Part 16 (1/2)

Her hand sought John's. ”Should I try if I can get Lieutenant Coldstone to help us open Fluckner's door?”

”If you think we can guarantee he won't make that poem disappear, since it proves I'm not not the killer.” the killer.”

”In other words, we need a witness to its discovery.”

”We need a witness who won't be intimidated by a British threat,” said John. ”That is, always supposing the poem has any bearing on the Pentyre matter at all. It may not.”

”Do you doubt that it does?” asked Abigail, surprised.

”Not the slightest.”

Abigail looked for Queenie the next day at the market, turning in her mind possibilities that seemed, when viewed from one angle, to be the fantasies of a schoolgirl dream. Yet her mind kept returning to the lakes of blood on Rebecca's kitchen floor, to the stains of mud and dampness on the green and white counterpane, the glint of scissor-blades in the shadows of the hall, and she knew that the lunacy which she suspected possessed Hester Tillet was as nothing compared with the madness whose existence could not be denied.

Even a man who would deliberately mimic such crimes, for whatever goal of politics or vengeance, is no more sane than the devil who originally perpetrated them.

As if that brief glimpse of madness had opened some terrible inner door, she seemed now to be conscious of lunacy everywhere. What had Lucy Fluckner said? You know how easy it is to think, 'Were we really making that up . . . ?' What had Lucy Fluckner said? You know how easy it is to think, 'Were we really making that up . . . ?'

She didn't know.

All she knew was that she wanted, by hook or by crook, to get into the Tillet house and have a look at the south attic.

Queenie was nowhere to be found at the market. Abigail spotted Mrs. Tillet's tall, starched cap almost at once among the stalls, and kept well clear of her. The cook could be ill-according to Rebecca, Queenie was a determined malingerer. Yet, Mrs. Tillet was an even more determined taskmistress, and ferociously disinclined to let any member of her household abdicate their duty.

Curious.

I'm going to feel very silly indeed, Abigail reflected as she moved swiftly, lightly away from the market square-her basket still empty-in the direction of Fish Street, if I find that there is some perfectly simple explanation to the yard being kept locked up, the rear house going unrented, and the Tillets' obvious desire to keep people away. if I find that there is some perfectly simple explanation to the yard being kept locked up, the rear house going unrented, and the Tillets' obvious desire to keep people away.

The gate into Tillet's Yard was still locked when Abigail reached the alley. Stepping back until her shoulders touched the opposite wall, she craned her neck to look up, and saw the south attic's shutters had been opened again. The inner sides, folded back against the rain-wetted dark of the gable, were dry, the gla.s.s beneath them unbeaded with any trace of last night's showers.

Surely it isn't possible. Mrs. Tillet isn't that that mad. mad.

She pulled her hood up to conceal her face, and moved inconspicuously to the end of the alley, in time to see a porter with a laden handcart engaged in an argument with Nehemiah Tillet outside the door of his shop. The handcart blocked traffic, but Tillet was gesturing impatiently to have it unloaded into the shop, as before, instead of into the yard.

Of course, she reflected as she retraced her steps down the alley, to circle around through somebody's garden and pig-yard into Broad Alley and thence to Fish Street on the other side of the Tillet shop . . . Of course a violent murder in his rental house could have changed his mind about leaving the gate open. But surely not in broad daylight? Of course a violent murder in his rental house could have changed his mind about leaving the gate open. But surely not in broad daylight?

It didn't seem to have affected the landlords of Zulieka Fishwire's house-or that residence's ultimate rentability.

As she approached the shop from the other direction, Tillet, his apprentice, and the porter were struggling with a large box. Abigail slipped casually into the shop, and pa.s.sed through it to its rear door and into the yard. Though she was tempted to investigate Rebecca's house-closed-up and forlorn near the locked alley gate-she made her way instead to the kitchen, where Queenie was as usual sitting at her ease at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea.

”Mrs. Adams!” She sprang to her feet and looked immediately-her face contracted with guilt-at the tray that rested on the other end of the table. Wicker-like everything else in the kitchen rather battered and grimed and clearly picked up secondhand from someplace else-and bearing a pottery pitcher of water, and a pottery plate on which lay one slice of bread, rimed with the barest film of b.u.t.ter. Beside it sat an enormous basket, stacked with cut and folded packets of muslin and calico: the component parts of s.h.i.+rts.

”My dear, I've been sick with worry over you!” cried Abigail. ”I was afraid you were ill, knowing how sensitive your system is to horrors and strain!”

”If only you knew the whole!” groaned Queenie, and pa.s.sed her wrist over her sweatless brow, with the air of an enslaved Child of Israel stealing momentary respite from the task of building the Great Pyramid single-handedly. ”I know not where 'twill end! And Mrs. Tillet is like a woman possessed!”

”How is this?” Abigail dropped, unasked, into the other rush-bottomed chair and puckered her brow in earnest readiness to listen to whatever Queenie had to say-noting, as she did so, that the teacup Queenie was drinking out of was one that she, Abigail, had given Rebecca. Though Nehemiah Tillet had on Monday dropped a small box containing ”Mrs. Malvern's things,” a glance at the sideboard told her that the Tillets had in fact appropriated plates, gla.s.ses, and silverware-anything expensive or of good quality-for their own.

”I have warned her,” cried Queenie, shaking her head and pouring Abigail some tea. ”She will not listen! Not to me nor to anyone! No good will come of it-”

”Of what, for Heaven's sake?” She took care to make herself sound profoundly concerned and not ready to grab Queenie by the shoulders and shake the information out of her.

”And the whole thing is simply shredding my nerves, Mrs. Adams! From the moment Mr. Revere shouted to me to come-”

So that's how they did it- ”There has not been a moment, when I have been free of migraine, or palpitations of the heart, or the sweats . . . Feel my forehead, if you don't believe me, Mrs. Adams! Last night I could not get a wink of sleep, not one single wink, and what it's done to my digestion I daren't think! My husband was the same way, all nerves, poor soul . . . Of course I was stronger then-”

”You have always inspired me with your strength, Mrs. Queensboro,” affirmed Abigail desperately, knowing Mrs. Tillet was not a woman to linger in the marketplace.

”No more.” Queenie shook her head, and raised a sigh so piteous and profound that-as Shakespeare had said-it seemed to shatter all her considerable bulk. ”No more. Not since his death, taken as he was in the flower of his prime . . . I have never been the same, you know . . .”

”What is it that she's done?” asked Abigail, throwing caution to the winds. ”Surely she isn't making you you, on top of all else that you have to do to run this household, sew those wretched s.h.i.+rts that she charges the customers seven s.h.i.+llings for?”

And she cast a meaningful eye toward the basket.

”Alas, if it were only that!” Queenie pressed a hand to her eyes. ”Even with my migraines, that I get from doing close work-and even the smallest effort at it will set me off for days-”

Heavy footfalls shook the parlor floorboards. Had she not known the yard gate was locked, Abigail would have made a smiling excuse and taken her leave at that point, but she knew she was cornered. She turned toward the parlor door with an expression of pleasure. ”Why, Mrs. Tillet-”

”Mrs. Adams.” The linendraper's wife filled the doorway like the Minotaur emerging from its cave. ”To what do we owe this visit?”

”I'm terribly sorry to intrude, m'am, but I was in the neighborhood and Mr. Adams had asked me, about a volume of Tacitus he had lent to Mrs. Malvern some weeks ago. It was not among the things you so kindly sent; I had wondered if by chance it had been mistakenly set aside?”

”If you're saying we might have stolen it, the answer is no,” snapped the big woman, broad face flushed with anger. She slapped down her market basket on the sideboard. ”And what my cook would know about the matter one way or the other I cannot for the life of me think.”

”Mrs. Tillet,” said Abigail, getting up, aggrieved and puzzled. ”I'm most dreadfully sorry if I've given you reason to think-”

”Well, I'm sorry, too, m'am,” returned Mrs. Tillet coldly. She was resolutely not looking at either the tray with the bread and water, nor the basket of sewing. ”I'm sorry that you you have nothing better to do with your time-and with growing children in your home!-then to go about the town talking to people's servants and keeping them from their honest work. Now, good day to you.” have nothing better to do with your time-and with growing children in your home!-then to go about the town talking to people's servants and keeping them from their honest work. Now, good day to you.”

Her face stinging with rising blood as if the other woman had slapped her, Abigail was halfway back to the market square when she remembered the detail that had caught her eye as she'd come out of the shop's back door, crossed to the kitchen-a difference in detail that had snagged her attention without transmitting, at the time, any meaning.

On dozens of mornings over the past year she'd crossed from Rebecca's door to the kitchen door, to ask one thing or another of Queenie, and had noted the small furnis.h.i.+ngs of the yard repeatedly: hayfork for the cowshed, woodpile in its shelter, line of chamber pots outside the kitchen door, emptied but waiting to be scoured. (More laziness of Queenie's-Rebecca had always scoured hers with ashes, soap, and boiling water even before breakfast, one of the first things Abigail had taught her when it had become clear that Rebecca was determined to live on her own. Abigail's mother always said-a saying which Abigail had pa.s.sed along-Worst goes first.) Rebecca's chamber pot had been a hand-me-down, like everything else in her house: yellowware with a white and blue stripe around its middle.

This morning it had been sitting in the line of the Tillet household china on the step.

Abigail slowed her steps, calling the picture back to mind. Of course, given Mrs. Tillet's penny-pinching ways, it was natural that she'd appropriate her vanished tenant's thunder mug as well as her plates and forks . . . But why why? None of the Tillet china had been missing. Half closing her eyes, Abigail was sure of it, because the four Tillet vessels didn't match one another, either. The Tillets' blue-and-white chinaware, and three rather plain pottery vessels in different colors for Queenie, the prentice-boys who slept in the shop, and whatever orphan Mrs. Tillet was half starving and working to death that year.

So who was using the other chamber pot?

Twenty-five

”Mr. Butler.” Abigail paused in the door of the cooper's shop. Mrs. Tillet's words still smarted in her mind, accompanied by other remarks made by other friends, about people who went around gossiping with servants. A little hesitantly, she said, ”Might I beg a few words with s.h.i.+m?”

The cooper grinned at her. ”Nar, I think s.h.i.+m's too set on cuttin' staves to spare a second to rest,” and the boy-already hopping gratefully down from the workbench where he had been performing this tedious and finicking task-grinned back and threw his master a salute. Mr. Cooper opened the door to the shop's tiny rear parlor for them and went back to fitting hoops to a half-a.s.sembled barrel.

At least everyone everyone doesn't think it's a sin to want to talk to someone other than the head of the family. doesn't think it's a sin to want to talk to someone other than the head of the family.