marriages.”

  “At least half,” Lily agreed. “You at least felt fondness for the man you wed. But I wonder if that has also increased your measure of grief and guilt, knowing that you did not love him as he loved you.”

  Lady Wyatt flinched, as if she wanted to turn away from Lily’s steady gaze but wouldn’t let herself. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I suppose it has.”