“Did Nicholas ever mention that conversation to his mother?”
“Lord, no! Before he’d found her, they set up a shout about Mr. Brian being bad hurt, and Mr. Nicholas, he looked like a ghost walking and never spoke of it to a soul except Olivia, and that was only after the funeral. I was the one laid out Mr. Brian, when they brought him up the stairs and put him in the bedroom beyond the landing. Looking for a clean shirt, so’s to make him presentable for Miss Rosamund, I found a letter ready to mail in his drawer, stuck deep under them. It was to Mr. Chambers, and it set out, starkly, the circumstances of Mr. Cormac’s birth. But when I spoke of it to Miss Olivia and we went to look for it, it was gone. Mr. Chambers, he never got it.”
“You read it? When you found it?”
She got up and went to the door to let the cat out into the night. He caught the breath of the sea and knew that the wind had changed direction. “Have you never lived in a house with servants? They aren’t deaf as posts and blind as bats. It was buried amongst his shirts, sir, not in his desk. I’d never have touched the papers in his desk, but it fell out on the floor and the sheet of paper went this way, the envelope that. I picked ‘em up and read the one before putting it in the other and setting it where it belonged, in the desk. And it was gone from there the next day.”
“You’re certain Mrs. FitzHugh herself hadn’t take it?”
“Well, as to that, sir, we couldn’t very well ask, could we, now! But later, when she was restless and uneasy in her mind, wandering the house all hours of the night, trying for sleep and not finding it, I wondered. Mr. Adrian, her father, hadn’t wanted her to marry Mr. Brian, and she knew it, but Mr. Brian was a kind man, he made her laugh and he had no eye for her money. The house’d gone to Miss Olivia, but the money was still Miss Rosamund’s. Mr. Brian gave no thought to it. He was happy if she was, and he gave her the twins, and Miss Rosamund adored them. It wasn’t a bad marriage to my way of thinking. Then Mr. Chambers, he started coming around when the period of mourning was finished, and Miss Rosamund, she looked for a time to be herself again, roses in her cheeks and that special way she had of tilting her head as if listening to something sweet in the air, whenever she was happy.”
Sadie, standing at the open door, shut it as the cat came back inside, and went to the hearth to stand. She was tired, her face deeply lined. But Rutledge thought he couldn’t have stopped her now if he’d tried.
“That was in June. By September she was dead, and they said it was by her own hand. But Lord, sir, I knew how much of the laudanum she’d took! I was the one that had to beg her each night to swallow half a draught to ease the despair she’d felt all through that last month. But she’d shake her head and say, ‘No, Sadie, I need my wits about me!’ ‘You’ll have no wits left, if ye don’t rest!’ I told her plain out, but she said ‘There’s something I must do, and I’m not sure exactly how to set about it. I’m not going to marry Mr. Chambers. Or anyone else. I’ve got my children to live for, and that’s the most important part of my life now.’ There was no changing her mind, she was that strong.”
“She’d decided against marrying Thomas Chambers? Had she actually told him that?”
“Oh, lord, yes, but he was there every weekend, come to call and dine with her. I heard her say to him once, ‘I’ve killed them all. George and James and Brian. I can’t bear to
see you die, and I won’t, I tell you!’ And he said, That’s nonsense, my love, you’re letting grief turn your thoughts.’ She just looked at him, her face sad. ‘I’m bad luck, Tom, I’d rather stay single than wear widow’s weeds ever again.”
“What made her think she had killed them?” He was fascinated, pretending to drink his tea and over the rim of his cup watching the old face in the lamp’s light, trying to read the eyes.
‘‘Ah, but did she? I wondered about that for the longest time. Miss Olivia, she said it was deeper than that, she thought Mr. Cormac, he was in love with Miss Rosamund. But there was no speaking of it, not to Miss Rosamund. She’d smile and say her spirits were fine, she’d just decided that marriage was not worth the grieving afterward.”
“Then how did she come to die?”
“That were odd, sir. One day she said to Miss Olivia, ‘I think I’ll ask Tom to come for the weekend. I need to speak to him. Legal matters, and perhaps after that’s done, we may find it possible to talk about other things.’ I was on the stairs, helping Mr. Cormac and Mr. Nicholas move a chest down from the attics that Mr. Cormac wanted to take back to his London rooms. You could hear their voices as you came down, talking in the drawing room. Then Miss Rosamund, she came out, she looked up at me, and her face turned that bleak I wanted to weep. I didn’t know what’d unsettled her, but it was there in her eyes. Cold as death. It was Miss Olivia who found the note she left, and burned it in the grate.”
“A note? I was never told that there was a note found when Rosamund died!” Rutledge said, appalled.
Sadie sat down, heavily and with great effort, then asked him to fetch her homemade wine, from the small cupboard by the dry sink. When she’d finished half the glass and got her breath with more comfort, she said, “No. Miss Olivia, she burned it, like I said. It was written in a scrawl you’d hardly recognize, and hidden under the pillow. Just a name. And a warning. ’Twas all Miss Olivia needed. She went whiter than she was and bent over her mother’s body in such grief I couldn’t bear it. So I walked out of the room and went
to fetch Mr. Nicholas, The note was never spoken of again. I didn’t need to be told. I’d heard the hounds myself since poor little Richard was taken. I knew who’d put the overdose in Miss Rosamund’s water. Not her, not that woman so full of life and love—she’d not have gone to her God with self-murder on her hands!” It was spoken with a vehemence that brought an angry flush to Sadie’s cheeks. In a stronger voice she added, “The twins, they were still too young to know anything about such things, only that their mother’d taken ill in the night and overdosed herself. Mr. Chambers, he was heartbroken. You’d have thought he was the grieving widower, not the family’s lawyer. It was the Gabriel hounds that whispered in her ear, bending over her as she dropped into that last sleep, and she’d known, she’d known where the danger was!”
“The danger to herself?”
“Oh, aye, that, and the danger to Miss Olivia. Because the truth of the matter was, you see, Mr. Cormac’d set his cap next for Miss Olivia. If he couldn’t become a Trevelyan in one way, he’d do it another. And Miss Rosamund, she wouldn’t marry him. Nor after begging her, how could he ask for Miss Olivia, without it all coming out? She’d have told Mr. Chambers too when he came, sure as God gave her the breath. It was what she’d decided, after all the worry and the sleepnessness. He was in a bind, and the easy answer was to remove the light of that house. Miss Rosamund, she’d used every excuse to put Mr. Chambers off, and he hadn’t run, he still wanted her with all his heart. He’d have done whatever she asked. He’d have questioned Olivia, too, and she might have told him at long last what was on her soul. But when Miss Rosamund died, Mr. Chambers was so sunk in his own pain that there was no way of reaching out to him. Miss Olivia buried her mother and told the world that grief had overwhelmed her in the night. Mr. Smedley, he loved that family, and he wouldn’t hear of suicide. Nor Dr. Penrith. He said her hands had been shaking, she’d been in a muddle from no sleep, and it was easy for her to make such a tragic mistake—dosing herself rather than waking one of the servants