Free The Fatal Fashione by Karen Harper

just have met her, not to mention the sad fact that Sally was so heavily poxed. Most children sheltered like Marie, who had not seen such horror, would be repulsed, but his dear child was like the mother who bore her—calm, at least usually, and tenderhearted.
    He pictured Marie’s mother again, his Gretta, fine and fair. Desperately, he summoned up the memory of her laughing, not crying as she’d been those last few days when the childbed fever racked her and she feared that she would die. Not sobbing as she’d been when she’d entrusted to him the portrait of herself as a child—so much like Marie now—with her twin sister. Yes, now he saw Gretta laughing like that time she had introduced him to Hannah, her near image, not only in the painting but in the flesh.
    Two of you? he had teased, kissing each one on the cheek. Double the delight of such beauty in the world?
    “Thomas,” Anne hissed in his ear, “what in all creation are you smiling for at a time like this?”
    The smile and the memory faded. “Hasn’t our dear girl always brought us joy?” he countered. “And we have her back safe.”
    “Safe in body, perhaps, but something dire and dreadful has happened to her—something she must recover to tell us. Let’s offer to keep this Sally as her companion and maid, if the queen and the herbalist will allow it. With Sally’s help, Marie-Anne must recover to tell us the truth!”
    In Hannah’s chill and breezy loft, they closed the windows, then draped the horse blankets over them to hide their lights. Meg pointed out the dipping vat, still full of thickening, settling starch, and then the shelf where the body lay. The six fat bolts of cloth hid all but the top of Hannah’s head, with hair so stiff it stuck out in all directions.
    Elizabeth observed everything in silence, then glanced back toward the starch vat. “That large window overlooking the street and St. Martin’s fields was open even now, so we might assume it was open during the murder. Ned, be sure to ask those you question tomorrow if they heard a scream or a fray—or glanced in to note a stranger inside, and I don’t mean Meg.”
    “Yes, Your Grace.”
    “And try to discern if there’s a way to escape through the window without being seen from the street or the fields, which I doubt.”
    “It looks l-large enough for someone to c-creep in or out,” Rosie whispered. Not only had the woman gone to stammering, but her eyes kept darting everywhere in the dim room with its shadows shifting from their lanterns. She looked as if she were certain something was going to leap out at them, and it didn’t help Elizabeth’s pluck to have her companion so knock-kneed.
    “But now,” Elizabeth plunged on, “to the terrible tasks at hand. Are these bolts of fabric placed, do you recall, Meg and Ned, much the way you and Jenks found them—and her?”
    “Quite sure that’s the way they were when the men put them back in place before we ran to the palace,” Meg assured her, “though I think her head was more hidden when we found her. Do you—want us to take the bolts away?”
    “Yes, in a minute. What are these bluish blurs on the linen roll? Let me have more lantern light here.”
    “I saw that before,” Meg murmured, “but just thought it was damp seeping into it from her body or garments. Her skirt is blue, so maybe the dye—it bled. I think it’s on more than one of the rolls.”
    “Yes, two others, only more faded. Perhaps all these rolls were defective or stained, so they were just left on the shelf and not used. The blue tinge is probably not from the murderer but from someone who simply mishandled them earlier. Now, we must study the way she’s been set on the shelf. Then we will lift her out onto the worktable over there. Rosie, note carefully what is on it, and if there is naught suspicious, clear things away and spread this last blanket there.”
    Giving Rosie a lantern and holding their other one high, the queen watched as