Treadles got to the point. “Mrs. Meek, have you ever gone by another name?”
All the blood drained from her face. “Why do you ask?”
He simply waited.
“I was framed!” Her voice shot up an entire octave, giving her words a jagged edge. “The man I worked for—it was him. His cousins had a sheep farm and they kept white arsenic for dressing the wool. A month before everyone died he visited his cousins. He mixed that arsenic into the spare jar of snipped-and-pounded sugar I kept in the cupboard. And of course he made sure to be away on business when the sugar in the kitchen jar ran out and I started using sugar from the other jar.
“I brought the children milk with sugar and hot cocoa for the missus, like I did every morning. They also had buttered toast sprinkled with sugar. You can’t imagine their suffering that day. I was frantic with worry. But I never thought they were poisoned. And I never thought I’d be charged.
“She wasn’t a pretty or clever woman. But she tried to make the best possible home for him. And the children were sweet and loved everything I cooked. I was happy to hear that their father, when he proposed to the daughter of a business associate less than a year later, was turned down. I was even happier to learn that he’d died on his cousin’s sheep farm, after he was gored by an angry ram. Perhaps God wasn’t blind and deaf after all.”
She knotted her fingers together, fingers that were large and rough from work. “But if that was justice from above, it came too late for me. My young man, he believed that I was innocent, but his mother wouldn’t let him marry anyone who’d been through such a public trial—not to mention she was afraid I’d poison her. And I couldn’t stay in Lancashire anymore. I had to say good-bye to him, move far away, change my name, and make a new life for myself.
The former Nancy Monk looked up at Treadles, her gaze direct and earnest. “I did not poison Mr. Sackville. And if you check with my previous employer—I served her for twenty years—you’ll find that I told the truth. She was sorry to see me go. And I’d have stayed on, but I’m not so young anymore and it was too much work feeding two dozen dyspeptic ladies day in and day out.”
“We will most assuredly be checking with your previous employer,” said Treadles.
Her distress was so palpable that he found it difficult to breathe. He wanted to believe her, but he could not allow his own sympathies to muddy the investigation.
“And what do you intend to do in the meanwhile, Inspector?” Mrs. Meek’s shoulders slumped. “Arrest me?”
Treadles sighed inwardly. “I do not plan to—yet. But I strongly caution you to remain in this house—or be considered a fugitive from the law.”
Treadles did not forget about the photograph, but Mrs. Cornish had a ready explanation. “Becky took it with her when she left. She wanted to go home, but she was afraid her parents wouldn’t let her leave again. So she asked for the photograph as a memento.”
Treadles nodded. “During my interviews with other members of the staff, I learned of a whisky decanter that you were searching for, Mrs. Cornish. You failed to mention it to me.”
Mrs. Cornish sucked in a breath. “But that had nothing to do with the case. There’s never been any theft in this house for as long as I’ve been here and I was upset that as soon as Mr. Sackville died somebody thought it was all right to swipe something of his.”
On the face of it, this was a plausible enough explanation. But then again, if one merely went by appearances, there would not be an investigation into Mr. Sackville’s death. “Did you ever find it?”
“No,” said the housekeeper immediately.
“Do let us know if it turns up.”
“Of course, Inspector.” Mrs. Cornish smiled tightly. “Of course.”
Sixteen
The response to Sherlock Holmes’s advertisement in the papers was beyond anything Charlotte could have anticipated. Even Mrs. Watson declared herself more than gratified by the influx of inquiries.
There were, as she had cautioned Charlotte, a number of letters that had nothing to do with perplexing issues that needed unraveling. Several missives scolded Sherlock Holmes for interfering in matters that were none of his concern—one purporting to be from a friend of Lady Amelia’s, another a relation of Lady Shrewsbury’s. A few others claimed friendship—and kinship—with the fictional Holmes, expressing hope for renewed acquaintance and perhaps some financial assistance. The ones that amused her the most were a half dozen or so marriage proposals, from women who didn’t want the singular genius of their time to lack the warmth and solicitude of a good wife.