Mistress of Scandal (Greentree Sisters 3)

“No, I couldn’t eat anything. Maeve—”

“Maeve?” The door had opened without them noticing, and a woman Francesca had never seen before stood there watching them. She was short and plump, and when she smiled she had dimples either side of her mouth. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.” But that didn’t stop her from coming right inside the room and closing the door behind her.

Francesca felt a chill run down her back. Was this the poisoner, the one she’d been waiting for?

“What do you want, Louisa?” Maeve said it so sharply that Francesca was taken aback. She had never heard Maeve speak in such an unfriendly manner.

“What do I want?” the woman said with a smirk. “I wanted to ask you a question. Yesterday Mr. Dobson was asking me about any medicine that Madame might ’ave had from the apothecary. I couldn’t remember fetching her any. And then I remembered about that little packet you had delivered at the door that time. Was that from the apothecary, Maeve?”

There was a strangely ominous silence. Francesca looked from one to the other of them, confused, but with a growing sense of foreboding.

“What little packet?” Maeve asked levelly. “You’ve made a mistake, Louisa.”

“No, I saw it right enough. It was the boy from the apothecary, and he gave you a little packet, and you paid him for it.”

“I…” Suddenly she smiled, more like the Maeve Francesca knew. “Ah yes, I remember now. They were drops, for my head. I get the headache something fierce.”

“Then why were you putting them into Madame’s coffee?”

Maeve stared, her smile slipping away. “What are you saying? How dare you…?”

/> But Louisa wasn’t about to be stopped. “Madame always gets you to make her coffee, because you do it just the way she likes it. No one else but Maeve can make Madame’s coffee!” she added, with a dimpled smile at Francesca that contained more than a hint of malice. “It’s a bit of a joke with us, you see.”

“You probably saw me with the sugar,” Maeve said flatly.

“Oh no,” Louisa exclaimed, “it weren’t no sugar. It were those drops from the apothecary that the boy delivered. Did Madame have a headache then? Maybe that was it?” Her accent was quickly slipping in the direction of the East End of London.

Maeve’s gaze narrowed, and her face looked pinched. “You’re wrong, or lying. I didn’t put anything in Madame’s coffee. I don’t know why you’re saying these things.” She stood up, moving toward Louisa.

Francesca had been listening with surprise and concern, but as Maeve walked away from her, suddenly she remembered what had been niggling at her a little while before.

“Maeve,” she burst out, “do you know Mrs. March?”

Maeve spun around, her eyes wide and frightened. “Why do you say that?” she cried in a brittle voice. “What has that to do with anything?”

“Because I saw you talking to her at the house in Wensted Square. I’ve only just realized it.”

“It wasn’t me,” Maeve wailed. “I didn’t do it.”

And then she seemed to break, folding in on herself, with her arms wrapped about her waist and her face screwing up like a child’s. Suddenly she opened her mouth and let out a shrill scream.

Francesca was too shocked to move, but Louisa was smiling with satisfaction as Maeve screamed again. The door opened abruptly, and Dobson and Sebastian came inside.

Maeve was still screaming. Dobson pushed past Louisa and caught her, shaking her and then pulling her against him when she refused to stop. The Irishwoman’s eyes were blank, as though her mind had gone beyond what she could bear. But at least, when he held her against his chest, she stopped her terrible cries.

The door was open into the vestibule, and Francesca could see others gathering to see what the fuss was about, before Sebastian closed it firmly in their faces.

“She’s the poisoner!” Louisa said, all but jumping up and down. She looked as excited as a child at a birthday party.

“Polly, go out there and tell everyone to go back to work,” Sebastian said impatiently, moving her toward the door with a hand around her plump arm. “And say nothing about what’s happened, do you hear me?”

He seemed very much at home, Francesca thought, almost as if he’d been here many times before. And then she realized what name he had called Louisa.

“Polly?”

“That’s me.” Louisa curtsied an acknowledgment with a glint in her eyes.

“Out,” Sebastian said. She gave an exaggerated sigh and vanished outside.