Lady Julia Grey Bundle

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  Aquinas brought Simon's luncheon tray while I prodded the skirting boards outside his room. They proved sound, and Aquinas joined me shortly to finish our search. To my relief, my own rooms turned up nothing. It was irrational, really, I knew that there was nothing there. But it made me feel immeasurably better, and I decided that I would tell Brisbane I had enlisted Aquinas to act as an impartial observer during my search of my own things. He would not believe it for a minute, but I thought it sounded very professional.

  The public rooms on the main floor took very little time. They had been furnished by Edward in his favorite Empire style—all cleanly designed and uncluttered. No hiding places among all those bare legs and stripped floors. That left only the belowstairs—kitchens, offices and the private rooms I had not yet searched. The kitchens were pristine, with perfectly ordered utensils and graduated copper pots ranged on hooks. There was not a fork out of place, and I was not surprised. Cook was more ferocious than any battlefield general; no one would have dared leave her kitchen until every last saucer was stowed in its place.

  The laundry was marginally less tidy. It was under Cook's nominal authority, but it was Magda's actual responsibility. She had left a cake of soap melting in a puddle of water and a brass can of water standing nearly in the doorway, so awkwardly placed that I nearly fell over it. I muttered, shoving it aside with my foot. The rest of the room yielded nothing, no cupboards or trunks where something suspicious might be lurking. There was only the bucket under the window where I had left Val's shirt several nights before. I moved toward it, surprised to find the water again reddened, as if someone had stuffed something bloody into it.

  And they had, I realized, peering into the bucket. I asked Aquinas for a stick and he found me a bit of long, thin pipe that Magda used to stir the boiler. I levered it under the water and heaved. A lump of sodden linen tumbled to the floor with a splash.

  Aquinas was on top of it before I could stop him. He was not so fastidious as I. He unfolded the dripping garment with his hands. It was a man's shirt, as I had known it would be, stained streakily across the cuffs with blood. There was a handkerchief this time as well—a woman's, from the look of the pansies embroidered garishly in the corner.

  I stared at the bloody, soaking mess, wondering how I could have been stupid enough to believe Val's story about a fight at the opera. He was a medical student, not permitted to practice. It was apparent that he had found somewhere to continue his studies, somewhere he could not speak of, somewhere that would provide him access to people who were profoundly in need of his attentions, I thought as I fingered the handkerchief. It was slashed in places, the edges of the cheap cotton curling back on themselves like the petals of a gruesome flower.

  I shoved the handkerchief back into the shirt and rolled the bundle back into the gory bucket.

  "This has nothing to do with what we are about. I will deal with it myself," I told Aquinas firmly.

  He said nothing but simply threw fresh water onto the pinkened puddle and took up a mop, swabbing at it until it was gone.

  But it lingered in our minds, and I knew we were both thinking of it as we made our way to Cook's room. There the mood lightened. We both smiled at her harmless indulgence in cherry brandy and fashion magazines. But even as we neatly tucked her bottles back under the bed, I found myself wondering about Magda. As the laundress, she could hardly have overlooked Val's bloody shirts. I had rinsed the first bloody one clean for him, but I had little doubt now that there had been others. He had not bothered to rinse this one, and yet he had to know she would see it. Did he pay for her silence? This possibility worried me. Val never had much money. Father's allowance was generous, but Val was, too, always giving money to causes he deemed worthy and friends who were not. I found myself rushing to search Magda's room. I felt certain that I would find something there that tied her to my brother, and I was very much afraid of what that might be.

  But even I never expected that it would be arsenic.

  THE TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

  My duty pricks me on to utter that Which else no worldly good should draw from me.

  —William Shakespeare

  The Two Gentlemen of Verona

  Of course I was not certain that it was arsenic when I found it. I was not even certain that it was anything of importance. But I suspected.And when I looked at the little box of grey powder, I felt sick. I had wanted so badly to give Magda a chance. Aunt Hermia had warned against it. She had never been as warm in her acceptance of Gypsies as Father had, and she was eloquent on the folly of bringing one into the house.

  "You won't have a stick of furniture left by the time she's done with you," she had warned me. "She'll sell it all from under you. And you'll not get a proper day's work from her, either." Privately, I rather agreed with Aunt Hermia. I knew Magda too well to expect she would settle easily to life inside four walls. I had a somewhat higher opinion of her honesty, and indeed in the time with us nothing more significant than a teaspoon had gone missing. But Magda had not fit in happily with the staff, preferring to keep to herself, occasionally engaging in violent, shrieking quarrels with one of the maids, which usually ended with the maid stalking off with a stellar reference and a handsome pay packet from me, and another trip to the domestic agency for Aquinas.

  But I could not turn her out, any more than I could explain to Aunt Hermia why I had taken her in. Why Magda had turned to me in her time of trouble, rather than Father, or someone else with the authority to help her, I could not imagine. She had, though, and I could no more abandon her than I could neglect any other responsibility. Father may have been a bit slapdash in the raising of his children, but he managed to instill in us the essentials, and duty was one of them. We were charged with taking care of those to whom our money and our blood made us superior, and it was an obligation we neglected at our peril. When Magda had come to me, cast out and penniless, I had not wanted to give her a place at Grey House, but I had no choice in the matter. She was in need and had asked for my help.

  I had given her cold refuge, I thought as I looked around the little room. It was bare as an anchorite's cell, and I felt a stab of anger, not at Magda, but at myself. She was like Morag, a creature without a home, but I had given her little more than four walls to call her own. The room was uncarpeted, furnished only with a narrow bed and a single hard chair. Her meager possessions were divided between a carpetbag and a discarded, crumbling old hat box. There was not even a proper curtain at the window. I looked at those four dull grey walls and the cold stone floor and the cheerless window, and I realized then what a prison it must have seemed to her, a Gypsy woman with rolling moors and tumbling rivers in her blood. She had roamed freely with her people before coming to me, winding from one corner of the kingdom to another. From Kentish summers making hay to the foggy winter London campgrounds, she had spent her entire life out in the fresh air, sleeping in a low tent, and later a painted caravan. Now she was confined to pavements and coal dust, as unnatural a being as the raven locked in Val's room.

  I pocketed the box and turned to Aquinas.

  "There is nothing else here. I do not think we need search Diggory's quarters. He has no access to the house."

  Aquinas nodded solemnly. "I think there is more at hand here than anonymous notes, my lady," he ventured, without a hint of reproach.

  "Yes," I said. I hesitated, then squared my shoulders. I had trusted Aquinas this far. It seemed pointless and insulting not to tell him the rest. "Mr. Brisbane suspects, as do I, that Sir Edward may have died by poison."

  "I thought as much," he said blandly.

  I blinked like a hare. "I beg your pardon?"

  "In Italy such things are more common, even in France it is so. It is not unheard of for an unhappy wife or husband to remove the cause of their sorrow. Or for a young nephew to help a rich and elderly uncle along to his grave for the sake of his inheritance. And it is not impossible that a man with poor health would take his own life rather than linger on in pain.
"

  I stared at him, remembering suddenly what Simon had told me about his own intentions. Why had it never occurred to me that Edward might have done the same?

  But I patted the tiny box of mortality in my pocket and I knew better. Edward had been genuinely terrified of the anonymous notes, according to Brisbane. A man bent on self-destruction would not have been so troubled by them. Besides, if Edward had engineered his own death, he would not have left the means secreted away in some innocent person's room to cast suspicion where it did not belong.

  "I shall have to deliver this to Mr. Brisbane. I think sooner rather than later."

  Aquinas withdrew, leaving me alone in Magda's room. I sat for a long moment, trying to put things together in my mind, but nothing seemed to fit. Every thought I had seemed to end with a question mark. What was Val about and how much did Magda know of it? Did she have cause to harm Edward? And would she? Had she?

  I shook myself finally and prepared to call upon Brisbane. I had questions, to be sure. And perhaps he had answers.

  * * *

  I should have thought that I would have felt rather smug handing over my little box. Instead I felt only miserable. I was implicating a woman I had known since childhood, a woman I trusted, after a fashion. I was putting her fate into the hands of a man I knew very little about. I still did not know the cause of his terrible headaches, but knowing the cures he had sampled did not reassure me. Everyone I knew had taken opium in some form, but I had never met anyone who had dosed themselves with absinthe. It had left me wildly curious and a little wary. Of course, this was largely due to the fact that I had recently sat up late, reading the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by guttering lamplight. I did not seriously believe that Brisbane had somehow caused his own suffering through scientific experiments gone horribly wrong, but it was enough to make me look at him closely as he surveyed the contents of the little box.

  Suddenly, he surged up out of his seat. He went to the long table under the shuttered windows where his scientific equipment was arrayed. I followed, watching as he spooned a small sample of the powder into a little crucible. He lit it and a strong, garlicky aroma filled the air.

  He turned to me, his eyes lambent with a sort of savage satisfaction.

  "I shall send it along to Mordecai to be fully analyzed, but this test indicates arsenic."

  I felt my heart sink a little at the words. There were plenty of good reasons for possessing arsenic, but Magda had none of them. I knew she did not use it for cosmetic purposes, nor did she kill rats. Brisbane, of course, was sensing my thoughts.

  "There is only one reason to have arsenic in this quantity and in this concentration," he said flatly. "She has poisoned someone, or at least intended to."

  "You do not know that," I argued feebly. "Doctor Bent has not even finished his report on what may have induced the symptoms Edward suffered."

  The black eyes narrowed unflinchingly. "Then can you explain why a Gypsy laundress in your employ keeps enough arsenic to fell a battalion tucked in her spare petticoat?"

  "You do not know that is arsenic!" I returned, angry. I do not know why I was enraged, only that I was. He was so eager to believe the worst of her. Perhaps I was angry with myself because I could think of no proper defense for her. Or perhaps I was angry with him for demanding one.

  Brisbane folded his arms over his chest, his shirtsleeves brilliant white against the dark wool of his waistcoat. I had called without sending ahead—rather foolhardy in light of how I found him the last time I did such a thing—and found him reading quietly by the fire. He had seemed pleased enough to see me, and delighted when I told him what I had brought. But I had felt every inch a traitor.

  "My lady, I know what that is, even if you do not. I will send it to Mordecai simply to confirm my own analysis. Now, sit down and tell me everything you know about Magda."

  Miserable and defeated, I did as I was bid. He rang for tea and I took a cup and a biscuit from Monk simply for something to do with my hands. Monk was careful not to make eye contact with me, and I wondered if he regretted the intimacies he had shared during my last call. He left quickly, and Brisbane did not wait for me to finish my tea before launching into his interrogation.

  "How long have you known Magda?" The notebook was on the table at his side, but he did not open it.

  "All my life, I think. I told you that Father permits the Gypsies to camp on his land in Sussex. Magda's people have been coming there since my father was a boy."

  "And has she always gotten on well with your family?"

  "Oh, yes. Father would pay her to tell fortunes at the harvest ball. He always bought horses from her brothers and told the tenants to buy the clothes-pegs and harnesses they made."

  Brisbane was thoughtful. There was an expression, almost of distaste on his face, as if he did not like peering too closely into their transient lives. I remembered suddenly the ragged bit of conversation I had overheard from the laundry room, and my certainty that it was Magda taunting Brisbane.

  "Who is Mariah Young?" I asked.

  His face did not change, at least not in any way I could define. It seemed to go flat, though, as if his features were no longer flesh and blood, but paper and ink, technically correct, but utterly devoid of animation. He sipped at his tea and then looked at me, his eyes strangely hooded. I had never seen quite that expression in them before, although his face betrayed no emotion whatsoever.

  "I thought I heard someone crashing about. What is down there? The laundry?"

  I nodded, my hands a little clammy. I patted them surreptitiously on my napkin.

  "Mariah Young is my business," he said evenly. "And she has no bearing on this case."

  "But you were there, talking to Magda—"

  He did something then, something I had not seen him do before. He put down his teacup and brought out a little wooden box. From it he took a slim, very dark cigar. He lit it in an unhurried fashion, taking a few deep draws to make certain it was smoldering properly. He had not asked my permission, but the tobacco had a sweet, musky smell that was actually quite appealing.

  "Spanish," he said with a thin smile. "I find they help me think. Mariah Young," he said, his tone thoughtful. He was silent a moment, as if weighing within himself how much he could or should reveal. I sat very still, trying to look more trustworthy than curious, but I did not deceive him. He simply shook his head and said, "I can only tell you that the conversation between Magda and myself has no bearing on this case except in one respect." He blew a soft blue cloud of smoke over his head. "I think that your laundress might very well be capable of blackmail. And if that is so, it is a short step to murder, don't you think?"

  "And that is all you are going to say on the matter?" I demanded.

  "That is all." The words were softly spoken, but underpinned with iron, and I did not doubt he meant them. I would learn nothing from approaching him directly. I decided to leave it—for now. But I made up my mind that before I was done with Brisbane, I would know the full story of Mariah Young.

  "How does a Gypsy teller of fortunes come to be employed as a common laundress?" he asked, taking back the reins of the conversation.

  "Her people were encamped at Bellmont Abbey when she got into some sort of trouble. She became unclean, according to their laws. You see, the Gypsies believe—"

  "I am familiar with the mythology," he said dryly. Of course he was. I had deduced from my conversations with Monk and Fleur that Brisbane was extremely well traveled. Doubtless he had encountered many wanderers in his own journeys. Likely that accounted for his antipathy toward them.

  "Yes, well, Magda was deemed unclean for a period of a year or two, I am not certain of the precise rules. It meant that she could not travel with them and would probably have starved. She came to me and I told her she could work for me, here in town. She has only just now been allowed to visit her brothers. They are encamped in London at the moment, and I think she may rejoin them soon."

  Brisbane sat and
puffed, staring at a point some inches above my head. I might have been a bowl of fruit for all the attention he paid to me.

  "If you did not want a biscuit, you did not have to take one to be polite," he said finally.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  He gestured with the glowing tip of the cigar. "You have crumbled that biscuit to bits. You had only to decline."

  I looked at the wrecked remains of the little pastry mounded on the plate. I put it down hastily.

  "Did Magda have any reason to bear a grudge against Sir Edward?"

  "Absolutely not. If Edward had objected to her employment, she would never have been given a post at Grey House."

  "And yet she brought poison into that house," he mused. There was another interval punctuated only by the soft exhalation of his breath. I sat quietly, mentally redecorating the room. It was quite nicely proportioned with good moldings, but I thought the chairs were a little dark, a little heavy for my taste. And the green of the curtains was entirely too grey.

  I had just moved on to the artwork, replacing his stark sketch of an Eastern mosque with my own rather good copy of Jupiter and Io when he spoke.

  "Why was she found to be unclean?"

  I began to toy with my rings. "It is really quite distasteful, Brisbane. It has no bearing on the investigation, I am certain of that."

  "But I am not," he rejoined with a smile.

  I fumed a little, but I told him. "It has something to do with the dead. She touched a dead person. Apparently that violates their greatest taboo."