Arrested by that expression—coldly eager and almost inhuman—Abigail’s glance went to Mrs. Sandhayes’s own half-empty cup and she thought, She cannot abide chamomile.
And then, as if she’d opened a box and seen all the events stored there like game-tokens: She came to Boston sometime after Christmas, at the same time as Androcles Palmer, and Sir Jonathan Cottrell . . . From where?
If she’s a part of this conspiracy, this may ALL be another lie.
She put the cup to her lips, raised it as if drinking, her lips pressed tight shut, and tried through a surge of panic to remember what Lieutenant Dowling had said about oleander’s deadliness. She set the cup down and immediately rested her chin on her hand as she studied the note, in such a way as to unobtrusively wipe her lips . . .
The paper on which the note was written looked like the same kind used in the Fluckner household. The ink, too: blue black with a good color to it, not the thinner sort used by John for drafts and documents of little importance. She was conscious of her heart pounding, of a shivering coldness rushing through her body. If EVERYTHING she has said is a lie . . .
Raising her eyes again, she became aware that Mrs. Sandhayes had changed the way she dressed her hair. No one—no grown woman that she knew, certainly no woman with the slightest pretension to fashion—wore her hair to cover her ears. The schoolgirl curls that the chaperone had induced to cluster around her face, hanging down from the more fashionable side-rolls of hair, were grotesque in the extreme, but grotesque in a different manner than the woman’s usual swagged fantasias of poufs and powder. As if her eyes had changed their focus, it seemed to Abigail that she could see through the gaudy makeup, to the severe—almost masculine—bone structure of the face, the strong chin and long nose . . .
She said, in a tone of surprise, “What on earth did you do to your ear?”
Mrs. Sandhayes’s left hand jerked toward that mass of curls, and as she touched them, Abigail saw that indeed the lobe of the ear was scabbed as if recently torn. With swift deliberation she raised her teacup to her tight-sealed lips again, made the pretense of drinking. Anything to put Mrs. Sandhayes off her guard—to put her at ease and make her think the danger is already taken care of—
Her visitor was watching her now with narrowed eyes, though her laugh was as empty and sparkling as ever. “Would you believe it, when I was dressing these silly curls—Did you ever see anything so foolish? Yet I understand they are all the rage now in London!—I caught the comb in my earring, a silly girl’s trick—”
“Oh, heavens—” Abigail made herself laugh, too, then drew a deep breath, pressed a hand to her bosom. “You must—forgive me. I feel suddenly queer—” What are the symptoms of oleander poisoning? “Pattie—” She staggered to her feet, and Margaret Sandhayes, with not the slightest effort to reach for her walking-sticks, sprang up like a panther, rounded the table, seized her by the arm, and shoved her back into her chair with one hand, and produced a pistol from her pocket with the other.
The walking-sticks clattered unheeded to the floor.
Well, of course she’d have lied about not being able to walk—
“If you’d drunk oleander, you would be retching your heart out by this time.”
Abigail forced herself to look away from the pistol, and up into Mrs. Sandhayes’s face. “Is oleander what you gave to Jonathan Cottrell?”
“Oleander is swift,” said the Englishwoman quietly, her pistol never wavering. “I did not wish him to die swiftly.”
At her words, Abigail saw with sudden and terrible clarity the square front hall of the Pear Tree House, like a great square well with doors to the rooms around it: west, east, north, and the front door facing south. Saw the telltale holes where bolts had been put on every door that would provide escape, upstairs and down.
She gave him the poison, got him into the hall . . .
And stood there on the stairs to watch him die. Not swiftly.
If he’d tried to mount the stair, she had only to retreat into one of the chambers, which communicated with each other and were all locked in their turn.
A chill went through Abigail at the deliberateness of it.
As deliberate as the poisoning of a whole household, when it looked like one member of it was getting close to the truth.
As deliberate as killing the servant in order to make sure no one met the Hetty at the wharf and saw that the man who got off was not, in fact, Sir Jonathan Cottrell.
Sandhayes nodded at the cup. “Drink it.”
“What did you use on him?” asked Abigail conversationally, though her heart was racing so that the tips of her ears felt like they were on fire. “Not death-cap mushroom, like poor Mr. Fenton, surely—Put that pistol down, m’am, you know perfectly well you can’t shoot me.”
“Can’t I?” Mrs. Sandhayes raised her brows.
“Well, you can’t very well go claiming to Pattie that I fell over and died of sickness if I’ve got a bullet-hole in me—”
“I won’t have to,” replied the Englishwoman. “All I’ll have to do is scream for Pattie, and she’ll come rushing downstairs and through that door. I can crack her skull with the butt of it while she’s bending over you. And unless you drink what is in that cup, Mrs. Adams, I assure you that after shooting you, and disposing of the helpful Pattie, I will then cover my tracks by setting this house afire, and leave your little sons upstairs to burn.”
Abigail stared at her, open-mouthed in shock. “And that is what Sybilla would have wanted you to do?” she asked after a time.
“Don’t name her to me.” The older woman’s eyes flashed with a cold green light. “You know nothing about it.”
“I know what I’m hearing,” replied Abigail. “Listen to yourself, woman! You honestly feel you can simply kill a man—”
It was Mrs. Sandhayes’s turn to stare. “Listen to yourself, Mrs. Adams. You honestly think that the man who raped a sixteen-year-old girl for his own amusement—only it was not rape, but murder, when she found she was with child—should walk away free? Or are you just like the men whose company you so clearly prefer? It’s perfectly all right to burn the hide off a man with boiling tar, or to thrust his wife and children into a life of poverty and ignorance by destroying his shop or ruining his business in the name of politics, but for actual justice—for the redress of human wrongs—you have little time.” She shifted as Abigail glanced toward the door, brought the pistol up closer. “Besides,” she added after a moment, “that isn’t poison in that tea—or whatever it is your girl gave me. It will make you sick and then put you to sleep for twenty-four hours, until I am well away from Boston. That’s all. I just need time.”
No, thought Abigail. What you need is an open road back to England, and to the family and the life you left . . . something you won’t have if there’s ANYONE who understands how you poisoned a man on the night you were at a ball in plain sight of two hundred people.
And the note I sent to Lucy yesterday told you that’s exactly what I am.
She took a breath, and made her shoulders relax as if in acquiescence; turned her face slightly away. Her hands were shaking so badly she wasn’t sure she’d be able to grip anything. You can do this . . . you can do this . . . O God, help me do this . . . She was aware of her adversary close at her elbow as she turned back toward the table, of the pistol against her side.