Tommy nodded. “Because they are.”
“And yet I am all those things, and a playwright besides. Some of us must work more than others.”
“Playwright?” interrupted Marjorie, sending Jacob a meaningful look. “My brother is a poet. Might we have read some of your work or seen one of your plays?”
Miss Henry visibly deflated, then just as quickly resumed her stiff posture. “My scripts have not yet been performed in a public theater.”
Marjorie clapped her hands in glee. “Jacob hasn’t been published, either. He’s an aspiring writer, just like you. The two of you must have so much in com—”
“Don’t move,” Jacob commanded. Not only because he wished to put a stop to this excruciatingly mortifying line of conversation, but because he’d just caught sight of Nirah.
Coiled beneath Miss Henry’s chair.
He handed the hedgehog to Adrian, then started to slide from his seat. “Please don’t make any sudden movements, Miss Henry. I don’t wish to alarm you, but there is a snake unfurling a few inches behind your heels. Please allow me to—”
Her torso tumbled forward onto her lap. Her head dropped upside down between her calves, spilling long strands of twisted black hair to the carpet as she hiked her skirts up to her ankles. In one fluid movement, she darted her hand between her legs, grasped the writhing snake just behind its jaws, then thrust Nirah out toward Jacob. “This one?”
“Er,” he managed, caught in the act of crawling toward her on hands and knees. “Yes. That would be Nirah.”
“Aren’t you terrified it’ll kill you?” asked Marjorie, recoiling against Adrian.
Philippa was practically cowering in Tommy’s lap. “How can you stand to touch it?”
Miss Henry looked at them as though they had sprouted reptilian scales of their own. “Terrified? Why would I be? I saw her reflection in the tea urn. She wasn’t going to kill me.”
“But it could bite you!” insisted Philippa.
Miss Henry shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Marjorie and Adrian stared at her with their mouths open.
“For the record,” said Jacob as he carefully plucked Nirah from Miss Henry’s hands, “we do own venomous snakes as well. You shouldn’t assume all pets are harmless.”
He made a show of closing Nirah safely in a basket to be returned to the barn later.
“I never assume,” Miss Henry retorted. “I observe. The green body with dark markings, the pale belly, the gold-and-black collar… This is obviously an ordinary grass snake. In fact, the only poisonous snake native to England is the adder, which has completely different coloring.”
Marjorie and Tommy exchanged glances.
“Are you seeing this?” Marjorie asked in her usual far-too-loud whisper.
I can’t look away, Tommy had the wherewithal to sign back, sothat her words would not be understood by their client.Aspiring writerandsnake charmer? Is Jacob swooning yet?
“Jacob is a professional who is on a case,” he hissed to his sisters. “Or would be, if I knew what was happening. Miss Henry, I do not mean to push you before you are ready, but if you are going to share with us the reason for your visit… might you do so now?”
A clear internal debate raged across Miss Henry’s pretty face as she watched him settle back into his armchair.
“Quentin is missing,” she confessed at last. “It’s not unusual for him to spend all day out with his friends, but he’s always home in time to eat supper with me, without fail. Nor would he miss our evening game of cards.”
“He didn’t come home last night?” asked Adrian.
“Or all day yesterday. He hasn’t been home to eat, or to change his clothes. Something is wrong.” She took a deep breath. “We parted on bad terms. An old argument.”
Jacob leaned forward. “What were his last known whereabouts?”
“After he left home? I don’t know. I do know every place he has ever visited up until now, and I personally checked each and every one of them. No sign of him at any of those locations.”
“Is there a friend he might be visiting? Or would harbor him in secret?”
