A Broken Vessel (19 page)

“Maybe Wax-face knows what he’s about, right enough. How do you know he ain’t using you, same as you’re using him?”

“Devil an inch of it! I’ve got Himself in me pocket. He has no more idea I’m double-dealing than he has of the dark side of the moon. I feed his vanity—and, Mother Mary, what an appetite it’s got! I tell him he’s a saint upon the earth, and big fool treats it as God’s own truth—and everything else I say, too! Here’s a bit of advice, and don’t be after saying I never taught you anything. If you want to lie to people, tell ’em something they want to believe, and they’ll swim right into your net.”

Back in her room, Sally lay awake for a long time, thinking about Mary and her letter. Peg’s information opened a whole new range of possibilities. Was she telling the truth when she said Mary never gave her the letter to post? Suppose Mary did entrust it to her, but she passed it on to Harcourt or Mrs. Fiske, or some enemy of Mary’s outside the refuge? Then again, perhaps she put the letter in the post-bag, but Harcourt or one of the matrons found it there. Yet if Peg had kept her part of the bargain and posted the letter, why would she pretend Mary never gave it to her? On the other hand, if she had done something hole-and-corner with it, why tell Sally about it at all?

Sally wrapped her pillow around her head, to shut out Red Jane’s snoring. Very well: suppose Peg was telling the truth, and Mary never gave her the letter. What did Mary do with it, then? How did it end up in the hands of the man from whom Sally had stolen it? Could Mary have found someone else to post it? Or had it been stolen from her before she had a chance to give it to Peg?

She had written the letter on Saturday evening. Maybe she found it hard to catch Peg alone on Sunday, with the inmates gathered in the chapel for most of the day. Perhaps she left the letter in her room, and someone found it there. Sally had learned that Mrs. Fiske was the matron on duty that Sunday, and she was especially zealous about searching the inmates’ rooms.

Sally squirmed and clutched the pillow more tightly over her ears. Now it was her own thoughts she was trying to shut out. Curse Mr. Kestrel and his puzzles! Once you started working on them, there was no getting any sleep.

If there were any justice, he was lying awake, too, as baffled and intrigued by this business as she was. She pictured him in bed, his body stripped of those impeccable clothes, his dark brown hair loose and disheveled. She sighed and stretched luxuriously, and was still smiling when she fell asleep.

CHAPTER
14

J
ulian kept his eyes open for an opportunity to approach Lady Gayheart. On Monday afternoon, he had the luck to see her carriage pull up outside a milliner’s in Bond Street. He contrived to stroll by just in time to hand her out, and on learning she was going to try on hats, declared she must have a gentleman’s opinion, and he was at her service.

Her dark blue eyes, so like her brother Charles’s, widened entrancingly. “Why, Mr. Kestrel, you can’t possibly be interested in ladies’ bonnets.”

“Not in a general way, no. But when they’re on ladies’ heads, they take on a singular fascination.”

“I’m sure you’ll find it deadly dull.”

“The only deadly feeling you’ve ever inspired in me is envy of Gayheart.”

She rapped him playfully with her sunshade. “You’re frightfully impertinent, and you mustn’t on any account come in with me.” She glided into the milliner’s. Her footman, stony-faced, held the door open for Julian to follow. He did.

An unctuous Frenchwoman greeted Lady Gayheart and showed her to a seat before a looking-glass. Assistants ran to and fro, fetching bonnets trimmed with lace and streamers, flowers and ostrich plumes. Lady Gayheart tried the effect of each, frowning prettily at the mirror and turning her head this way and that. Julian drew up a chair close to hers—to see the hats better, he explained—and embarked on the sort of stylized flirtation she would expect, and he could conduct almost in his sleep.

They soon passed to lamenting about how desolate London was at this time of year. It turned out that the Gayhearts, like Julian, had been invited to spend October at Braxton Castle, only to have the entertainment abruptly called off. “I think it’s simply horrid of Lord Braxton to promise everyone a party,” Lady Gayheart declared, “and then cry off at the last minute, just because his daughter must needs run away and marry a half-pay captain with side-whiskers. Now Gayheart’s got involved in some tiresome business matter—one of those South American mines everyone is so nutty upon—and he won’t leave London, and you’ll hardly believe it, but he won’t let me go away without him! Fancy! We shall make such quizzes of ourselves, living in each other’s pockets, for all the world as if we weren’t married at all!”

“You can’t expect me to regret your remaining here, so opportunely bereft of admirers.” He added offhandedly, “Town isn’t quite empty. Your brother is here, for one.”

“Oh, Charles.” She lost interest. “I daresay he’s afraid the duns will descend on him if he tries to leave London.”

“Is he at low tide? I had no idea.”

“I don’t know how bad it is. But he’s always having to ask Papa for money—which of course he gets, because Papa thinks nothing too good for Charles. You can’t think how Charles wheedles things out of him. It’s too bad, really it is! But he was always Papa’s favourite.”

“I never thought he lived particularly high.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, either, but of course a gentleman has all sorts of expenses he doesn’t tell his sister about. Heaven knows how he’ll manage if he’s such a noodle as to marry Cousin Ada.”

“Is that on the cards?”

“I can’t say. He and Ada have always paired off, and I believe he’s not best pleased to see that stuffy major dancing attendance on her. But I can hardly believe he’d commit such a
niaiserie
as to marry her. She’s very sweet, but she hasn’t two farthings to rub together, and she’s hopelessly without
ton
. Charles would be bored to distraction in a month. Not that Gayheart’s powers of fascination are anything out of the common, but at least he had an absolutely staggering fortune.”

She smiled charmingly, then turned back to the mirror. “This one is a bit showy, don’t you think?”

“I think it’s a very game little hat, to get itself noticed at all, with such a face underneath.”

“What a shocking great flirt you are. Why do you never come to see me?”

He felt himself getting into deep water and decided to swim for shore. Rising, he took up his hat and stick. “It’s been a herculean effort of self-denial, but you see, I hear you have a Pomeranian dog.”

“What, you’re not afraid of a little dog, surely?”

“No, but on the advice of my tailor, I’m allergic to anything that sheds.”

After a little more banter, he got away from her and took himself off to one of his clubs. A servant brought him a newspaper, still hot from being ironed to remove the creases. He screened himself behind it and thought over what he had learned from Lady Gayheart. It intrigued him that Avondale was such a favourite with his father. That gave him a possible hold over the ambitious Mr. Harcourt. Lord Carbury was Harcourt’s most exalted patron. What if Avondale offered to further Harcourt’s cause with him, or threatened to undermine it? How far would Harcourt go to keep in Carbury’s good graces?

Avondale’s money troubles were interesting, too, but their implications were less clear. He did not have a reputation for extravagance. In particular, he was not much given to high-stakes gambling, which was how so many young men got themselves smashed up. So where was his money going?

Finally, there was his attachment to his cousin Ada. What that could have to do with the Mary mystery, Julian had no idea. It was certainly a misfortune for Avondale to fall in love with a penniless girl, when he was hard up himself. If he really did mean to marry Miss Grantham, he would have to raise the wind somehow. And there was nothing like urgent financial need for driving a man to desperate measures.

Sally straightened up from scrubbing the floor and listened intently. Hearing nothing, she tiptoed over to the landing and peered through the banisters. Sure enough, no one was approaching from up- or downstairs.

It was the ideal moment. Many of the inmates were out for their daily walk around the back garden. Harcourt was shut up in his office. Mrs. Jessop, who was on duty again today, was the least vigilant of the matrons. She was a tall, officious woman with fat cheeks and red hands, who would rather stand about lecturing the inmates than roam the refuge hunting out misconduct.

Sally crossed the hall to the matrons’ closet. It was no more than six feet wide, sandwiched between Harcourt’s office and the room where the matron on duty slept. She opened the door and peered in. It would have been safer to go in and shut the door after her, but then she would have been left in darkness.

She scanned the shelves, which were filled with china and linen, candles, soap, and polish. Several bottles stood on a high shelf. She took one down and sounded out the writing on the label: IPECACUANHA. Grimacing, she put it back.

The bottle beside it was the one she wanted. SUMMERSON’S STRENGTHENING ELIXIR, the label proclaimed, and there was the familiar smiling sun in the upper right-hand corner. She had seen that sun often enough: it beamed from shop windows, leaflets, pasteboard signs.

The bottle was still half full. Drawing the cork, she took from her pocket a scrap of black bread she had saved from breakfast. She quickly soaked the bread in the thick, purplish syrup, corked the bottle, and put it back. Wrapping the bread in her handkerchief, she shut the closet door and raced back to her brush and soap-suds.

She was pleased. Not only had she succeeded in getting a sample of the cordial, she had made a useful discovery. From the matrons’ closet, you could hear everything that went on next door in Harcourt’s office. Not that there was anything worth listening to—just Wax-face walking back and forth and coughing once or twice. But another day she might have a reason to eavesdrop, and now she knew just how.

The dinner bell rang. Sally finished her work and scampered down to the refectory. After the meal, she stole out into the back garden of the office house. Here, all but hidden in a clump of shrubs, she had left an upended sieve, weighed down by a rock on either side.

“How you doing, Barney?” she whispered.

A plaintive squeaking came from under the sieve.

“I knows how you feels. I don’t like being cooped up, neither.” She looked around to make sure she was not observed, then unfolded her handkerchief and took out the morsel of bread. “I brought you some grub. Your belly must be thinking your throat’s cut by now.”

She slid the bread under the sieve, taking care not to let the mouse escape. Then she bent down, peering ruefully through the mesh. Barney was sniffing the bread, his whiskers all a-quiver. “It ain’t my fault,” she appealed to him. “I got to find out if the cordial’s hocussed, and you’re the only one as can help me. So remember, if you has to croak, it’s in a good cause.”

She did not see her prisoner again till after supper that night, when she contrived to sneak out to the garden with a candle. She found the bread nearly gone, and Barney capering about inside the sieve, as merry as a cricket.

“Nothing rum about that cordial, anyhow!” she whispered “Thanks, Barney, you been a trump. You can pike off now.” She lifted the sieve, and the mouse streaked off into the garden.

At first her discovery seemed momentous. If the
bottle
of cordial was not poisoned, then the
dose
Mary took must have been. Since Mrs. Fiske had poured it out, it must have been she who had hocussed it. But after a little thought, Sally realized the matter was not so simple. Summerson’s Strengthening Elixir was widely available, and all the bottles looked alike. What was to stop the murderer from poisoning the bottle on Tuesday, then replacing it with an identical, harmless bottle next day, after Mary was found dead?