A Perilous Perspective (Lady Darby Mystery #10)(51)

Tilting her head, she studied the pendant as if sifting through her words before she answered. “I ken that was your mother’s because . . . I gave it to her.”

I stared dumbly at her as she continued.

“?’Twas a wedding present. After she married my nephew Edmund.”





Chapter 15




I stumbled back a step, almost losing my footing, and Miss Campbell reached out a hand to steady me, but I pulled away. “She . . . ? Your . . . ?” I stammered, unable to form a coherent thought let alone a question. Closing my eyes, I shook my head, trying to jar some sense into me. “No, she married James St. Mawr.”

“Aye. Later.” She eyed me with something akin to pity. “A few years after Edmund died.”

I turned away to stare out across the loch, reaching out to grasp the low wall while I forced myself to take great gulps of the chill wind in an attempt to steady my swirling thoughts.

My father hadn’t been my mother’s first husband? If that was true—and I couldn’t think of a reason why Miss Campbell should lie about something so easily disproved—then why had no one told me? My mother had died when I was eight, but surely this was information someone should have shared with me. When I came of age. When my first husband died. When I remarried. How could I have reached the age of a score and seven years and not been informed of this?

Did Alana know? Did Trevor? I wanted to demand answers, but my sister was in London, and my brother at Blakelaw House in the Borders region—both of which were hundreds of miles away. My father had long since joined my mother in heaven. However, my mother’s younger sister was close at hand, and Aunt Cait was going to answer some very pointed questions, or I would know the reason why.

But in the meantime, it was too much to grapple with. I could barely face the eddy of disquieting feelings myself, let alone dissect them before a virtual stranger.

“I’m sorry,” I told Miss Campbell, gripping the wall so tightly that the gritty stone bit into my skin, but I welcomed the pain. “I’m not ready to discuss this.”

“O’ course,” she replied kindly, though she must have had as many questions as I did.

“I . . . I need to speak with you about Mairi MacCowan,” I said, floundering for something solid to latch on to. Something not related to my mother, or her pendant, or this man named Edmund. “You’ve been informed she is dead?”

“Aye. This mornin’. So it’s true?”

“I’m afraid so.” I studied her eyes, scrutinizing every shift of light, every subtle tightening. “My husband and I were there when she was found. In the long gallery. On the floor beneath the forged Van Dyck painting.”

She stiffened.

“Do you have any idea why she was there?”

“I . . . no,” she stammered, seeming truly disconcerted for the first time in our acquaintance. “Perhaps oot o’ curiosity.”

“We were told that Miss Margaret preferred Mairi. That she was more often in the family rooms of the castle than other servants.”

She stared at me in bewilderment. “Aye, I s’pose so.”

“Perhaps she overheard something sensitive. Something she shouldn’t have.” I arched my eyebrows. “Something that others didn’t want her sharing.” I knew I was being sharper than I needed to be, that I was in many respects lashing out because Miss Campbell had upset me with her revelation about my mother. In that regard, I was no better than the cook who had been so brusque with me such a short time ago. But I was restraining myself so rigidly, I feared if I softened my tone, I might begin to come apart at the seams.

As such, I expected her to take offense, but instead she blinked rapidly. “I dinna understand. If she was killed at Barbreck, then wouldna the culprit be—”

“She was poisoned,” I interrupted. “By a substance that was slow in acting. And we’ve determined she must have ingested it prior to arriving at her father’s cottage.”

“Then . . . she ingested it here,” she deduced.

“Or somewhere between Poltalloch and Barbreck,” I added for the sake of clarity.

She pressed a hand to her stomach. “I honestly dinna ken what to say. Why would someone here poison Mairi?”

I searched her face for any sign of prevarication, but she seemed genuinely perplexed.

“I don’t know, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to believe she poisoned herself by accident, which means someone wished her ill.” I glanced back toward the stables, recalling my earlier suspicions about Miss Campbell’s location upon our arrival. “Liam Gillies is missing. He was with her when she died, and we think he panicked, believing he would be blamed. It’s imperative we talk to him to find out how she was acting just before she died.”

Her green eyes met mine steadily. “And you wonder if he came here?”

“Did he?”

She scrutinized me in turn, seeming to come to some decision. “I have no’ seen him. But I will ask my staff if they have and, if so, urge them to send Liam to you.”

I realized there was a great deal of leeway in those statements, but under the circumstances, I suspected it was the best I would get.

Gage joined us soon after, and the next few minutes were spent relaying to him the information I’d already gleaned. Though I should have been watching Miss Campbell more closely and listening for discrepancies, I found my attention wandering—to my mother, to the things Miss Campbell had said. Her confession had knocked me off my axis, and I barely had the wherewithal to wonder if it had been on purpose. It wasn’t until Gage asked a question about Miss Margaret that I was able to drag my attention back to the matter at hand.