Brisbane sat and puffed, staring at a point some inches above my head. I might have been a bowl of fruit for all the attention he paid to me.
“If you did not want a biscuit, you did not have to take one to be polite,” he said finally.
“I beg your pardon?”
He gestured with the glowing tip of the cigar. “You have crumbled that biscuit to bits. You had only to decline.”
I looked at the wrecked remains of the little pastry mounded on the plate. I put it down hastily.
“Did Magda have any reason to bear a grudge against Sir Edward?”
“Absolutely not. If Edward had objected to her employment, she would never have been given a post at Grey House.”
“And yet she brought poison into that house,” he mused. There was another interval punctuated only by the soft exhalation of his breath. I sat quietly, mentally redecorating the room. It was quite nicely proportioned with good moldings, but I thought the chairs were a little dark, a little heavy for my taste. And the green of the curtains was entirely too grey.
I had just moved on to the artwork, replacing his stark sketch of an Eastern mosque with my own rather good copy of Jupiter and Io when he spoke.
“Why was she found to be unclean?”
I began to toy with my rings. “It is really quite distasteful, Brisbane. It has no bearing on the investigation, I am certain of that.”
“But I am not,” he rejoined with a smile.
I fumed a little, but I told him. “It has something to do with the dead. She touched a dead person. Apparently that violates their greatest taboo.”
He took up a small china dish figured in gold dragons and ground out the remainder of his cigar. “What were the circumstances?”
“Really, Brisbane, must I—”
“Yes, you must,” he said, his tone hard. “I will know everything.”
I drew a deep breath. “Very well. Her daughter, Carolina, had died. My father arranged for her to be buried in the village graveyard at Blessingstoke. Magda was found there the next night. Her daughter’s body had been dug up. She was embracing the corpse.”
“Good God.” He sat back heavily in his chair, and I felt a childish sort of satisfaction at having shocked him. “I am surprised they only banished her.”
“They pitied her. She was ranting, half out of her mind with grief. They put out her things and packed their own. They were gone by daylight. Within the space of a few short days she had lost her only child, her entire family, her whole way of life. Now perhaps you can find some pity for her.”
His eyes lifted to mine, cool and black as a night sea.
“Pity is a luxury I cannot afford, my lady. For anyone.”
“How can you be so unfeeling?” I demanded. “What is your heart made of that it can remain so wholly untouched by the suffering of another human being?”
“Stone. Steel. Flint, if you like. I am sure that is what you think.”
“What I think does not matter at all,” I retorted. “I simply cannot comprehend how any person can live as you do.”
“That is because your ladyship has the advantage of a clean conscience and an untroubled past,” he said, his words tinged with ice. “If you had to live with what I do, you would understand it well enough.”
A sudden image flashed into my mind of Brisbane, drugged and in agony, and I felt ashamed of myself. I inclined my head.
“You are right, of course. I should not have judged you. I apologize.”
He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I have just apologized,” I said, smoothing my skirts. “You were right and I was wrong. I spoke thoughtlessly. Shall I make amends, or do you forgive me?”
I waited coolly for his reply, but he simply stared, dumbfounded. He was shaking his head, his expression entirely astonished.
