street, startling horses and causing a near-accident.
Dr. Thurgood was unable to give any further assistance. There was nothing medical to add to the bare fact that Serafina had died of an overdose of laudanum so huge that it was impossible that she had given it to herself accidentally.
He caught a hansom to go to Dorchester Terrace. On the journey he turned over in his mind the practical facts, which severely limited the number of people able to administer such a dose.
The most obvious person was Nerissa Freemarsh; not that he seriously thought it
Then why now? Why not sooner? Was it really coincidental that Serafina’s death had happened just before Duke Alois’s visit? It was not easy to believe.
He arrived at Dorchester Terrace, alighted, and paid the cabbie, then walked up the pathway to the door. He was admitted by the footman and gave him his card.
“Good morning,” he said quickly, before the man could protest that the house was in mourning and would receive no callers. “I need to speak with Miss Freemarsh. I hope she is still at home?” He was certain she would be. She was very traditional in her manner and dress, and, so newly bereaved, he was certain she would not leave the house for some time.
The man hesitated.
“Will you inform her that Lord Narraway is here, on business to do with the recent death of her aunt, Mrs. Montserrat.” He did not pitch his voice to make it a request. “I shall also need to speak with the housekeeper, the maids, the cook, yourself, and Miss Tucker.”
The man paled. “Yes … yes, sir. If you …” He gulped and cleared his throat. “If you would like to wait in the morning room, my lord?”
“Thank you, but I would prefer to use the housekeeper’s sitting room. It will make people more at ease.”
The man did not argue. Five minutes later Narraway was seated on a comfortable chair by the fire, facing the plump, pink-faced housekeeper, Mrs. Whiteside. She looked angry and bristling.
“I don’t know what you are thinking, I can tell you that much,” she began, refusing to sit, even though he had asked her to.
“You are in charge of the house, Mrs. Whiteside. You can tell me about each of the servants employed here.”
“You can’t imagine that any of them killed poor Mrs. Montserrat!” she accused him. “I’m not standing here while you say wicked things like that about innocent people, lordship or not, whoever you are.”
He smiled with amusement at her indignation, and with quite genuine pleasure at her loyalty. She looked like an angry hen ready to take on an intruder in the farmyard.
“Nothing would give me more pleasure than to prove that true, Mrs. Whiteside,” he said gently. “Perhaps with some detail, you can assist me in that. Then we widen the circle to include others who might have observed something of meaning, even if they did not realize it at the time. The one thing that seems impossible to deny is that someone did give Mrs. Montserrat a very large dose of laudanum. If you have any idea who that might be, or even why, then I would be obliged to you if you would tell me.”
It was the last sort of response she had expected. For several seconds she could not find words to answer him.
He indicated the chair opposite him again. “Please sit down, Mrs. Whiteside. Tell me about the members of your staff, so that I can imagine what they do when they are off duty, what they like and dislike, and so on.”
She was thoroughly confused, but she did her best. A quarter of an hour into her description, she began to speak naturally, even with affection. For the first time in his life, Narraway was offered a vivid picture of a group of people utterly unlike himself, all away from the homes and families in which they grew up, slowly forming a new kind of family, with friendships, jealousies, loyalty, and understanding that gave comfort to their lives, and a certain kind of framework that was of intense importance. Mrs. Whiteside was the matriarch, the cook almost as important. The footman was the only man, Serafina not requiring a butler, and therefore he had a place of unique privilege. But he was young, and not above bickering with the maids over trivia.
Tucker, as the lady’s maid, was not really either upstairs or downstairs. Her position was senior to the others, and as Narraway listened to Mrs. Whiteside’s descriptions, he came to the conclusion that Tucker’s position was an oddly lonely one.
“I don’t know what else you want,” she finished abruptly, looking confused again.
Narraway was quite certain that none of the staff had had anything to do with Serafina’s death. Their own lives had been sadly disrupted by it; now, even their home was no longer assured. Sooner or later Nerissa might choose to sell the house, or might have to, and they would be separated from one another and without employment. Then again, if she suspected them of disloyalty, or of speaking out of turn to Narraway, she might dismiss them without even a reference, and that would be worse. He became suddenly sensitive to the fact that he must phrase his questions with care.
“I would like to speak to them one at a time,” he responded. “And see if anyone has noticed anything out of the ordinary in the house. Something not in its usual place, moved, or accidentally destroyed perhaps.”
She understood immediately. “You think somebody broke in and killed poor Mrs. Montserrat?” Her face was horrified.
“The more you describe the people here, the less likely I think it is that one of them could have gone upstairs, found the laudanum, and given Mrs. Montserrat a fatal dose.”
“I must stay right in this room while you talk to the maids,” she warned him.
“Of course,” he agreed. “I wish you to, but please do not interrupt.”
His questioning proved fruitless, as he had expected, except to confirm in his own mind that Serafina’s staff was ordinary, an artless group of domestic servants, capable of occasional idleness, gossip, and petty squabbling, but not of sustained malice or evil. For one thing, they seemed far too unsophisticated for the degree of deception required to poison someone and hide all traces. For another, they confided in one another too freely to keep such a secret. Mrs. Whiteside’s estimate of them was reasonably accurate. He made a mental note that if he was ever involved in detective work again, he would pay more attention to the observations of housekeepers.
Tucker was a different matter. She had been with Serafina for decades. She looked pathetically frail now, and somewhat lost; she would be cared for now, but never needed in the way Serafina had needed her. She sat in the chair opposite Narraway and prepared to answer his questions.
He began gently, and was amused to find her observations of the other servants very similar to Mrs. Whiteside’s, if a trifle sharper. But then she did not have to work with them anymore. She no longer had a position to guard.
She was not without humor, and he regretted having to move his line of inquiry to more sensitive areas.
“Miss Tucker, I have heard from Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould that Mrs. Montserrat was losing her ability to remember exactly where she was, and to whom she was speaking. Did you know that she was afraid of letting secrets slip that might affect other people very adversely?”
She sighed and looked at him carefully. “Of course I was aware. If you had asked me five years ago, I’d never have believed such a thing could happen to a lady like Mrs. Montserrat.” She had difficulty controlling her grief, and her eyes blazed at him through tears.
“Someone killed her, Miss Tucker. I am thinking it less and less likely that it was someone already in this house.”
She blinked and said nothing.
“Who has visited Mrs. Montserrat in the last three or four months?”
She looked down. “Not many. People like to feel comfortable, to be entertained or amused. If you are of a certain age yourself, seeing a living example of what can happen, or what may yet happen to you, is unpleasant.”
Narraway winced internally. He had many years before he reached Serafina’s age, but it would come soon enough. Would he bear it with grace?
Then he realized with a chill like ice that perhaps he too would be terrified of what he might say, and might
