He was watching her again, with an intentness that she found hard to attribute merely to grief for a wife who had betrayed him. Trying to read her, she thought, as she—her eyes downcast in a counterfeit of confusion—was trying to read him.
“They had no acquaintance in common that you know of?”
“In the past, I’m sure they did. Given Mrs. Malvern’s current circumstances, I can hardly imagine any woman with whom my wife was associated, who would acknowledge the connection.”
The revival of the implication that Rebecca had deserted Charles Malvern out of a craving for low company brought a flush of anger to Abigail’s face, and though she lowered her head in submissive assent, she took a good deal of pleasure in saying meekly, “Of course, sir. And would you know what to make of the story that I have heard, that you were seen in Hull Street, at half past eleven on the Wednesday night, on foot and walking toward the waterfront?”
Pentyre couldn’t stop himself. He threw a fast glance over his shoulder, to see if Coldstone had heard.
If he but blench . . .
“That is a lie,” he said—not loudly enough for the words to carry to the Lieutenant.
“Is it?” said Abigail in a normal tone. “I understood that—”
“I am a man with many enemies, Madame, and as such I cannot hope to keep track of the calumnies that may be circulated about me by the disgruntled. Fortunately, it is well attested—by the sons of Governor Hutchinson—that I was at cards with them, in their father’s mansion on Marlborough Street, quite at the other end of the town.” As he spoke his eyes shifted, and for a moment, behind the wary anger in them, she thought she saw fear.
Why fear?
“I’m sorry that I could not be of more assistance.” He was on his feet. At the other side of the office, looking the tiniest bit surprised, Coldstone rose from his chair.
Hamlet, or Viola, or the wily Odysseus, would have had precisely the right question to call the merchant back, to pique his vanity or his curiosity or his fear of what she might know and thus elicit further revelations . . .
And all she, Abigail Adams, could do was incline her head, and say, “I thank you for your trouble, sir—and for the information you have given me.”
Would a murderer have turned back, asked in not-quite-concealed concern, And what information was that, pray, my dear Mrs. Adams?
Richard Pentyre got out of the room as promptly as he was able—she had the impression he only barely kept himself from backing from her presence.
“Please wait here, Mrs. Adams.” Coldstone favored her with a slight bow, and followed him out.
Abigail folded her hands, her heart beating hard. She had touched him on the raw, beyond a doubt; frightened him. It crossed her mind to wonder what he was going to say to Coldstone, who might very well have seen or heard something. Or would it suffice merely to play his trump card: I am the Governor’s friend. The law does not apply to me.
In certain matters it didn’t. The fact that the Governor’s friends, like the King’s, could get away with financial peculation and chicanery with the customs was one of the things that most maddened Sam, and John, and others. In a question of murder, however, he was likely to find matters less amenable to influence.
Or was he? The thought was a disconcerting one. In Pamela, as John had derisively pointed out, the lustful and demanding Mr. B held his power precisely as Governor Hutchinson held it: because every man’s livelihood depended upon his whim. No one considered a servant girl’s honor more important than keeping a roof over one’s own head or food on one’s family table.
The door opened. Abigail got to her feet, lips parting to ask Coldstone what Pentyre had said—
Only it wasn’t Lieutenant Coldstone in the doorway, but a tall, buxom, black-haired young girl in an overly colorful parakeet green dress.
In fact—Abigail belatedly identified the newcomer—it was the Royal Commissioner’s daughter, Miss Lucy Fluckner.
“Mrs. Adams?” The girl’s husky hesitancy, Abigail guessed at once, was not her usual habit. “We need to speak to you. I-I think it’s on a matter of life and death.”
Twenty-two
The Fluckners had two rooms in what was clearly the officers’ quarters of Castle William: Abigail wondered who had been displaced to make way for them. The suite had obviously been intended to house an officer and his servant, for a door connected its rooms, and in addition each had a door and a window looking out onto the parade ground. A light burned in the window of the smaller chamber, an uneasy reminder that, though daylight remained in the sky, evening was coming on fast. The wind, which, as she had prayed it would, had slackened for her crossing, was now getting up again, and whistled shrilly around the fortress walls. It would be a bitter night for those lodged under canvas. As she crossed the parade in Miss Fluckner’s wake, Abigail checked her watch, reflecting that she had best hold fast to what she had instructed Thaxter to tell Lieutenant Coldstone: that she would return in one hour.
The Lieutenant’s probable reaction, when he returned to the office and found John’s clerk there instead of herself, she put from her mind. Instead she mentally marshaled the arguments she’d have to present to this decisive-looking young lady—or her irascible father—about where she, Abigail, was supposed to spend the night—
And tried to salve her conscience about playing sleuth-hound on the Sabbath yet again.
A matter of life and death?
“No one will believe Philomela when she says she’s in danger,” said Miss Fluckner—who was, Abigail was pleased to see, one of the few women of her acquaintance who walked as briskly as she did herself. “They say—Papa says—she just doesn’t want to be sold, because I indulge her and she’s afraid that another master wouldn’t.” Though Colonel Leslie had clearly given orders that the open parade in the center of the fort was to remain open, all around its edges pens had been set up for sheep, cows, pigs. As they approached the doors Abigail was obliged to gather up her skirts lest they be caught on the corners of makeshift chicken-coops. “Papa says she’s sly, playing on what he calls my ‘romantical fancies.’ Papa says all Negroes are liars.”
“I expect a good number of slaves do learn to lie, if ’tis the only way they’ll escape a beating,” remarked Abigail rather drily. “And since their masters would sooner blame them than themselves for things that go wrong, one can scarcely take issue with this evidence of intelligence on their part. I am pleased that you’re treating your servant’s danger seriously, but what prompted you to come to me? Don’t tell me my reputation for detecting wrongdoing has spread beyond this affair of Mrs. Pentyre?”
“But it is about Mrs. Pentyre’s murder.” Miss Fluckner stopped before the door, regarded her with wide eyes of a jewel-like blue. “Mr. Malvern’s Scipio told Philomela that you were looking for the man who did it—that you’d gone to talk to Mrs. Fishwire’s neighbors, because she was killed the same way—”
“Wait a moment,” said Abigail, with a sense of shock. “Are you telling me that your servant Philomela—the young woman I saw with you on Rowe’s Wharf yesterday, I presume—”
Miss Fluckner nodded, black curls bouncing.
“—believes herself to be in danger from the same man who killed those other women? How does she know this? Has she seen him?”
“She thinks so. She doesn’t know, Mrs. Adams, but she’s mortally afraid.” Miss Fluckner opened the door.
Philomela got to her feet. Abigail’s impression of yesterday was confirmed. Slender and graceful, even in the neat chintz frock and mobcap of a maidservant, she was probably the most beautiful woman Abigail had ever seen. She sank into a curtsey as Miss Fluckner said, “Mrs. Adams, this is Philomela.”