A Dangerous Collaboration (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery) Deanna Raybourn (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📖

She nodded, lifting her wrist to show the length of colored cord knotted there. Dangling from it was a slim silver medallion with a worn inscription of some sort. “It’s a coin, salvaged from a Spanish shipwreck on the beach.”

“Rather unlucky for the fellow who wore it last,” Stoker ventured. “Spanish sailors have never fared well in these waters.”

“It is better than nothing,” she returned, lifting her chin.

“Why did you try to leave the island today?” I asked.

“Because of her,” Helen said. “If she walks, who is to say whom she will visit? What harm she will do? She died in the prime of her life on her wedding day. She must be angry, so terribly angry.” Her voice faded to a rough whisper, thick with fear.

Stoker’s pity seemed to stir then. He put a consoling hand to her arm. “I am certain you have nothing to be afraid of.”

She gave him a grateful look, and I chose then to speak. “I am not so certain,” I began slowly.

She blinked, panic returning to her. “What do you mean?”

“If Rosamund is returning, if her spirit is uneasy, it must mean that she has unfinished business. She wants something—revenge? To make us aware of how she died? A proper burial? Or to punish those who did not protect her in life?”

I stepped towards Helen with each question, coming so near that I could see the pupils of her eyes dilate in terror.

“Mertensia,” she said, bursting out with the name. “She would want Mertensia. I heard them quarreling the night before the wedding. In the garden. It was terrible! I thought Mertensia would kill her—” She broke off suddenly, two spots of color burning in the dead white of her face.

I stepped back, giving her a consoling smile. “There. I’m certain Stoker is right and you have nothing to be afraid of. All the same,” I added, “I would not leave this room after dark if I were you.”

CHAPTER

17

“That was a trifle mean,” Stoker observed as we made our way from the family wing. “Even for you.”

I bristled at his accusing me once more of small-spirited behavior. “I was not mean. And if I were, she deserved it. I seem to recall you carping endlessly about her fleecing the grief-stricken.”

“Oh, I object to her occupation on principle, but there is something pitiable about her nonetheless.”

I quickened my pace. “The sentimentality of the male sex never ceases to astonish me,” I muttered.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing,” I returned. “Except that for a man who has suffered as much as you at the hands of women, I should have thought by now you would be immune to feminine wiles.”

“Wiles! If you think that Helen Romilly possesses one wile—”

We were still arguing when we reached the stillroom. I had hopes of bearding Mertensia in her den. She was not there, but the pan gently steaming on the hob intimated a return shortly.

We occupied the time investigating our surroundings, and the stillroom offered much to see. The room was fitted with shelves from stone floor to beamed ceiling, spanning the length of the walls. Each shelf held an array of glass jars, some clear, some amber, some green, and every jar was filled with something interesting. There were potions and decoctions, creams and salves, elixirs and balms. From the beams hung clusters of drying herbs, and in the corner stood a copper distillation device and next to it a large sink. A worktable had been placed in the center of the room, its surface scrubbed clean, and behind it a bookshelf had been hung and stacked with herbals, physic books, pharmacopeia, and florilegia. Another set of shelves held an assortment of equipment, glass beakers, pans, spoons, measuring devices.

“I’ll be damned,” Stoker said in a low voice. “This is nothing like my nanny’s stillroom.”

“I should have thought the Templeton-Vanes grand enough to have a stillroom maid,” I remarked as I thumbed my way through the books. I was still annoyed with him but curious in spite of myself.

“We did, but that was Nanny’s first post starting in the house and she guarded our stillroom like a dragon. And if she had seen this one, she would have raised holy hell with my father until he had equipped hers better.”

“What sort of things did your nanny brew up?”

“Toothache remedies and jams,” he said promptly as he studied the shelves of herbal mixtures. “Nothing to touch this. My God, she has a preparation of foxglove here!”

I glanced over to where he stood enraptured with Mertensia’s collection. “For treating heart ailments?”

“Or poisoning people,” he returned. “Everything on this shelf could kill a man—or woman—in sufficient doses.” He began reading off the labels, each penned in Mertensia’s tidy hand. “Peppermint syrup for digestion, lettuce juice for headache, fig syrup for constipation. Those are the harmless ones. But this shelf”—he returned to the foxglove preparation on the top shelf—“this lot is altogether different.” He paused, moving closer to the bottles as he extracted one. “Mertensia does more than dabble in digestive tisanes,” he said as he lifted the bottle to the light.

I plucked a book from the shelf. It was thick and bound in dark green cloth stamped with a golden mermaid. I flipped through the pages, realizing that it was a sort of receipt book, recording her various preparations with notations and scribbling as she perfected each. Within the leaves were loose pieces of paper, laundry lists and notes from Mrs. Trengrouse, doubtless thrust aside to be forgot in the fever to brew a new batch of potions. I skimmed them, stopping when I came to a sheet of cheap paper headed with the name of a barely respectable hotel for ladies in London. There was no salutation and the text picked up in the middle of a paragraph. Clearly the first page had been lost, but I recognized that flamboyant hand immediately.

—why I am so terribly desperate. I cannot describe to you the awfulness of this place.