The Anatomist's Wife

by Anna Lee Huber

  “Then I guess we had better help her remember,” I said.

  He nodded and rapped on the door to Faye and Celeste’s room.

  “Entrer,” we heard Faye’s heavily accented voice say through the wood.

  The little maid stood next to the window, looking out on the garden. When she turned toward us, I was glad to see she was more composed than the last time we visited her. Her eyes were still rimmed in red, but her appearance was neat and tidy.

  “Mon dieu!” she gasped and pressed a hand to her chest. “C’était rapide.”

  “Mrs. MacLean met us in the hall,” Gage explained. “She said you allowed Lady Stratford’s maid to borrow one of your aprons.”

  “Oui. Celeste . . . um . . .” The maid seemed to struggle switching back to English. “She is Lady Stratford’s maid. She say her apron missing and borrow mine.”

  “She also shares this room with you?” I peered around Gage.

  “Oui.”

  “When did she borrow the apron?” Gage queried.

  Faye’s wide eyes flicked back and forth between us in growing alarm, and I wondered if her reaction had more to do with her shaky grasp of English or the nervous energy suddenly radiating off of Gage. “Mmm . . . zee day before zee last day.”

  “Two days ago?”

  “Mmm . . . oui.” She nodded.

  Which would have made it the day after Lady Godwin’s murder.

  “Did she say how it might have gone missing?”

  Her brow furrowed. “No. It just . . . missing.” She shrugged.

  I stepped back to lean against the wall as he asked Faye if she would like to sit. The maid shook her head no, and clasped her hands in front of her.

  I glanced around at the sparseness of the room. As a rule, servants’ quarters were normally rather bare and austere, particularly when two visiting servants occupied the room. There were two small beds, barely larger than cots, a small dresser, and a wardrobe. The floor boasted only a worn, thin rug, probably saved from the rubbish bin after it was deemed unusable in the main part of the castle. No curtains or paintings covered the thick stone walls, just a wooden cross hung in the middle of the wall opposite the two beds, so that the maids could reflect on it while they lay in bed, I supposed.

  “Was Lord Stratford one of Lady Godwin’s lovers?” Gage asked lightly, propping his foot up on the frame of the bed.

  Faye seemed to take a long time considering her answer, but I knew she must have understood the question. Gage glanced at me, sharing my curiosity over the maid’s hesitation.

  Finally the girl sighed and dropped her eyes. “Oui.”

  “Why didn’t you want to tell us?”

  “Because Lady Stratford so nice to me. She her ladyship’s friend. But my lady say Lady Stratford sleep with my lord, so she sleep with hers,” the maid stated and pointed her nose into the air, defending her employer’s reprehensible behavior to the last.

  “Lady Stratford bedded Lord Godwin?” Gage asked doubtfully.

  “Oui,” Faye nodded her head once decisively.

  “All right. Well, do you know when Lady Godwin and Lord Stratford conducted their liaison?”

  The maid tipped her head to the side and closed one eye. “Mmm . . . Lent.”

  “Lent?” Gage seemed to contemplate this.

  “The six weeks between Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday,” I reminded him.

  He scowled at me. “I know what Lent is.”

  “It normally falls within March,” I added, wondering if this was his issue.

  “Thank you,” he snapped before turning back toward the maid who was watching our quarrel with great interest. “Could Lord Stratford have been the father of her child?” he asked after taking a calming breath.

  Faye shook her head. “No.”

  This was not the answer either Gage or I expected. “Why not?” he pressed.

  “He is . . .” the maid waved her hand in the air as if searching for the word “. . . stérile.”

  “Sterile? You mean he can’t have children.”

  “Oui. Many people know zis.”

  Something nagged at me in the back of my brain, something important. I furrowed my brow, trying to remember.

  Gage turned to me and murmured. “I bet you five hundred pounds he’s not.”

  “And how exactly are you going to prove that?” I asked him crossly.

  “Why don’t you take the bet and wait and see?”

  “I don’t have five hundred pounds.”

  He shrugged. “My loss.”

  We looked up to find Faye scrutinizing us again, and then her face cleared. “Ah. You are lovers,” she stated as if she’d just solved a great mystery.

  “No!” We both exclaimed.

  I scowled at Gage’s reaction. Just because I was horrified by the thought did not mean he should be. I barely restrained myself from asking him what was wrong with the idea of having me for a lover. But such a question would imply that I cared. And I didn’t.

  I turned away, wanting to escape this awkward situation, when the door opened and in walked Celeste. She seemed fidgety and uncertain, though in all fairness, the expression on our faces was not exactly welcoming.

  “Mrs. MacLean said ya wanted ta see me?” she asked, fisting her hands in her skirt.

  “Yes.” Gage cleared his throat. “Close the door and come in.”

  She turned around to shut the door softly and then took two short steps into the room before stopping. Her posture was as stiff as a statue, albeit an unstable one. The maid had titian hair and a pink complexion. She looked more like an apple-cheeked dairy maid than a coldhearted killer—a girl who was more likely to be talked into a roll in the hay with a handsome stranger than be convinced to help her employer commit murder.

  “How long have you worked for Lady Stratford?” Gage asked gently, trying to put the woman at ease.

  “Since a’fore her debut,” she replied in a shaky voice. “I were her sister’s maid a’fore that, but when Lady Alice married, she decided she wanted a different maid. A’fore that I was but an upstairs maid.”

  Gage perked up and seemed pleased to discover Celeste was talkative. “You must be grateful her ladyship kept you for her lady’s maid when she wed?”

  “That I am. Lady Alice thought me clumsy, but Lady Charlotte says she’s happy to have me. ’Sides, she’s much prettier than her older sister. And she’s a countess now, and a great lady.” Celeste raised her chin in pride, a tight smile stretching her lips.

  “We’ve been told she was a good friend of Lady Godwin’s.”

  Celeste’s smile fell, and she looked across the room at Faye. “She was. Took her ladyship’s death right hard. ’Specially considerin’ . . .” She shrugged, leaving us to wonder what she had not said.

  “Especially considering what?” I asked.

  The maid chewed her lip and glanced back and forth between me and Gage. “I s’pose ya know by now that Lady Godwin was expectin’.” I nodded. “Well, her ladyship didn’t want the babe. Least, that’s what she told my lady.” Her eyes flicked to Faye, who did not dispute this assertion. “My lady convinced her to give the babe to a family near Glasgow so that my lady could visit the babe whenever she stayed with her great-aunt.”

  Gage folded his arms across his chest and tilted his head. “She did that, even knowing the child’s father was Lord Stratford?”

  Celeste’s eyes widened. “Yes. Even knowin’ that.” She rocked back on her heels. “Maybe ’specially ’cause of that.”

  A frown puckered Faye’s brow, as if she was confused by this answer and wasn’t certain if she should say something. Gage shifted and squared his body so that he could focus solely on Celeste. I knew the conversation w
as about to become even more serious.

  “Can you tell me where you were the evening of Lady Godwin’s murder?”

  The maid’s body froze, and her hands tightened in her skirt. “I was tendin’ my lady. She gets megrims. ’Specially when his lordship is not behavin’ himself,” she added defiantly. “Her ladyship retired after dinner, and I stayed with her. We didn’t even ’ear ’bout the murder ’til the next mornin’.”

  “Did anyone see you run errands for Lady Stratford that evening? Can anyone vouch for you?” Gage pressed.

  “Not after her ladyship called me ’way from the dinner table. I slept in her dressing room case she needed me.”

  “Do you do this often?”

  “Yes. As I says, she gets megrims, and sometimes they be right terrible.” The maid sounded frank and confident, but her body language told a different story. Her hands continued to twist in the fabric of her skirt, and she rocked back on her heels several more times. Was she always this fidgety? I wondered whether to trust her verbal or physical cues.

  Gage crossed the room to stand over Celeste, intimidating her with his height. She shrank away from him. “Did you borrow an apron from Faye two days ago?”

  Celeste’s eyes flicked to Faye and back to him again in confusion. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I had to wash mine, and m’spare was missin’,” Celeste replied cautiously.

  “Did you report this to Mrs. MacLean?” Gage asked, pacing around her.

  “No.” She watched dazedly as he passed behind her. “I didn’t think I needed ta.”

  “Why?”

  “I figured it would turn up. It didn’t seem like somethin’ somebody would go ’bout stealin’. I got more at her ladyship’s house in London.”

  “I see. Was there anything distinctive about it?”

  “Uh . . . no. Just a white apron.” By now I was getting dizzy watching Gage circle around the woman, and she looked a bit frantic. “Have you found it then? Is that what this is all ’bout?”

  “We have,” he admitted.

  “Where is it? Did someone have it?”

  “Where is not as important as how we found it, and how it appeared when we did.”

  Celeste looked positively flummoxed by his clever twisting of words. “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do,” he replied, halting in front of her. “Can you tell me whether Lady Stratford embroiders?”

  She blinked up at him, clearly thrown by the change of topic. “Y-yes. Yes, she does.”

  “And what does she embroider?”

  “Uh . . . samplers, and blankets, and shawls, and things. Oh, and once she stitched yellow roses onto a pair of gloves. They were right pretty.”

  My stomach dipped.

  “She embroiders shawls?” Gage confirmed, and the maid nodded her head. “Do you know if she stitched pink roses along the border of an ivory silk stole?”

  Celeste’s eyes widened. “Why, yes. It happens to be one of her favorites. Loves to wear it with her pink satin.”

  His eyes met mine across the room. “Do you know what her embroidery scissors look like?” he asked.

  She looked down and licked her lips, perhaps just realizing that his questions were not so innocent. “Um. I believe they have vines and flowers and things on ’em.”

  Gage reached into his pocket. “Like this?” He held up the pair of embroidery scissors we had found in the maze. They had been cleaned and the blood removed.

  Celeste seemed to cower from Gage. “Y-yes.”

  “Are these her ladyship’s scissors?”

  Her eyes darted down to them and then back to his eyes. She licked her lips again. “Well, they look very like ’em. I . . . I don’t know if that’s her pair exactly.”

  I heard Faye gasp behind me and then release a string of curses in French. “You murderer! Vous le cochon dégoûtant!” I moved forward to intercept her before she could lunge at Celeste. “Je découperai votre coeur!”

  “I’m not a murderer,” Celeste protested. Her voice rose in panic as if she only now comprehended exactly what all of this questioning was about. “I’m not a murderer. I never touched Lady Godwin. I was with my lady.”

  “Meurtrière! Meurtrière!” Her anger quickly spent, I managed to coax Faye to lie down on her bed, where she curled into herself and began to sob.

  I glanced at Gage, who was taking all of this in with a look of careful indifference. I couldn’t manage such cold composure. Not while my heart raced and my ears still rang with Faye’s cries. Murderess! Murderess!

  “Lady Darby,” Gage said coolly. “Please take Celeste out into the hallway and wait for me there.”

  “I’ve done nothin’ wrong!” Celeste shouted at him.

  “Then you’ll have no problem with my searching your things.”

  “Go right ahead. But I’m not leavin’.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  He looked at me. “All right. But stay over by the door with Lady Darby.”

  Gage began rifling through her belongings, of which, fortunately, there were few. He opened the drawers of the dresser and slammed them shut again when he found nothing. Then he flipped through the garments in the wardrobe and searched the bedding on Celeste’s tiny cot.

  “See. Nothin’,” the maid declared belligerently.

  I sighed. Such a cheeky tongue was only going to anger Mr. Gage.

  He glared at her. “We’ve already found more than enough. This was simply a formality to make certain you haven’t any more damning evidence.”

  “A missin’ apron and my lady’s embroidery scissors don’t mean anythin’.”

  “They do when they’re found covered in blood.”

  Celeste gasped while across the room Faye whimpered. Even I cringed at the bluntness of his words.

  “That’s not true! It can’t be!” Celeste said. “I haven’t done anythin’.”

  “You’re coming with us,” Gage declared, reaching out to take hold of her arm.

  She squirmed against his hold, and he clamped down on her upper arm even harder. “But wait! I . . . I have to fix her ladyship her tonic.” Her voice was desperate and her eyes wild. “She needs it. I’m already late.”

  Something in my memory clicked into place, and I halted Gage before he could drag her out the door. “What tonic?” I questioned her. “What kind?”

  “Her . . . her chasteberry tonic. She takes it every afternoon. Please, m’lady,” she pleaded. Tears sprang to her eyes, and her lip wobbled. “I . . . I haven’t done anythin’.”

  I looked up at Gage. “Do you know what chasteberry tonic is used for?”

  He did not shake his head, but I could tell he was aggravated by the question, believing it to be irrelevant. Like most males, he was clueless as to the tonic’s medicinal properties.

  “I think you should,” I told him gravely.

  His gaze sharpened. “Let me place this maid under Mrs. MacLean’s supervision. And then we’ll talk.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I rapped twice on the parlor door to the Stratfords’ suite, and when no one answered, rapped twice more. There was only silence inside the chamber. Celeste was sequestered in the housekeeper’s quarters, and though I wasn’t certain where Lord Stratford and his valet were, I strongly suspected Lady Stratford was alone in the suite. At least, I hoped so. It would make all of this easier.

  Twisting my hands in my skirts, I glanced up and down the corridor before cautiously opening the door and peering inside. The sun-filled chamber sat empty, save for the furnishings, but still I hesitated at the threshold, troubled by what I might discover within. Afraid I might find that a monster can lurk behind even the most fragile facade.

  It se
emed absurd that I was not relieved by the information Celeste had given us. After all, this was what I had wanted—to catch the murderer and remove suspicion once and for all from myself—but I simply couldn’t feel pleased with such a result. Not knowing that a woman like Lady Stratford could be so evil. It sent spiders crawling up and down my spine.

  I don’t know what I had been expecting. Someone murdered Lady Godwin and her child, and though no one at the house party had struck me as a probable suspect, from the beginning, I had been well aware that the likely culprit was a fellow guest. But Lady Stratford? Especially knowing what I did about her health. That was almost beyond my comprehension. It was certainly beyond my understanding.

  I shook my head, saddened and confused, and sickened by the knowledge of what I must do. Glancing behind me once more, I stepped into the room and closed it softly behind me. I wished Gage was with me. No matter what he said about Lady Stratford being more comfortable speaking with a woman, I would be more comfortable with him by my side. I felt certain he would be better at coaxing her to talk than I, but he insisted that I interrogate her on the matter of the chasteberry tonic while he retrieved the embroidered shawl from the chapel cellar and located Philip and Lord Stratford. I knew the only alternative was for me to revisit the cellar and collect the shawl, and I had absolutely no intention of ever returning to that foul, makeshift crypt. So in the end, my only option was to confront Lady Stratford alone.

  I wasn’t afraid that the countess would harm me, and, in any case, Gage and the others would be joining us shortly. However, I was still distressed by the task set before me. My hands shook as I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. I surveyed the parlor. Lady Stratford’s embroidery hoop lay discarded on the blue settee where she had let it drop when she stormed out earlier. It sat with her work, face up, and I realized, with a jolt, that she was stitching a picture of a rocking horse. For whom? Lady Godwin’s baby? Celeste told us Lady Stratford had arranged for the adoption of Lady Godwin’s child and planned to visit the little girl. Would a woman do such a thing if she planned to murder the mother and child?