Pride and Premeditation (Jane Austen Murder Mystery #1)(49)

Their conversation was put on hold as they arrived at a sad, squat gray house. The stone was slick with condensation, and the windows were grimy and dark. Lizzie could smell the stench of mold and damp from where they stood on the street, but it was the correct address. “Here we go,” she said to Wickham. “Remember—let me talk.”

He nodded, and she knocked on the flimsy door. From inside they heard rustling about and the cry of a small child before the door was wrenched open by a red-faced matron with a dirty apron and a little one clinging to her skirts. “Yes?” she asked, suspicion weighing down the word.

“Good day, madam. We are looking for Abigail . . .” Lizzie realized with a start that she didn’t know Abigail’s surname.

“Abigail Jenkins?” the woman asked, her gaze evaluating them. “And what business do you have with her?”

Lizzie was about to say they were friends, but Wickham cut in. “We’re her cousins, recently arrived to town from Hertfordshire.”

So much for letting Lizzie do the talking! At least Wickham sounded truthful, and she had to admit it was a good cover. The woman stared at them for a moment longer, then stepped back and yelled into the depths of the house, “Abigail! Visitors!”

The matron swept up the child in her arms and pointed into a darkened room. “You can wait for her in the sitting room. If it’s tea you’re wanting, it’ll be extra.”

“Please don’t trouble yourself on our behalf,” Lizzie rushed to say.

The sitting room was dark, with a worn settee and hard chairs, but it was clean. Lizzie perched on the settee, and Wickham stood behind her, next to the window. They heard shuffling and some whispering in the hall, and then Abigail appeared, looking skeptical at the sudden materialization of cousins from Hertfordshire. When she spotted Lizzie, her eyebrows jumped.

“Thank you, Mrs. Evans!” she called out to the hall, and took a seat across from Lizzie. “I never expected to see you here.”

“Hello, Abigail. This is my colleague, Mr. Wickham,” Lizzie said, but Abigail barely acknowledged him with a small glance. “What happened?”

Her brown eyes were bloodshot but dry, and she spoke in a flat tone. “Just as I predicted, miss. They’re closing the house. Mrs. Hurst refuses to return, and I can’t say as I blame her.”

“So quickly?” Lizzie asked. She wasn’t surprised that Abigail didn’t want to reveal she’d been dismissed, but she needed Abigail to trust her. “Surely they would have kept you on long enough for you to find another position.”

Abigail didn’t say anything to that, so Lizzie tried another approach. “Well, never mind. You know my offer stands, to give you a letter of reference. You were so helpful that day when I called. It’s just, I wonder . . .”

Lizzie let her voice trail off, and Abigail shifted in her seat. “What, miss?”

“Well, this is delicate. You told me the other day the watchmen believed that Mr. Hurst’s pocket watch was stolen by the murderer. Only . . . I heard the watch was missing before his death.”

Abigail’s face went a shade paler. Lizzie continued, “I was wondering if perhaps you knew its whereabouts. If he sold it, maybe.” She waited a beat, then added, “Whoever has it may lead us to the killer. At least, that’s what Mr. Bingley’s solicitor seems to think.”

“Do you think so, miss?”

Lizzie could tell by the way Abigail’s fists had buried themselves in her skirts that she was nervous. Lizzie looked her straight in the eye. “I do.”

She let Abigail realize the danger on her own. Abigail’s eyes darted to Wickham, standing behind Lizzie, and Lizzie prayed Wickham would have the sense not to startle the young woman either. Finally, she spoke.

“I may have some information. But I don’t think it’ll lead where you’re hoping.”

“It’s my duty to follow up on any and every lead,” Lizzie said. “I have no interest in any other crime but the murder. As long as you didn’t kill him, we should be quite all right.”

Abigail shook her head. “I didn’t kill Mr. Hurst, miss. I can promise you that.”

“I believe you.”

Lizzie’s words seemed to give Abigail confidence. “The Runners did think the watch was missing with the murderer, at first. He’d gone to bed fully dressed, but without his watch or a single coin on his person. They thought it was suspicious, and I suppose it was, if you didn’t know . . .”

“But the staff knew of the money troubles,” Lizzie prompted.

“We aren’t stupid. The furniture was disappearing, and the butcher wouldn’t serve Cook until the account was settled, so we hadn’t had meat for a month.”

“And the watch?”

“Mr. Hurst was home two days before he was killed, wailing that it was stolen. It was valuable and he threatened to march the thief to Newgate himself. We thought he’d sold it himself and was carrying on to save face.”

“But?”

“You’ll think me awful,” Abigail whispered with one flicker of a glance to Wickham.

It was this admission that caused Lizzie to sit back with a small huff of surprise. “Oh, Abigail. Why?”

“Four years I worked in that house,” Abigail said quietly, “and do you know how many maids came and went? How often the bell would ring for tea, and we’d walk in to find him drunk? And if the girls breathed so much as a word to Mr. Banks or the housekeeper about what he’d say, what’d he do when he was in that state, they were dismissed without a reference. I endured it, but when Mrs. Hurst left, I knew I’d be dismissed, and I was afraid no one would write me a reference. I took the watch when Mr. Hurst came home for a change of clothes. I thought that he’d be distracted by Mrs. Hurst’s absence and wouldn’t notice, but . . .”