Free Scarlet Widow by Graham Masterton Page B

and said, ‘What does it matter? We’re going to be married soon anyway.’
    ‘Who says we’re going to be married?’
    ‘My mother, of course. She has your life all mapped for you. What do you think she’s going to do now that she’s getting old? She’ll be forty-three next Easter! She’ll need somebody to run the house for her, and to give her heirs. She didn’t take you in out of the goodness of her heart, you know.’
    ‘I’m not going to marry you !’
    ‘Then who? Who would you find to take any interest in you, apart from me?’
    Beatrice didn’t answer, but closed her door and pushed the wooden wedge underneath it. She waited, listening, but after a while she heard Jeremy going back downstairs.
    She turned back to the window. The sunlight had gone now and the sky was growing dusky. ‘ Who would take an interest in you ?’ Jeremy had asked her, and she couldn’t help thinking of Francis and the way he looked at her when they passed each other in the street.

Nine
    Cousin Sarah called out, ‘Elizabeth! Agnes! Jenks! I want you all in here right away! You too, Beatrice!’
    They gathered in the dining room. It was raining outside, quite hard, and Beatrice could hear the rain rattling through the branches of the apple trees. It was gloomy, too, for an early April afternoon.
    On the polished dining table stood a tall glass confectionery jar half filled with tarnished brown coins, pennies and farthings, and a few silver sixpences. Cousin Sarah was standing on the opposite side of the table with her arms folded and her lips tightly pursed.
    Beatrice had been brushing cobwebs off the bedroom ceilings and she was still holding her ostrich-feather duster. Agnes stood next to her, her sleeves rolled up and her forearms reddened halfway up to her elbows from plunging them into the washtub. Behind them stood Elizabeth, smelling of sweat and suet, and Jenks, a young man who did odd jobs around the house, dug the garden and tended the horses. Jenks kept swivelling his eyes around the dining room and sniffing. He was the oldest son of one of the local metalworkers, but his father had considered him too much of a liability to be working with molten iron and so had found him employment with Sarah Minchin.
    Beatrice could see all of them in the slightly distorted mirror behind cousin Sarah’s back, and somehow the subtle flaws in the glass made them look like strangers pretending to be them.
    ‘I am deeply disappointed in one of you,’ said cousin Sarah. ‘All of you must be aware that I collect coins in this jar, which I donate every Easter to the destitute in St Philip’s parish. What you may not know is that I count them at the end of each week, after our Sunday meal.’
    They glanced at one another sideways. Jenks was probably the only one of them who couldn’t guess what cousin Sarah was going to say next.
    She picked up the jar and gave it a single sharp shake. ‘When I counted the contents of this jar last Sunday, it contained two pounds seven shillings and sixpence. When I counted them today, I found that I had only two pounds one shilling and twopence. Since I do not believe that coins can spontaneously evaporate, or that this house is haunted by thievish spirits, I have no option but to conclude that one of you has been stealing. Six shillings and fourpence, to be exact. Six shillings and fourpence! And what would any of you do with such a sum of money?’
    Agnes instantly put up her hand. ‘If you please, Mrs Minchin, it weren’t me what took it.’
    ‘Oh, no? So why are you in such a rush to deny it?’
    ‘Because I don’t want you believing it might have been me, because it weren’t.’
    ‘So who else could it have been? It must have been one of you. That money didn’t disappear by magic. Elizabeth? Didn’t I hear you complaining that you needed new shoes? Six shillings and fourpence! That would buy you a good stout pair of shoes, wouldn’t you agree?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But I