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.
“Poisonings,” she said thoughtfully. “Yes, I have had a few. There was the poor girl who came from Leeds. Her man topped up her ale with arsenic when she got with child…then there was the old lady in South Street. Her nephew, I always thought, slipped her a bit of belladonna.” She shrugged a sturdy shoulder. “Hard to say. So many of them just look like normal dying, if you take my meaning. But I suppose some of them might be poisoned.”
“Might one of them have been Sir Edward?”
She smiled, showing an almost complete set of strong teeth.
“Mightis a large word, my lady. Anything is possible.”
I sighed, wondering how on earth I had come to be discussing philosophy with a charwoman of Jesuitical bent.
Brisbane inserted himself seamlessly into the conversation.
“A woman of your considerable experience would doubtless have noticed if something were amiss,” he began.
I almost snorted into my tea. If he managed to achieve by flattery what I had failed to gain by appealing to her intellect…
