On the other hand, most of the people in this house believed Angél’s death had been nothing more than an unfortunate accident, even the bishop. Only I had my doubts, and my thoughts were reflected in the eyes of the woman staring at me from above the fireplace.
I groaned and rolled over. The opiate made my limbs as loose as Angél’s when she’d tumbled to her death. As I drifted to sleep, I again saw Michel’s eyes, flat, brown, and filled with lust, then Renaud’s blank, pig-like stare. Then the bishop’s blue gaze: stern, terrible, grieving. I tried to shut them all away, but they followed me into my dreams.
The next day, my headache had gone. I spent the day shopping with Aimee and privately sifting through the puzzle of Angél’s death. Aimee, also recovered, generously bought me a gown her dressmaker was trying to get rid of, and would not let me refuse it.
For supper I wore the new white and cream-colored silk and had Beatrice put up my hair to leave my neck bare. Aimee chattered and laughed throughout the meal, and the bishop, avoiding my eye, jested with her. Even Aimee’s brothers and their wives let themselves be almost witty tonight.
In the salon, I played cards with Aimee’s father and mother and Mathilde, Renaud’s wife, and managed to win a few livres. Michel, at the next table, sent me suggestive glances whenever his wife’s attention was elsewhere.
I rose early and announced I would retire. I paused by Michel’s chair on my way to the door and let him catch my gaze. Mathilde, who also claimed fatigue, went upstairs with me, her tread heavy. We parted cordially on the landing, and I continued up another flight to my chamber.
Once there, I untied my hair and shook it down. I doused all but two candles the maid had left burning for me, fetched a bottle of wine and some goblets from the cupboard, and arranged everything on a round table with two chairs drawn up to it.
He didn’t knock. He slipped into the room and closed the door, waiting for me to notice him. I waved him to one of the chairs and poured wine, dark and red, into a goblet.
“You are beautiful tonight, Madame.” He seated himself, took up his goblet, and drank noisily. When he set the glass down, a red droplet clung to his mouth.
“Thank you. I am glad you like me this way. I took the idea from Angél.” I gestured to the portrait.
His brows drew down, and he turned to look up at the painting. While his attention was on the portrait, I moved quickly to his chair. I’d positioned the candles so their glare was behind me, and my shadow fell upon him.
He gazed at the painting for a long moment, then turned back to me, starting when he saw me over him.
Color drained from his face. “Dear God.” He reached out an uncertain finger and touched the lace on my skirt. “Angél?”
“Do you remember?” I asked in a quiet voice.
His finger shook, and he withdrew it. “No.”
“You remember.” I went on relentlessly. He knew what had happened, damn him, but I had to make him tell me. “Here in this room. You found Angél, asleep on her bed.”
He nodded, his eyes half closing. “She thought I was Jacques.”
“But she said nothing.”
Michel’s faced flushed with sudden rage. “She did not. But why shouldn’t I have her, Jacques’ whore? He brought her here under our noses, and my brother was completely blind. Angél let me touch her. She should not have, but she let me without making a sound.”
“Because she was afraid of you,” I said, my voice hardening. “You killed her because you feared she would tell Jacques. You put something in the wine, an opiate perhaps, something strong enough to make her sleep and never wake. Then you carried her to the stairs and dropped her over.”
Michel clenched his fists on the table—large beefy fists that could knock me to the floor. “No.”
“I asked for an opiate yesterday. A good, strong dose for my headache. All of it is in your glass.”
Michel stared at his nearly empty goblet, his face draining of color. He pushed me away, his jaw slack. I smiled.
Michel lunged for me, but he was clumsy with drink, and I’d already moved. I was across the bedchamber before Michel could struggle to his feet. I wrenched open the door … and collided with Jacques de Sansard who rushed into the room, eyes blazing like the sapphires on his crucifix.
“You killed her, Michel.” His voice cut like falling ice. “I’ve always believed so. May God have mercy on your soul.”
The rest of the Poullard family straggled into the antechamber in response to the noise. Mathilde, dressed for bed, huddled in her dressing gown.
Michel thrust a pleading hand at them. “Help me. She’s given me poison to drink. Angél has killed me.”
“Nonsense,” I said crisply. “I am Émilie, and I have given you nothing but wine.”
For a moment, Michel stared in choked silence, then he howled and leapt at me. The bishop seized him and bore him to the floor.
Monsieur Poullard cleared his throat, looking embarrassed. A cool father indeed, who could only respond with shame that his son was a murderer. Or perhaps he’d suspected, had made his peace with it long ago. “Please take him away, Jacques.”
Michel’s wife, Léonore, peered over her father-in-law’s shoulder. Her face was white, her dark eyes wide, but she made no move, voiced no protest.
Jacques hauled Michel to his feet. I closed my eyes to shut out the bishop’s cold and merciless face as he dragged Michel past.
Michel been the only one of the household to show any interest in common desire—even Jacques knew how to hide his emotions. Only when Jacques had been confused by me in the shadows, or befuddled with drink, had he shown his true self, and he’d pulled his mask into place very quickly.
Michel, a man who enjoyed lusts, married to a rather passionless wife, would have found the pretty Angél irresistible. And why not? he would think. Angél had been his brother’s wife, but the lover of his cousin—why should he not enjoy what she obviously gave freely?
I knew that, once arrested, Michel’s fate would be swift: interrogation, torture, imprisonment, execution. A man with the power of Jacques de Sansard could extract a brutal and final vengeance.
When I opened my eyes again, I found only Monsieur Poullard and Renaud left in the antechamber—Mathilde, Madame Poullard, and Aimee must have taken Léonore away. The two men looked at me uneasily and then at each other, as though uncertain what to do. I doubted anything so scandalous had ever happened in their stoic lives.
I closed the door on them, not caring if I were rude. I leaned against the bedchamber door, wretched and weak, hearing the drip, drip, drip of scarlet wine falling from goblet to carpet.
“I hope you are finished, Angél,” I said softly.
From somewhere a faint whisper touched me—a breath, a sigh—then it was gone.
I longed suddenly for the chaos and noise of Versailles and the court, for the tantrums of Madame de Montespan, the petty games of the courtiers and their ladies, the splendor of Louis’ gardens. A colorful and lively world compared to this quiet house where people lived oblivious to its luxuries, where those who did not belong came to a tragic end. Only Aimee seemed untouched, but then she had escaped at a young age, and was now more a product of the court than this stolid, wealthy family.
Someone tapped on the bedchamber door. I roused myself and opened it to find the bishop, still in his velvets, on the threshold. He looked at me in my white silk, then past me at the portrait over the mantel. When his gaze came back to me his eyes held caution and a bit of respect.
He gave me a bow. “Thank you, Madame.”
I spread my hands. “I did nothing.”
Jacques’s mouth set. “You found out what truly happened to the woman I loved. Michel murdered her, and he will pay. I will always be grateful to you.” He paused, looking me up and down again. “I am very rich, Madame. I can offer you a reward for this deed.”
I swallowed. At court, I had to fend for myself, finding my own meals, paying for every expense. Madame de Monte
span could have fits of generosity, and would not leave me entirely destitute, but much of the time, I lived on a pittance.
But such money would always remind me of Angél, of Michel’s blaze of lust, of Jacques’ anguish when he crushed my hands between his in the darkness of the carriage.
“No,” I said. “Thank you. I do not want it.”
Jacques looked surprised, but seemed to understand, and gave me a nod. “As you wish. If you change your mind, you may write to me.”
I didn’t answer. Jacques looked at me for a long moment, then he leaned forward and pressed a brief kiss to my lips. Then he turned away, and was gone.
I closed the door and gazed up at Angél. The painted woman’s smile seemed a little wider, and the light in her eyes matched what I’d seen in the bishop’s when he’d thrown Michel to the floor.
I put out the last of my candles and drowned the portrait in darkness.
I never heard anything of Michel Poullard after that. But weeks later, after I had returned to Versailles, I learned that Jacques de Sansard had been given a second bishopric. Gossip said his power was on the rise to even greater heights.
I saw Jacques once after that, a year later, in an avenue in Paris. Astride a fine horse, surrounded by retainers, his costly cloak adorned with a bejeweled brooch, Jacques swept a stern gaze about him, his look powerful and proud. If he saw me, he made no acknowledgment.
But I remembered his head on my lap, his tears wetting my skin as he grieved for a pretty young girl taken from him too soon.
After my visit to Aimee, my life at court went on as usual—that is to say, I was surrounded by gossip, intrigue, and squabbles both petty and serious.
Madame de Montespan welcomed me back, telling me she hoped I wouldn’t make a habit of running off to Paris when she and the dear queen needed me so much. I settled into my routine of brushing the queen’s dogs, fetching the queen’s gloves, delivering secret notes for Montespan, and avoiding the attention of Louis the king as much as I could. Louis had discovered my talent for ferreting out information, and used me from time to time to help him with problems he wanted no one else to know about. Thankfully, he did not seem to need my services for now, and so my life was tranquil, at least as much at it could be in the court of the Sun King.
Pierre Marchand, the policeman, got word of the arrest in Paris and my hand in it. He stopped me as I strolled the market in Versailles one evening, purchasing food for my meager supper.
Monsieur Marchand was a tall man, in his thirties, with fair hair, a high forehead, and a nose that was long and sloping. He never bothered with a wig and often tied his hair back to keep it out of his way. He was not handsome but his brown eyes held something as lively and confident as Jacques’s blue ones had.
I found the butt of Pierre’s walking stick stopping my foot as I turned away from one of the vendors. He did not need this stick to support himself—he preferred to terrify criminals with it.
Pierre gave me a shallow bow, but did not move the stick. “You cause trouble, Madame, it seems, wherever you go.”
I tried to shrug as I tucked my dinner of pullet and bread securely away inside my cloak. “It was not I who caused the trouble, Monsieur. I was simply sorry for the young woman who did not fit in.”
“And a respectable family felt the touch of scandal.”
“The scandal was not mine,” I said indignantly. “I merely exposed it.”
Marchand only looked at me, those shrewd eyes of his seeing everything. “You are a dangerous woman, Madame d’Armand.”
“So you have said. May I get on? Or have you come to arrest me for purchasing slightly overdone pullet?”
Pierre never smiled, as I said, but I saw a spark of amusement in his eyes. “I would have done the same, had I been there. In my own way, of course.”
He would. Perhaps I’d been learning too many of his tricks. Pierre bowed to me and strolled away, and the vendor selling the chicken in sauce sighed in relief. Marchand had a reputation as a policeman who always got his man—or woman—no matter how many people he had to arrest before he found the right culprit.
I watched Pierre walk away, his tied-back hair swaying across his dark coat, his head turning so his keen eye could watch for any wrongdoing. He technically only held power in Paris, but this did not stop him from ferreting out crime wherever he went.
I returned to my shopping, hoping I’d heard the last of a matter I longed to put behind me.
The white gown I never wore again. I instructed Beatrice to sell it, and I distributed the proceeds to the beggars.
End
A Soupçon of Poison
By Ashley Gardner
A Kat Holloway Mystery
A Soupçon of Poison
Chapter One
London, 1880
I am a cook, and better than most, even at my young age of nine and twenty, and the gentry and aristocracy pay highly to have me.
Sir Lionel Leigh-Bradbury of Portman Square gave me less than I might have had elsewhere, but when the agency told me he’d agreed to the large number of days out a month I’d requested, I leapt at the position.
I had never actually met Sir Lionel—the housekeeper and the agency made all the negotiations with me—until I’d been in his employ nearly two months. Then, one evening, he abruptly summoned me.
Copley, the thin, sour-faced butler with a walleye, delivered the news to the kitchen. “’Is royal ’ighness demands your presence. In ’is library.”
I stilled my knife on the carcass of an onion spread before me. “Now?” I asked crossly.
I had much work to prepare for supper, having no assistant. Sir Lionel employed only one footman and a scullery maid in addition to housekeeper, butler, and cook. He kept the housekeeper and butler only because he’d inherited them with the house and title.
Copley banged down his salver and threw himself into a chair by the fire. “No,” he snarled. “’E must ’ave meant in a fortnight.”
Copley despised all women in general and me in particular. He was pinch-faced, bad-tempered and usually half drunk with gin.
I began chopping again, with more vigor this time. “He stays above stairs, and I stay below,” I said. “It is the proper way of things.”
“Am I to blame for ’is upbringing? You’d best get to it, woman.”
I sighed, finished the onion, and carefully washed my knife before putting it away. Onion juice left to dry can be disastrous to cutlery. I put the onions in a bowl, wiped my hands, and went to face my employer for the first time.
Sir Lionel sat alone in the library on the second floor. The high-ceilinged, dark-beamed room was cold, musty, and dimly lit. Tall bookcases lined the room, each packed so tightly with books I doubted that any could be pried out and actually read.
My employer reposed at a writing table with about a dozen photographs on it. As I came as close as I dared, I saw that the photos were of older Leigh-Bradburys, of Sir Lionel in formal dress, and one of a young woman, pretty, whom I did not recognize. That photo looked old, but the frame was new, so perhaps it was a beloved sister or beau who had passed away.
Sir Lionel had limp brown hair that hung from a bald place on top of his head, a white face, and a long nose. His limbs were almost as thin as Copley’s, and his long coat hung on his bony shoulders. He was middle-aged and had recently inherited this house, all its contents, and his baronetcy from his uncle.
I stopped a foot or so from the desk and folded my hands on my plump abdomen. “You asked to see me, sir?”
Sir Lionel looked me up and down, his prominent Adam’s apple moving. “You are my cook?”
I inclined my head. “I am Mrs. Holloway, sir.”
“Mrs. Holloway.” He leaned forward a little as he said the name. “You are married?”
My matrimonial state was none of his business. “All cooks are called missus, sir,” I said stiffly.
Sir Lionel continued to stare at me, his blue eyes so wide they protruded. The good Lord had
blessed me with a comely face—so I’d been told—a mass of curling dark hair, and a figure that was curved and not angular, but I saw no reason for such amazement.
“You sent for me, sir,” I prompted as Sir Lionel continued to stare at me.
“Oh. Yes. I wanted to … I wanted …” He trailed off and assumed a fretful frown. “I am feeling unwell. The dish you prepared for my supper last night is to blame.”
“The cassoulet?” I said in surprise. “Of course it was not to blame. Everyone in this house partook of that dish, and no one has any ill effects. It was perfectly fine.”
“It tasted off.”
“Nonsense. The chicken was freshly killed and the vegetables fine and crisp. I was lucky to get them and at a fair price.”
Sir Lionel tapped the arms of his chair. “I have eaten only your cassoulet since last night, and I am ill. What else could it be?”
I eyed him critically. “If you’ve eaten naught else, it’s no wonder you’re ill. I’ll make you a cup of beef tea, sir, and send you up some seedcake.”
He looked indignant. “I do not want—”
“Certainly you do,” I interrupted. “Your humors are out of balance and need some easing. I ate a good portion of that cassoulet, and as you can see, I am fit and hale. You want a bit of grub in your belly, that is all.”
Sir Lionel gave me a dazed look, as though not used to being told what to do, even if it was for his own good. “Er, yes, quite. Yes, yes, send it up, whatever you like.”
I gave him a little bow and turned away, feeling his gaze on my back all the way to the door.
Downstairs, I cut up seedcake and fixed a thick broth of beef with black pepper. I set this all on a tray, which was carried upstairs by the footman, because Copley was snoring and unlikely to rouse himself the rest of the night.
My cakes seemed to have done the trick, as did my supper of thick slices of pork, hearty bread, and onion soup, for I heard no more complaints about illness and no more words against my cooking. I did not see Sir Lionel again for another three weeks.
Late one night, after the other staff had gone to bed, I sat in the kitchen at the wide wooden table, sharpening my knives.