“I suppose it isn’t to be hoped that Malvern could arrange an interview with Richard Pentyre,” remarked John, when Abigail handed him the note that had awaited them on the sideboard on their return from morning service.
“On the contrary, I suspect there’s a better chance of getting truth out of the maid than out of the master.” Abigail squatted to kiss Charley and Tommy, who generally had a hard time of it on Sabbath mornings while the rest of the family was at Meeting. Both John and Abigail subscribed to the belief that profane matters of the work-day week included weekday toys and games, something Tommy didn’t understand yet and Charley pretended not to. Like many children—Abigail included, at age three—he was deeply puzzled and resentful that God would require him to “sit still and be good” one day out of seven.
“Haven’t you told me, John, time and again, that eight murders out of ten turn out to be someone known to their victim?” She rose again to her feet, and spoke softly: oxen, pits, and Sabbath notwithstanding, it wasn’t a discussion she wanted small children to overhear. “In spite of the favors and business opportunities that accrued to Mr. Pentyre as a result of his wife’s affair with the commander of the British regiment, the fact remains that she was deceiving him, and doing so before the whole of the town.”
“And the fact remains that as a firm friend of the Crown, a cousin of our Governor through the Sellars and Oliver families, and a consignee for the East India Company’s tea monopoly, Pentyre had no real need of the Army’s favors,” returned John. “He had, on the other hand, numerous enemies.”
“Yet he lives.” Abigail hung her cloak on its peg, poured out water to wash her hands: The table for the cold and early Sabbath dinner had been set last night, the food prepared. At three the afternoon service would begin: Young Mr. Thaxter, John’s clerk, had agreed to come by with his mother to escort Pattie, Nabby, and Johnny back to the Meeting-House while John remained with the little ones and Abigail embarked on her un-Sabbathlike quest for information. “Why take such pains to lure his
“Why would Malvern’s daughter bribe servants to murder Mrs. Pentyre’s dog?” John’s face was somber as he picked up Tommy and carried him to the table, where the other children were already taking their places. “There is such a thing as vindictiveness in the world, Portia. I don’t suppose, in your conversation with the Malvern servants last night, that you asked after their master’s whereabouts on Wednesday night?”
Abigail stared at him, taken aback. “He would not—”
“And I would not,” said John. “And yet, someone did.”
Lisette Droux was a tiny, dark-haired Frenchwoman in her thirties, with buck teeth and a complexion so pitted by smallpox as to defeat the eye of any but the most willing of suitors. She rose and curtseyed as Scipio showed Abigail into the Malvern kitchen.
“Madame.”
“Mistress Droux.” A small fire burned on the hearth and warmed the big room, but the neatly stacked dishes, the absence of pans or cooking smells, told her that Charles Malvern held to the Puritan way beneath his own roof. The fire—and the kettle bubbling softly over it—were concessions to Tamar’s more fashionable cravings for tea and comforts: Abigail noticed Scipio had provided tea for the maidservant as well. “Did Miss Connelley tell you anything of what I wish to ask you about?”
“No, Madame.” At Abigail’s gestured invitation, she seated herself on the other side of the table. “Nor would I believe that Irish cocotte if she told me the sun rose in the East. But Scipio tells me you are a friend of the woman in whose house Mrs. Pentyre met her death, the woman who has now disappeared: fled, he says, and perhaps in fear for her life. And since this imbecile from the office of the Provost Marshal seems to think of nothing but that there is a political conspiracy to murder both M’sieu and Madame over this question of tea—”
Abigail said, “What?” and the woman raised her dark, straight brows.
“The imbecile,” she explained. “With the pale face and the little nose like a girl’s.” Her own was a noble organ; had her uneasy shock at this confirmation of Coldstone’s inquiries been less, Abigail would have smiled at the description of her adversary’s dainty features. “He asked, did anyone follow Madame, did anyone hide themselves about the stables while Gerald was taking out the chaise for her, did she receive letters threatening her life from such a one, or such a one—”
“Which such-ones?” asked Abigail. “Do you recall any names?”
The maidservant considered the matter, with aloof dis passion that seemed to be native to her. It was difficult to tell whether her dark bombazine dress was intended to constitute mourning for her mistress; Abigail was inclined to think not. “
“
“It is politics.” Lisette shrugged. “It is nothing. One does not do murder over politics. You must take tea, Madame, or coffee if you will—”
Scipio brought a small pot over to the table, and a cup. Abigail in fact found coffee’s bitterness unpleasant and cursed the Crown for its tax that had pushed the colony into a boycott of her favorite comforter in the late afternoons, but knew she had to accustom herself to drink the stuff. In Malvern’s respectable house there was no hope that the tea had been smuggled in by the Dutch, tax-free.
“How long had you been in Madame Pentyre’s employment?”
“Three years, Madame. I was taken on at the time of her marriage. These pamphlets, these Sons of Liberty”—she made a very Gallic gesture with one hand—“When first she married M’sieu Pentyre, my lady read them all, these pamphlets. She would stamp her pretty foot and fling up her hands, so! and shake her hair about. She had lovely hair.” A trace of sadness came into her voice, like a woman mourning the loss of some particularly fine roses in a childhood home. “And she would call M’sieu a Tory and a dish-licking dog. M’sieu would laugh, and kiss her, and she would be wild with indignation, and storm away out of the house . . . She was very young, Madame. When M’sieu learned that she had fallen in love with Colonel Leslie, and become his mistress,
“Almost a year, Madame. They become lovers at the New Year, at a ball at the house of the Governor, in the pantry where the silverware is cleaned. I found some of the cleaning-sand in her petticoat-lace afterwards. But since first she is introduced to him, in the summer at a picnic in honor of the officers of the regiment, she has— what is the word? She has set her hat in his direction.”
“Did she love him?” asked Abigail. “Or he her?”
