I felt a rush of irritation. That inventory had taken hours to complete, dreary, dull hours of copying out endless lists of what Aquinas and I had found in every room. To have those interminable hours referred to so lightly was more than I could stand. I would not be made to feel like his pet clerk.
“Brisbane, you are being churlish. Now, if you mean to call upon Mrs. Birch, get your coat. I will wait.”
He arched an imperious brow at me, but obeyed. I had not liked his little jest about Doctor Bent. I knew it was intended flippantly, but why then had I felt a thorn beneath the smooth words?
He returned a moment later, shooting his cuffs. “My lady?” He lifted his hand, indicating the door. I preceded him out and into the hansom that he hailed. I gave him the address to give to the driver and we proceeded in silence, the air thick with questions that went unasked. Brisbane said not a word, but sat like a great black bird of prey, watching out the window of the cab. His pose was relaxed, but his hands were tensile, clenching his walking stick until the knuckles went white.
In the end, I could not bear the silence.
“You are angry.”
He sighed. “I am not. I am intensely irritated. If a quantity of poison is discovered amongst the private possessions of a suspect, it should bloody well be the murder weapon, don’t you think?”
It was a symptom of his mood that he swore. Brisbane had frequently been quite rude, but he rarely cursed in my presence. Most ladies would doubtless have been horrified by such a breach in manners. I did not mind. It made me feel more of a comrade-in-arms. “Don’t be peevish. I know you wanted Magda to swing, but you will simply have to knock your arrow in someone else’s direction.”
He flicked me a cool, almost dismissive look.
“Your metaphors are deplorable, my lady. I assure you I had no evil intentions toward your laundress.”
“Former laundress,” I said without thinking.
His gaze sharpened, and I spoke quickly to extricate myself.
“She left Grey House. So it is just as well that she is not the murderer,” I said lightly. “As a Roma, I imagine she could hide herself quite handily. I would not have relished smoking her out once she’s run to ground.”
“Indeed not,” he said finally. “Were you planning to keep that little nugget of information to yourself?”
“Of course not,” I said sharply. “Had the arsenic been the cause of Edward’s death, I would have told you instantly. But it is all very much moot, as Doctor Bent has just informed us.”
He was silent a long minute, and I began to feel uncomfortably warm in my new finery. He was staring out of the window again, but I felt quite certain he was not seeing the streets outside. When he spoke, he kept his face turned toward the glass.
“If I find that you have hidden anything else from me, hindered me in any way,” he said softly, “I will not be responsible for my actions.”
I did not reply, but merely turned my head to look unseeingly out of my own window. And between us the silence grew thick again. He did not speak when I ordered the hansom to stop at a bookshop, nor did he say a word when I returned to the cab a moment later with the parcel I had purchased. He kept silent until we reached the modest home of Mrs. Birch, and it occurred to me then that Brisbane might be a prodigiously good holder of grudges. Yet something else to worry about, I thought irritably as he reached out to knock at the peeling door.
The fact that Mrs. Birch washed the bodies of the dead of the parish speaks eloquently to her financial necessity. She was a widow of little means, with seven children to bring up, and she applied herself diligently to whatever work could be found for her. Mending, charring, brewing and a little baking kept her children fed and clothed and with a dry roof over their heads. She was not above any honest work that might purchase a scrap of beef or crust of bread for them or, to my delight, a book.
Once I discovered her determination to educate her young, I made a habit of tucking an inexpensive volume or two into her baskets from Grey House. A costly book would have brought with it the temptation to pawn it for the cash. A cheap edition could be kept for the pleasure of reading alone, by Mrs. Birch as well as her children. She spoke plainly, her speech liberally sprinkled with the profanity she had learned from her sailor husband. In all, she was rough and crude and common. I liked her immensely.
And most of all, I liked her for her naturalness. It would have been a great day for her if the vicar himself called, rather than sending the curate. But faced with a gentleman of Brisbane’s elegance, and myself, she did not turn a hair. She simply threw open the door, smiling and motioning us inside.
“Good day to you, my lady—that is quite a fine hat if I may say it.”
“You certainly may, Mrs. Birch, and I thank you. I hope you are well?”
She stepped aside, letting Brisbane enter the narrow hall.
“As well as God ever made a body,” she said heartily.
“Mrs. Birch, please forgive the spontaneity of our call,” I began, but stopped when I saw her brow begin to crease. “That is, we have called without sending ahead, unforgivably rude, I know. I hope you will understand when I tell you it is a matter of some importance to us. Otherwise I would not dream of interrupting you when I know you must be very busy.”
She flapped a plump hand. “Don’t you worry about that, my dear lady. Always welcome you are, it is true. And whatever I can do for you, you’ve only to ask.”
She looked at me expectantly and I hastened to make introductions.
“Mrs. Birch, this gentleman is Mr. Nicholas Brisbane. Mr. Brisbane, this is Mrs. Birch, a widow of this parish.”
Mrs. Birch thrust out a thick hand. Brisbane, taking her in from untidy cap to worn shoes, did not hesitate. He took her hand warmly in his own.
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Birch. You are very kind to see us.”
Mrs. Birch turned and led us down the passage. “I’ve all the time you like, so long as I can keep on with my stitching. I’ve a dozen more shirts to get to the tailor, so I must not stop.”
We followed her into the overheated kitchen, which was the heart of her little kingdom. Unlike its mistress, the kitchen was spotlessly tidy. The few utensils were gleaming, as were the pots and floor. A few small children were scattered about, learning their letters on a slate wielded by their elder sister, but Mrs. Birch made short work of shooing them out. As the last one—the eldest girl—was scuttling out, I handed her a package in brown paper. She looked at me inquiringly.
“A few new books. Some Shakespeare and a volume of fairy stories. Some of them are rather gruesome, so mind you don’t read them to the little ones.”
She did not smile, but her expression was one of pure rapture. She held the books close to her body, ignoring her mother’s admonition to thank me.
I waved it aside. “Never mind, Mrs. Birch. I was shy myself as a child.” Brisbane coughed, I think to cover a snort.
The girl threw me a grateful look and scurried out. I made a mental note to inquire when she would be ready to go into service. Another employer might mistake her shyness for backwardness and shove her into the scullery. But she had a good mind, that much was clear from the flicker of quicksilver intelligence behind her eyes. With a proper hand, such as Aquinas’, she might make a good chambermaid, perhaps even a housekeeper in time. She could learn enough there to keep her own shop someday if she had ambition.
But I had more pressing matters to attend to, and I turned my attention back to Mrs. Birch, who was bustling about, putting the kettle on the hob and cutting off a few slices from a new loaf. She spread them with thrifty scrapings of fresh butter and assembled miscellaneous bits of crockery, some of it chipped and carefully mended, together with a small packet of sugar and a tiny pot of jam.
Brisbane held a chair for me near the fire and I seated myself, pleased to find that the chair cover, while faded and shiny with use, was perfectly clean.
Mrs. Birch watched as Brisbane settled himself, her hands busy with the tea things. She looked him over with the appraising eye of a woman who has seen a good number of naked men, both dead and alive. She seemed appreciative.
By the time the bread was cut and the cups assembled, the kettle was boiling. While she busied herself with the teapot and packet of tea, I took careful stock of the room. It was a home that had known hardship, that much was evident from the furniture, worn with polishing and hard use. But the walls were cheerfully, if cheaply, papered, and the floor was spotted with a few rugs of an unlikely shade of green. Garish but happy, rather like Mrs. Birch herself. I realized that she must be a woman of some sense and great resourcefulness to have made a pleasant home for herself and her children under trying circumstances.
Beside me, Brisbane was silently watchful, and I imagined he was making much the same assessment of Mrs. Birch and her little home. Finally, the tea things were ready and Mrs. Birch presented them to us with no apologies.
“I’ve cut a loaf of new bread, and that’s fresh butter, mind you, straight from my sister’s farm—none of that dyed muck they try to sell up at the shop. I don’t know where that comes from, but you mark my words, a cow had nothing to do with it.”
She gave us thick slices of bread with butter and hot mugs of strong, perfectly brewed tea. It was like being in the nursery again, and I ate with abandon. For all her fancy ways, Cook had never sent up a tea tray half so tempting. Mrs. Birch settled herself and took up a gentleman’s shirt, finished but for the buttons. Her nimble needle whipped through the linen, stitching buttons into place while she talked. She scarcely looked at her hands, but the needle never missed, setting stitches so tiny, so precise they were almost invisible.
After my second piece of bread and several minutes of desultory conversation between Brisbane and Mrs. Birch, I came to the point.
“I believe that you attended my husband, Sir Edward Grey, after his death.”
She nodded. “I did, and I hope you will permit me to offer my condolences. It’s a hard thing to lose one’s man, I know, my lady.”
I did not speak for a moment. Her simple expression of sympathy had touched me more than the elaborate condolences I had received from her betters.
“Thank you. Although, I have at least had the consolation of a comfortable living and no young ones to worry over. I know your own lot must have been very difficult.”
She stared at me, her expression pitying. “No, my lady. You’ve got it backward. The young ones are my consolation.”
I took up my tea to swallow down the lump in my throat. Sometimes I simply wanted to disappear through the floor. Naturally her children were precious to her. I had seen them only as a pack of mouths to feed. No wonder I had not been blessed with children, I thought bitterly. I did not deserve them.
“It were a pleasure to wash Sir Edward,” she said. She paused and took a thoughtful sip of her tea as Brisbane threw me a quizzical look.
“Pleasure?” he put in softly.
“Oh, yes. I never mind scrubbing the quality. Such nice, clean ways they have—well, most of them. There’s some that would better suit a barnyard than a ballroom, but you’ll hear no scandal from me. Sir Edward was a nice, clean gentleman.”
“Mrs. Birch, I must beg your discretion for what I am about to reveal,” I said.
She nodded once. “You have it.”
I believed her entirely. She did not seem the sort that would sell my secret as a bit of gossip over the wash line. Besides, she was country-bred, and in the country there was still a strong tradition of loyalty to the gentry. Some might call it feudal, but as it served my purposes, I was not about to argue with it.
“We have reason to believe that my husband’s death might have been hastened. Do you take my meaning?”
“Oh, was it murder, then?” Her tone was as casual as if she had just offered me another slice of bread. I stared at her.
“Mrs. Birch, you astonish me.”
“Oh, I am sorry. Did you not mean murder?”
“I did, as a matter of fact.” I had the strangest sense that Brisbane was trying to hide a smile behind his mug.
“I believe that Lady Julia is simply surprised at your quick grasp of the situation, Mrs. Birch,” he said smoothly. “She does in fact mean murder.”
Mrs. Birch sipped contentedly at her tea. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, my lady, indeed there isn’t. It does happen in the best of families, you know.”
Her voice was reassuring and I felt almost as if she had just patted my hand. The entire conversation was taking an extraordinary turn.
“Thank you. Am I to understand that you have had some experience with such matters?”
“Of course I have, my lady. I have washed the dead of this parish for nearly twenty years. I’ve seen stabbings and slashings, garrotings, stranglings, head-coshings…” She trailed off, doubtless reminiscing pleasantly.
“Have you ever seen a poisoning?”
She put a hand under her cap and scratched, thinking hard. With the cozy glow from the fire, and the lines of her face soft with thought, I could see that she had once been a handsome girl. A handsome girl of good sense and an excellent constitution. Her only liability had been a lack of fortune and good birth, and because of that, she lived in a tiny set of rooms, existing hand-to-mouth as she raised seven children, patching and darning her things to make them last from year to year. I, too, had been born handsome and sensible and healthy, but because my father sat in the Lords and had an annual income in excess of more than a hundred thousand pounds, I had every advantage while Mrs. Birch washed the dead to feed her children. Murder might be an interesting puzzle, but Fate is by far the greatest mystery of all, I mused.