The Ninth Daughter

“We’ll talk of it in the morning,” Malvern repeated, as Tamar showed signs of dissolving into hysterical tears. “Jeffrey, take your sister to her room. Oonaugh, if you’d be so good as to stay?”

“Papa, don’t believe her! Please don’t believe her! When I found she was forging those letters from Jeffrey—”

“I never!” protested the maid, as Abigail closed the study door behind Jeffrey and Tamar.

“Of course you never forged these things, girl,” said Malvern harshly. “Don’t you think I know you can barely write your own name?” From the litter on the table he picked up a handful of the spicier billets-doux Scipio had told her of, addressed to Tamar by a variety of young gentlemen and containing nothing more incriminating than some of the worst sonnets Abigail had ever read. “And I take it you have no idea how these came into my daughter’s possession either?”

“Sorr, I can explain—”

“I’m sure you can,” he agreed. “I know my daughter is extremely fond of you, girl, and since I can say with certainty that Miss Tamar is going to be both bored and unhappy over the next several months, I would hesitate to add to her distress by obliging her to train a new servant. Do I make myself clear?”

The girl whispered, “Yes, sorr. But I never forged nuthin’, nor told her to keep no letters—”

“It’s just a story my daughter made up?”

“Yes, sorr.”

“Like other stories she makes up?” His face was mottled crimson with anger, but he kept his voice quiet, more terrifying than a shout.

“Yes, sorr. She—”

“I’m going to ask you to do a favor for me, Oonaugh.” He reached into the pocket of his sober gray vest. “Several favors, in fact. I trust you know our conversation is not to be shared with Miss Tamar?”

“Yes, sorr. I mean, no, sorr.”

He pitched a coin onto the desk. The maid identified its size and weight in an instant and her black eyes widened. “For a year now I’ve been paying your wages. I want you to remember, from now on, that you are working for me. You tell my daughter that you forgive her for lying about you—”

Oonaugh’s mouth popped open in protest.

“—and whatever she tells me, I expect you to come to me with the truth. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sorr.”

“Now you may go.”

The girl’s short little fingers nipped up the coin, and she bobbed a curtsey. As she turned to go, Abigail said, “Just a moment, please. Mr. Malvern?”

He glanced at her, raised one heavy brow, tufted like a bobcat’s.

“May I have a word with the girl, please?”

He nodded. “As many as you like. You may cut off her hair and knit stockings out of it—”

Oonaugh clutched at her cap in alarm.

“Mistress Oonaugh,” said Abigail. “What is your surname?”

“Connelley, m’am.”

“Miss Connelley. Are you acquainted with the maid who worked for Perdita Pentyre?”

“Oh, that was a horror, m’am! I’ve heard she was—”

“I know what you’ve heard,” said Abigail grimly. “Do you know her?”

“We’ve spoke at parties. Down the rooms, you know, when the quality are all up flirtin’ an’ playin’ cards an’ carryin’ on. Thinks the sun shines out her backside, she does, the consayted Frog, but I knows her to speak to.”

“Would you be so kind as to carry a note to her for me? I should very much like to speak with her.” The handmaid of Jezebel, that was privy to all her ways . . .

Malvern brought another coin from his pocket, and held it up for Oonaugh to see. “Please tell Miss—”

“Droux, sorr. Lisette Droux.”

“Please tell Miss Droux that both Mrs. Adams and I understand how valuable her time is.” There was silence, broken only by the creak of a manservant’s feet in the hall, and the scratching of Abigail’s quill as she penned a hasty note. “Does she read English?”

“I dunno, sorr.” Oonaugh looked puzzled by the question. “I shouldn’t think so, if she’s French.”

“Then perhaps you could ask her, if she would meet Mrs. Adams here at her earliest convenience?”

“That I’ll do, sorr. You can depend on me.”

“Good.” He laid the second coin on the table. “You may go.” As the door shut behind Oonaugh, he added quietly, “Shall I call Scipio in and have him make more coffee, Mrs. Adams? You look quite exhausted.”

She could hear the half hour striking on Faneuil Hall, and tried to recall which hour had passed. She felt cold, weary to death, and a little ill. Surely it hadn’t been only that morning that she’d started reading through Rebecca’s letters of the summer before last, before sallying forth to the market to question Queenie.

“Thank you, sir, no. Thank you,” she said again, as he came around to her, to hand her up from her chair. “More than I can say.” The thick Spanish dollar he’d held up to Miss Connelley would buy, she guessed, any amount of information from Mlle Lisette Droux, and very quickly, if she knew anything of the cupidity of servants— particularly servants who might be facing unemployment in a foreign city.

He rang the bell nevertheless. Scipio appeared, having evidently disregarded his master’s orders to take himself off to bed. “Have Ulee harness the chaise, to take Mrs. Adams home. I trust,” he added, as the butler turned to obey, “that I have no need to say that I rely on your discretion, about all things concerning the events of this night, Scipio?”

The servant bowed. “You have no need, sir.”

“So Mrs. Adams tells me. If I have not said so before,” he went on quietly, “and I may not have, for you know as well as I that I do speak hastily when angry—I value very much the discretion that is natural to you, Scipio; as indeed I value all of your good qualities. Thank you for the help that you have extended to Mrs. Adams, on behalf of-of my good wife.”

Scipio inclined his head. “Thank you, sir. Mrs. Adams.” And he bowed himself from the room.

When he escorted her to the door some ten minutes later, Malvern said, “Let me know what you learn, Mrs. Adams. If you would,” he added, like a man recalling a phrase in a foreign tongue. “I’ll have the letters from Woodruff to-to my wife”—again he avoided calling her Mrs. Malvern—“sent over to you next week; I should like to read them myself again. You probably know as much as I do about—about my wife’s family—and in any case it is hard to see, after the lapse of nearly eight years, why someone from her past would choose to do violence against an innocent third party in her house.”

“I agree,” said Abigail quietly. “Yet the killer has to be someone she knows, and trusted.”

“Which doesn’t preclude Sam Adams or one of his ilk,” retorted Malvern grimly. “There!” he added. “That’s the three quarters striking! Ulee had best make a little speed, if you’re to be home when the Sabbath begins.”

Icy wind clawed them as he handed her down the step and into the chaise. Abigail had protested, while they’d waited for it, that the distance was barely five hundred yards to her own door, but in her heart she was grateful, as the glow of the vehicle’s lamps caught on flying spits of rain. “If he’s a few minutes late,” she replied, “I think we can argue, with our Lord, that it comes under the heading of pulling one’s ox from a pit. The Sabbath was made for Man, and not Man for the Sabbath.”

“Let me know what you learn,” he said. “And how I may help you find—Mrs. Malvern.”

Quietly, Abigail said, “I will.” But as the chaise rattled up King Street, Abigail reflected on how little she had learned, since she’d waked in the morning’s cold dawn. She had pulled no ox from any pit. And though a small part of her heart rejoiced at what she thought she had heard in Charles Malvern’s voice, she was well aware that she was no closer to knowing Rebecca’s whereabouts than she had been on Thursday morning, watching the Sons of Liberty mop Perdita Pentyre’s blood from Rebecca’s kitchen floor.

Eleven