“Do your stepchildren and own children get on?” I asked tentatively.
“Of course not. My daughter, Harriet, despises Erica and George. Not that Harriet has had much luck in matters of marriage herself. She was nearly engaged to a young man who then decided to marry another. Harriet pretends not to mind, but she too was humiliated. Oh, do not think she was in love with the idiot. She simply wanted to be married and out from under my thumb.”
Lady Covington’s death might give Harriet a bit of money, depending on how Lady Covington left things. She’d be out from under her thumb that way.
“You think me a hard woman to suspect my own flesh and blood—my own daughter,” Lady Covington said. “But if you lived in this house, you would not consider it odd. It’s rather fetid in here. Simmering anger, jealousy, resentment. In an earlier age, we’d have all killed one another by now, by the sword or pistol, in old-fashioned duels.”
She spoke with no fear. Yesterday, at the Crystal Palace, she’d been worried and tired, but today she was robust, her tongue sharp.
“You have not mentioned your son,” I ventured.
Immediately, her eyes softened. “No, no, Jonathan has nothing to do with any of this. He does not stay much in the house, which I think is wise. George hates him. But Jonathan is as concerned as I am.”
Miss Townsend had mentioned that Jonathan got himself into scrapes, probably helped out of them by his mother. If she favored him in her will, here was another person who might not be sorry if she died. Jonathan absenting himself often from the house would keep suspicion from him and protect him from ingesting any poison accidentally.
“Is there anyone else you suspect?” I asked. “Someone close to you—your lady’s maid, perhaps?”
“Jepson?” Lady Covington gazed at me in unfeigned astonishment. “Jepson would no more poison me than she would a child. She has a soft heart.”
I recalled the pinch-faced woman who’d charged to us at the Egyptian exhibition, with her impertinent words and disapproving glare. I’d never connect her with the phrase soft heart. She’d certainly chivvied Lady Covington without apology.
“It would be easiest for one of your staff to put poison into your food,” I explained. “They have the most access to your meals, while the upstairs—your family—might not. Do any of the family cook?” Some ladies and gentlemen dabbled in the culinary arts for enjoyment.
“My children and stepchildren?” Lady Covington gave me a mock-astonished look. “Heavens no. They couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger. The cook is in charge of all meals, and the footmen serve them. I do understand what you mean—it would be easy for a maid to slip something into a dish while it sits in the dumbwaiter downstairs, or a footman could while the food waits on the sideboard. But the odd thing is, only I take ill. None of the others do—they are rather complacent about that. They believe I am simply weak and sickly. I once mentioned that I worried about poisoning, but they dismissed it as a flight of fancy.”
She glared at me, as though daring me to tell her I agreed that she was in less than vigorous health.
“This person is clever then,” I said. “Or, they have access to things only you eat or drink. Do you take powders for sleeping or other ailments?” Daniel had told me she took powdered medicine, but I wanted to hear the answer from her lips.
“Only when I am ill from the food.” Lady Covington lifted her chin. “I am not subject to ailments. I have a very strong constitution. That is why I know I am being poisoned.”
“But you are unsure who is doing it. If you were certain of the culprit, you’d confront them, or summon the police.”
“You have grasped things precisely. I know I am not imagining things, but I do not know who is undertaking this or how. Now, what can you do? I have heard of you delving into the truth of matters, especially in the goings-on at the house of Sir Evan Godfrey, but speaking to you now, I wonder if you are up to the task.”
I was not offended, because I agreed with her. I’d solved the mystery in the Godfrey home—a few houses away from this one—with the help of my friends. Unless I sat in a corner watching everyone in this household, I doubted I could discover who was putting noxious substances into her meals.
“I can only do my best, your ladyship.”
“I suppose—”
“Mama?” A rustle of skirts drew my attention to the doorway, through which a young woman strode. She was Harriet, Lady Covington’s daughter. “Jepson told me you were in here. What are you doing entertaining a domestic in the sitting room?”
Her tone and her pinched lips implied that finding me here confirmed her opinion that her mother had gone completely mad.
Lady Covington regarded her daughter coldly. “I asked Mrs. Holloway to provide me a recipe. I thought it kind to give her tea for walking all this way when she has work to do.”
Harriet exuded displeasure. “You could have had Mrs. Gamble give her tea in the kitchen.”
Lady Covington rose and faced her daughter. I quietly set aside my tea and came to my feet.
Lady Covington and Harriet possessed the same stance and shape of face, glossy brown hair, and blue eyes. Their expressions of willfulness were similar as well. But I saw that the older woman was the stronger. Harriet began to wilt under her mother’s steady gaze.
“This is my house,” Lady Covington stated. “If I wish to entertain a pack of monkeys in my own sitting room, I will.”
“It’s George’s house now.” Harriet’s mouth turned down sourly. “But never mind. Do as you like. I hate George.”
“Harriet . . .” Lady Covington’s admonishment wasn’t because of Harriet’s sentiment, I surmised, but because Harriet had said such a thing in front of me.
Harriet ignored her mother and turned to me. “What sort of recipe?”
I curtsied to her. “Lemon cake, miss.”
“Ooh, I love lemon cake. Have Cook make it for tea.”
“The menus have already been set for the day,” Lady Covington said frostily.
“Well, do forgive me.” Harriet’s tone matched her mother’s. “When George marries, you know, the new Lady Covington will set the menus. Like as not, she’ll boot us all out, and then where will we be? Not that anyone would marry George, the ass.”
On the heels of these words, another woman hurried into the room, her face blotchy red with anger.
“Harriet,” she admonished. “You take that back.”
Erica Hume, née Broadhurst, dressed as fashionably as the other two ladies, but she managed to make her frock frumpy. The skirt was twisted, her collar soiled, strands of hair escaping their pins. Her coloring was pallid compared with the other two, with her sand-colored hair and light brown eyes.