The Thief Taker by Janet Gleeson

Author:Janet Gleeson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2004-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-seven

AGNES WAS MAKING liver pudding when Nancy stepped out of the scullery bearing her housemaid’s box. She was wearing Rose’s better working dress, a yellow-and-green striped cambric. It fitted her surprisingly well. Agnes noticed that there was no perceptible swelling about Nancy’s waist beneath the folds of her skirt, but she seemed broader in the hips. This confirmation of Philip’s assertion strengthened Agnes’s resolve, and she assailed Nancy with unusual forthrightness. “Did you think I would not suspect you were lying?”

“Pardon me?” said Nancy, swiveling round.

“I said I believe you to be a liar.”

“What do you mean, Mrs. Meadowes?” Nancy looked at her in astonishment. “It is most unjust of you to accuse me of any such thing.”

“Some things you have told me concerning Rose may have been true, but others were wide of the mark—deliberately so—weren’t they? You said them to cast a slur on Rose because you were jealous of her, and, I presume, to deflect attention from your own predicament.”

Nancy slapped a defiant hand on her hip. “What predicament?”

Agnes eyed Nancy’s belly. “I think you know what I mean.”

“You’ve got no proof. Nor any right to speak to me like that.”

“On the contrary, you have given me all the proof I need. Rose Francis was never in the slightest way tidy. You were forever saying how sluttish she was and complaining of the mayhem she created. But when we looked through her things they were all as neat as a sixpence. The only possible reason for that was that you’d been through them already. Perhaps that, rather than oversleeping, was the reason you were late down for your duties that morning. And as for my right to accuse you—Mrs. Blanchard herself has asked me to look into what happened to Rose.”

“We all know what happened to her—she got her neck slit.”

“But we do not know who slit it or why. Perhaps it was your hatred that drove her away, Nancy. Perhaps she could take no more of you meddling with her possessions, stealing her correspondence, quarreling with her.”

Nancy looked perplexed. “No, ma’am, you malign me, I done nothing like that. She irked me now and then, but I liked her well enough, I swear. I wouldn’t do nothing to—”

“Don’t feign ignorance, Nancy. Or would you prefer that I suggest that Mrs. Tooley search through your possessions? She already has her suspicions regarding you. Rose told her you were jealous, and that you took a letter and left it in the drawing room to cast her in a bad light. And John says a stolen letter was the cause of your fight. But I think you took something else of hers as well. Her purse, perhaps? No wonder she wanted to leave.”

“’Course I never took the purse. Would I have mentioned it if I had?”

“Then was it another fabrication?”

Nancy scowled. “No, it was not. There was money right enough.”

“Why then did you quarrel?”

“I told you before, it were nothing.”

Agnes would not be fobbed off. “I don’t believe Mrs.

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