“What do you remember of that morning?”
She stopped, her hands deep in the white dough. Her gaze shifted to the door leading to the garden. “Dawn was just breaking. You know your mother’s an early riser. Said she wanted to get some things from the garden before it got too hot. No sooner had she gone out than she came back in, callin’ for your father.”
“Was she—” I stopped, unsure how to ask the question. “Did you see a lot of blood?”
Her brows formed a line. “Now what kind of a question is that for a young boy to ask? Don’t you be thinkin’ on such gruesome ideas.”
She went back to pounding the dough, and I knew she wouldn’t answer any more questions along this line. I decided on another topic. “What was she wearing that day?”
A shrug followed her burying her fist into the bread. “One of her house dresses.”
“Has it been washed?”
“Has it—?” The violence with which she now worked the bread caused small clouds of flour to rise about the edges. “How should I know? I’m the cook, not the laundress. Ask Mrs. Simpson.”
With a sigh, I dropped my gaze to the floor. I had hoped—
My body tightened when I focused on my shoes. With a jerk, I raised my head. “What about her boots? Was she wearing her gardening boots?”
“Her boots?” She blinked at me. “I don’t recall, but she must have been.”
Without waiting for more information, I rushed through the door to the rest of house and down the hallway leading to the conservatory.
Just inside the entrance, however, I pulled to a stop. The scents of damp earth and of green, growing things enveloped me and carried with them memories of my times helping my mother. I could clearly see the sunlight dance on her face as we traversed the various aisles and she quizzed me on the names of the plants she cultivated. In later years, I came to understand how different her collection was than most. Hers was an assortment of very specific species of medicinal plants selected for their treatment of different illnesses. Even the usual trees found in greenhouses—such as lemon and orange—were there because of their healing properties.
Following a deep breath, I passed between the rows of the pots in search of my mother’s gardening boots. This required me to push aside the leaves to check underneath them as well.
My heart pounded against my ribs. What would I do once I found them? And what would they show? To calm myself, at each pot, I recited the Latin and common name for each as well as what my mother had taught me about their different properties.
Mentha × piperita, or peppermint, good for nausea. I picked a leaf and chewed it, further calming myself.
Rosmarinus officinalis. Rosemary. Good for memory. Mother always complained about Cook stealing stalks for her kitchen. Still, she never confronted the woman about it, and I knew she truly didn’t mind it.
Eucalyptus oblique. Eucalyptus. Good for skin eruptions.
I continued down the aisle in this manner. Nothing. At the end was a small stand, similar to a clerk’s table, holding her books, a series of journals inventorying the plants and their growth. She’d been experimenting with different soil enhancements. One lay open on the stand, waiting for her next entry. I picked it up to study her notes, and a pocket-sized volume fell to the floor.
As I stooped down to pick up the smaller book, my gaze fell upon a set of dried, muddy footprints on the floor. They had to be my mother’s.
I slipped the volume into my pocket and followed the prints up the next aisle. Halfway down the passage, I found her boots, lying on their side, as if kicked off in haste. I picked one up and studied the bottom. Mud, dried to a tan color, caked it and the sides. Along the top, more mud splatter.
Getting on my hands and knees, I examined the prints still on the wood planks of the greenhouse. Luckily, Mother didn’t allow servants into the conservatory, or else the tracks, the same color as that on the boots, would have been cleaned away.
But where was the blood?
If Mother had stabbed the woman with a pitchfork, wouldn’t there have been blood on her? Or her boots?
Certainly I would find it in the garden?
After a moment’s hesitation, I grabbed the boots and slid them under the table holding the pots. Once safely concealed, I dashed from the greenhouse and up the servant’s staircase to descend again down the front stairs to the breakfast room. Both my father and brother still sat at the breakfast table, each perusing part of a newspaper.
My father observed me over the top of his paper. “Bonjour.”
“Bonjour,” I said in response.
I’d almost forgotten my parents’ practice of speaking different languages at the table. As a result, we were all conversant in French, German, and Spanish.
“Dressed already?” my father asked in the language of the day.
“I’m going to the garden. I want to check the vegetables. For Mother.”
He scrutinized me for a moment before picking up the paper and hiding himself from my view. After losing the bread to the pickpocket at the gaol, I found myself quite hungry. I filled my plate with the crisp bacon, toast, and eggs from platters on the sideboard and, as fast as decorum allowed, polished off my breakfast.
“Not missing Eton’s porridge now, n’est ce pas?” Mycroft said with a smirk.
Ignoring the remark, I asked Father, “May I be excused?”
The top of his head moved behind the paper. I noticed he held it open to the same page as when I sat down. I took his gesture for agreement, and I left for my uncle’s workshop to pick up the magnifying glasses.
On the way there, I glanced to the bushes from which Mrs. Winston had appeared. I froze as I recalled our conversation. I had entirely forgotten to ask my mother about the seeds she’d requested.
How could I explain this to the maid when she returned?
My head dropped forward. I promised her and had failed to keep it. My only hope would be to ask Mother on the next visit, which I hoped was soon. I’d planned to ask my uncle that very question as soon as I got to his workshop, but as I approached the building, I could hear his snoring through the door.
I felt it safe to enter without waking him, despite my surprise greeting the night before, and let myself in. True to his word, Ernest had located his magnifying glasses, and he did have a number of different ones—all displayed on a small work table to the left. The collection included several of the normal ones—round lenses with a metal handle—in various sizes. A few others were probably his own design. I picked up what appeared to be a pair of spectacles with a series of lenses attached to it. These could be rotated down over the spectacles’ lenses to create a form of binocular.
I put them on and flipped different lenses into place, studying their various magnifications of the table’s wood surface. I found it impossible to focus well using both sides at once, but if I used it as Mother had taught me to use a microscope—with only the lenses for the right eye—the magnified image appeared in a much crisper focus and my brain concentrated on it. In the end, I selected one of the hand-held glasses as well as the spectacles and went to the garden.
With no idea what I would find, I was surprised at how easily I could identify the area where the body had lain. Being autumn, most of the garden now lay fallow, with withering stalks poking up through the raised rows. The remaining vegetables, onions, potatoes, and other root varieties as well as the fall squashes, occupied the back portion of the garden, nearest to a stone fence separating the plot from a pasture beyond.