Chapter 20
I had estimated Mrs. Birnam to be close to two score and ten years old, and I guessed that Ann McClintock was of a similar age.
However, the maid had not had the benefit of decades of being waited upon.
So where Mrs. Birnam was round and soft, McClintock was thin and hard.
Her hair had gone almost all iron gray and was scraped back severely from a face with not enough flesh to temper the sharp wrinkles etching the corners of her eyes and mouth and the broad swathe of her forehead.
We had been warned that she was loyal to her employer, and this bore out to be true when we attempted to question her, for she abjectly refused to answer.
She stared at the square of floor in front of her, only acknowledging our presence in the minute tightening of her lips.
I had been prepared to be convinced that Mr. Armstrong might have been mistaken in what he’d seen, but Mrs. McClintock said not a word in her defense, neither explaining what the bottle had been nor denying that it had been oil of vitriol.
With each query she ignored, my heart sank further, until with leaden feet I followed Gage from the room, standing just outside the doorway with Bree.
“Has she been like this since you brought her here?” Gage asked.
“Aye,” Bree confirmed, her arms crossed before her. “She’s no’ even coughed.”
“She does understand us, doesn’t she?” I wanted to verify. “She does speak?”
“Oh, aye. She’s just choosin’ no’ to.”
I turned to Gage, anxious to discover if he had some other explanation, but it was clear he found her silence as incriminating as I did. After all, if there was an innocent explanation, why not give it?
“Keep her here,” Gage instructed Bree before meeting my gaze. “Meanwhile, I think it’s time you and I spoke with Mrs. Birnam.” His voice hardened. “Whether she wishes to or not.”
We both knew it would be the latter. So when Matilda opened the door of her mother’s sitting room in answer to our knock and attempted to deny us entry, Gage merely pushed the door wider.
“Not this time,” I told her quietly in response to her shocked expression.
Gage allowed me to be the first to enter. Inside, I found Mrs. Birnam attempting to sit upright on the sofa where she’d been lounging.
“How dare you!” Her face flushed red. “Barging in here. Is this the way you treat your guests? I demand you leave.” She pointed toward the door. “I demand it now.”
“Mrs. Birnam, we have detained your maid,” Gage pronounced.
Behind us, Matilda gasped while Mrs. Birnam’s eyes bulged in their sockets.
“How dare you!” she exclaimed again once she’d recovered. “I demand that you release her. Release her at once!”
“We can’t do that, Mrs. Birnam,” Gage continued calmly. “She was seen with a bottle of oil of vitriol in the hours before Miss Whitlock’s murder. The same bottle that was used in the attack.”
We did not have proof of this yet, but I did not fault him for stating it as fact. It was the only explanation that made sense.
Matilda whimpered behind us, and I turned to see her shoulders crumpling as she pressed a hand to her mouth to contain her sobs.
“Matilda, leave us,” her mother ordered, and when she did not comply fast enough, she shrieked, “Go!”
I watched as Matilda turned to flee the room. I considered going after her, but then Mrs. Birnam spoke.
“If McClintock was seen with a bottle of vitriol, I’m sure she had a perfectly legitimate reason for having it.” She twitched her skirts, straightening her appearance. “But I had no knowledge of it. As I’m sure she’s told you.”
“She hasn’t told us anything, Mrs. Birnam,” Gage said sternly. “And that is very damning. You must see that.”
“What I see is that you are prepared to condemn her…” she arched her eyebrows “…and me, if I don’t mistake the intention of your barging in here for a minor coincidence.
So McClintock was seen with a bottle of vitriol hours before the attack on my husband’s secretary.
She wasn’t seen around the time the crime was committed.
She couldn’t have been, because she was with me. ”
“Then she should explain that and tell us what she was doing with the vitriol in the first place and where it is now,” Gage countered, struggling with his temper.
“Why should she? She’s not beholden to you. She’s done nothing wrong.”
“Because we are attempting to solve a murder! The horrific murder of your husband’s secretary, Miss Whitlock.” He emphasized her name, evidently having also noted how Mrs. Birnam avoided saying it. “One would think you both would wish to see the perpetrator brought to justice.”
“We do.” She patted her hair, affecting an air of unconcern, but I could see the way her hands shook before she returned them to her lap. “But that’s your task to see to, not ours.”
“Then why won’t you answer our questions?” I interjected.
She turned to glare at me. “Because we had nothing to do with it.”
“But your family knew Miss Whitlock best.”
She scoffed. “I would hardly say that.”
I frowned, trying to understand why she was being so difficult. What was she afraid of?
“Mrs. Birnam, was your husband sleeping with Miss Whitlock?” Gage surprised me by asking. I supposed he’d decided the direct approach was now our only option. At least this way, we could attempt to judge from her reaction.
As predicted, she was outraged. “How dare you insult me in this manner! My husband is a good and faithful man. He would never…” She stumbled over her words, but they were inconsequential anyway.
For I could already tell that something in her statement was not strictly truthful.
It was evident in the way her jaw tightened, and her eyes slid away. But which part was a fabrication?
“Was he attempting to convince your son to ask for Miss Whitlock’s hand in marriage?”
Her head reared back as if I’d slapped her. “Absolutely not! Of all the notions.”
This declaration I believed. Her almost disgust of the idea was written in every fiber of her body. It puzzled me, for I would have thought she would have been more appalled by the suggestion her husband was having an affair.
“Then why did you dislike Miss Whitlock so much?” I inquired.
Mrs. Birnam began to fidget with her garments again. “I liked her just fine.”
I tilted my head in disbelief. “Come now, Mrs. Birnam. It was obvious to everyone that neither you nor your son approved of Miss Whitlock. Why, you can’t even say her name.”
“What nonsense!” she insisted. “Jemmy and I liked Miss Whitlock just fine.” Her lip curled.
“Despite the gossip that was stirred up over my husband hiring her for such a position. It certainly didn’t do us any favors.
Especially Matilda.” Who would have been entering the marriage market at about that time.
Perhaps this was the source of her animosity, perhaps it was nothing more. But the fact she so readily admitted it when she acknowledged nothing else made me skeptical.
“Whose idea was it?” I asked.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” she retorted before giving the query a moment’s consideration as she worried the chain of her pendant. “Probably Mr. Birnam’s. He was rather resistant to the notion of her being married off at such a young age.”
Yet she hadn’t been enfolded back into his household as his ward. Instead, she’d been forced to take up employment under him. I could see that Gage was puzzled over the same thing.
“What did you think of Clive and Ellie Whitlock? Were they good parents?” I was curious about her impressions.
She seemed startled at first by the question.
“Attentive enough, I suppose. Clive was a good man, if a bit gullible, and sadly too reckless. Lost all his fortune through bad investments, you know. He had pretentions to greatness. He named his daughter Portia, for heaven’s sake.
But he’d not half the wits Jeremiah possesses.
” A frown marred her brow. “And Ellie was sweet, I suppose. Pretty, in a blowsy sort of way. A bit crude, but as you’d expect from a woman growing up where she did. ”
I’d recalled that Mr. Birnam had said that he and Mr. and Mrs. Whitlock had all come from the same neighborhood, while Mrs. Birnam had come from a perhaps more genteel part of Glasgow.
I couldn’t tell if this was the reason for her disapproval of Ellie or if the woman’s daughter had inspired it retroactively.
“It was kind of you and your husband to care for her when her parents died,” I complimented, hoping this would convince her to share more.
Her expression was troubled. “He’d made a promise.”
A promise she wished he hadn’t. At least, that was the impression I received. Peering into the past had distracted her, so I decided to risk asking the question I knew she would never answer otherwise. “What happened when Miss Whitlock was sent away to school?”
But she wasn’t nearly as preoccupied as I’d hoped, pausing her fiddling with her necklace to peer up at me in suspicion. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Something happened that made you send her away,” I stated, refusing to back down.
“What nonsense! Now who told you that?” She arched her chin. “It was always the plan to send her away for finishing. Weren’t you and your sister?”
Alana was prepared for her debut into society by our Aunt Cait, while I was more interested in art than securing a husband through the marriage market. However, I didn’t tell Mrs. Birnam this. Not when she was attempting to divert attention from herself.
“But Miss Whitlock wasn’t finished off in the traditional sense. She undertook employment.”
Mrs. Birnam scowled. “Yes, well. That was not the plan.”
This, I believed.
“Will you speak to Mrs. McClintock and tell her that it is important she cooperates with us?” Gage requested, perhaps thinking we’d strayed far from the aim of our visit. “For her own sake and yours.”
Mrs. Birnam gave this minimal consideration before rising to her feet. “No.”
It was Gage’s turn to stiffen in shock. “Why not?” he demanded as she turned to walk away.