Chapter 7
GOSSIP AND CASUAL CONVERSATIONS
The sunlight through the apse windows shone down on the pulpit as Sir James and the Summerworth carpenter, Elmore McCurdy, studied the pulpit platform. In the bright, unexpected sunlight, James could see that the platform was in worse shape than he’d observed the previous day.
“What do you think, Mr. McCurdy? Can this be fixed before Sunday services?”
“Och, aye, sar, if’n I takes off the skirt with the decorative carving nice and easy-like, to build the platform, can be done in a tick. Then we stain it and put back these purty skirt pieces, and it be better than ever. You want as how I should go ahead and do this?”
“What other jobs do you have?”
“Reet now only a new gate in the back pasture.”
“The one we talked about connecting to the Aldrich property?”
“That be the one. And the new bed for young Master Hugh.”
James nodded. “Both of those can wait on the church repairs. I’d like this platform completed first, then the Vicar has other repairs here I’d like you to look at as well. Take as long as you like on the repairs for the church property. The vicar needs a good ear right now.”
“I catch your meanin’, sar. I’d be happy to,” the carpenter said, with a wide grin and a conspiratorial wink.
James laughed. “Good man. Let’s find the vicar and tell him you are at his disposal to attend to the repairs.”
“Reet behind ya, sar,” Mr. McCurdy said as James walked out the side door of the church.
They found Mr. Jones at the open door of the rectory, glowering after a visitor who scuttled away.
“Mr. Jones, is there a problem?” James asked.
“What?” Mr. Jones said, jerked out of his thoughts.
He turned toward Sir James. “That is the second person in two days to gently suggest my Miranda accidentally killed Miss Inglewood with her tisane. Thought that explained my wife’s death, that she took her own life in guilt and sorrow, never no mind what the inquest said.
” The vicar shook his head, then ran his hand through his sparse white hair.
“This village likes its drama and will make it up out of whole cloth if they need to. –But I’m sorry, I’m sure you didn’t come here to discuss the unfortunate gossip. ”
“Hardly,” agreed James. “I’ve brought Mr. McCurdy around to survey repairs to be done here. He tells me they will be straightforward.”
“Aye,” said Mr. McCurdy. “Work be slow up at the Park now. I’d be reet glad to busy ma hands with work. And I wouldna mind but to put a bee in an ear of any who want to come by to speak badly of yur missus. She were a good woman.”
The vicar smiled slightly. “Thank you, Mr. McCurdy.”
“I’m a goin’ to hie meself on up to the Park now to git ma tools, and I’ll be back after noonins.” He reset his cap on his head, and after a nod to both of them, he trotted down the road toward Summerworth Park.
“I’m hearing noises from inside your house,” James observed after Mr. McCurdy left.
“Mrs. Hull. She simply came and started doing for me. I didn’t have much say, other than I know of other parties who want to do the housekeeping and cooking for me. Did make a fine meat pie last night.”
“My wife told me that Mrs. Hull feared you would give the job to Mrs. Ralston.”
“I was thinking about it. She is younger than Mrs. Hull, and I thought she could get around better,” the Vicar confessed. “But Mrs. Hull has dug in and done stuff even Miranda hasn’t done in a couple of months.”
“Lady Branstoke told me she used to come around to help Mrs. Jones in the garden.”
The vicar nodded. “And in her still room as well.”
James paused and tilted his head for a moment. “Would she know the recipe for the pennyroyal abortifacient?”
His brow furrowed. “Probably,” he said slowly. “It is most likely in one of Miranda’s herbal journals.”
“Do you know if Mrs. Hall can read?”
“Yes, she can. At one time, when she was young, she was a governess. I heard her and Faith talking about that when Faith was thinking of answering advertisements for governesses. Gave her lots of advice. Now you’ve got me wondering if she made the tisane for Miss Inglewood.
” His brows furrowed together as his lips compressed, and he turned to walk back into the house.
James caught his arm. “Easy. No sense running off with worries and assumptions. That will make you no better than those who come to you with their suspicions of Mrs. Jones.”
The vicar stopped, his expression crumbling. “There is truth in what you say.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair. “But I just want to know!”
“As does everyone else. We’ll go together. Let me lead the conversation.”
“All right, Sir James. Now that you brought my head around, I hope my wild thoughts are wrong.”
They found Mrs. Hull cleaning the shelves in the vicar’s study, humming a tuneless song as she worked.
“Mrs. Hull? …Excuse me, Mrs. Hull?” the vicar said, striving to get her attention.
The woman jumped. “Oh!” she said as she turned around.
“Oh, vicar, you gave me such a fright, so in my head I be dustin’,” she said with a merry smile.
“And me hummin’ when I know I cain’t carry a tune in a bucket,” she added with a laugh.
“Oh, and hello to you, too, Sir James. I didn’t see you there.
” She curtsied hastily. “Is there somethin’ I can do fur you gentlemen? ”
“Yes, Mrs. Hull,” James said, stepping further into the room. “I would like to know more about Mrs. Jones’ herbals. The vicar said he didn’t pay much attention to the herbals, but said you often helped her and you might be able to answer some of my questions.”
“Yes, I did, so I rightly guess I know more than anyone.”
“Can we talk? Vicar, if you’ll take your seat behind the desk, Mrs. Hull and I can then sit here, in your visitor chairs… Excellent,” he said as everyone settled in place.
“As no doubt rumor has shared, I was with Mrs. Jones when she died and heard her last words.”
“Aye, sar,” Mrs. Hull said.
“One of her last words was pennyroyal. It sounded like she was telling someone not to use pennyroyal. She said: No Pennyroyal. Stop stop. Do you have any notion what she might have meant by that?”
“No pennyroyal. Stop stop,” Mrs. Hull repeated softly to herself, her brow furrowing in thought.
She shook her head and looked up at first James, then the vicar.
“No, I can’t say as I do. What I do know is Mrs. Jones said even if she had pennyroyal here, she wouldn’t give it to her.
This was not the first time Miss Inglewood had been with child, you know,” she said with a knowing look.
The gentlemen exchanged looks. “No, Mrs. Hull, I didn’t know that,” James said softly.
Mrs. Hull nodded sagely. “And it were less than a year ago, too. Mrs. Jones said she had given her the pennyroyal the first time—”
“No,” protested the vicar. “My Miranda wouldn’t do that.”
Mrs. Hull stared at him for a long moment.
“I’m sorry, vicar, but you are wrong. She did.
But she told me she couldn’t do it again, and so she also told Miss Inglewood.
That young lady came to visit—I guess it was a week before she died—Miss Inglewood, that be, not Mrs. Jones.
She told her she didn’t have any, which was true.
She said pennyroyal is too strong and it would be too hard on Miss Inglewood’s body a second time.
She could die or at least become sickly.
Told her even if she had the herb, she wouldn’t give her any.
Miss Inglewood started screaming at her then, something awful, and ran out of the rectory. ”
“Do you know for a fact that there is no pennyroyal in Mrs. Jones’ stillroom?” James asked her.
“Are you accusing Mrs. Jones of lying?” Mrs. Hull demanded, clearly affronted.
James let a ghost of a smile touch his lips. He liked Mrs. Hull’s loyalty. “No; however, sometimes people forget or misplace things. And I imagine it would be easy to do that in a stillroom.”
“Humph,” Mrs. Hull grunted as she looked at him side-eyed.
Then she appeared to relax a little. “I believed her, and I think folks who knew her would take her word. But truthfully, I cain’t say.
I ain’t been in that stillroom for nigh on a month.
Haven’t had a reason to as there’s so much to do in the gardens, planting and weeding, and not much yet available to harvest this time of year. ”
“Thank you, Mrs. Hull. When you get the opportunity, I would request you check her stillroom.”
“For what?”
“For anything out of the ordinary.”
While James visited the vicar, Cecilia and her maid, Sarah, walked down into the village.
Cecilia didn’t have a decided destination.
She was walking for inspiration, and intuition told her where to go.
The villagers were, by nature, friendly and always up for listening to the latest scrap of gossip.
Gossip wasn’t Cecilia’s favored occupation; however, she owned it could aid in investigations—particularly in villages seemingly ruled by gossip.
They walked past the pub. The door stood propped open, and from the dark interior, she heard the murmur of voices, but she was not wont to look for answers in the pub in the morning when only those who lived to imbibe dwelled there during the day.
As they walked past the pub, Cecilia detected the smell of bread baking.
It wafted to them on a light morning breeze from the bakery two buildings further down the road.
The old Tudor building had a stone-walled ground floor and a wattle and daub first floor that jutted out over the lower level, shading the door and display window below.
“I think a nice warm bun might be a fine way to start our morning, don’t you, Sarah?” Cecilia suggested, steering her maid toward the building.
Sarah’s eyes lit up. “Definitely, milady.”
“Lady Aldrich told me the baker makes good teething biscuits for the little ones. She purchased biscuits for Charlotte here until her cook devised a biscuit recipe very similar to the baker’s.”