A Perilous Perspective (Lady Darby Mystery #10)(70)

Bree glanced over her shoulder from where she sat in the pew nearest that alcove, her strawberry blond curls a bright halo in the gloom. Next to her slumped another figure with ash blond hair—Liam Gillies.

We crossed the room toward them, and Liam jerked his head up to meet our gazes as we rounded the pews to stand before him. It was clear that wherever he’d been hiding, it had been crude and susceptible to the elements, for the smell of dirt and damp wool assailed my nostrils. A towel was draped around his shoulders, and dirt streaked the side of his forehead near his hairline. His face was pale, and dark circles ringed the eyes that stared up at us guardedly.

“Liam Gillies?” Gage asked evenly.

When he didn’t answer, Bree nudged him with her shoulder. “Go on.”

“I heard you were lookin’ for me,” he murmured hoarsely, his eyes darting from Gage to me and back again, as if searching for confirmation. When neither of us leapt on him, he craned his neck forward, the veins on either side standing out as he made his plea. “I didna kill Mairi.”

“We know,” I replied softly.

His eyes flew wide, searching my face as if to be certain this wasn’t some kind of trick.

“It was poison.”

At this pronouncement, his shoulders sagged, and his head bowed, the heavy burden of his pain and grief evident in every line of his body.

I sank down on the pew in front of him, turning to the side to look over the back of it.

“Please, can you tell us what happened, what you observed?” Gage said as he joined me. “It could help us figure out how this happened to her.”

Liam nodded, still staring at his feet. “What do ye want to ken?”

“Had you and Mairi planned to meet yesterday evening?”

He swallowed before lifting his head. It seemed like he had to force himself to speak, and I wondered if he’d gotten any rest today or the night before. “Nay. ’Twasn’t her usual day off. But I was happy to see her nonetheless.”

Of course he was. They were in love. Though I found it interesting that no one else had mentioned that yesterday was not Mairi’s usual day off. Not Mrs. Kennedy or the rest of the staff at Poltalloch, and not her father.

“How did she seem to you when you saw her?” I inquired. “Was she her normal self?”

“She . . . she seemed tired, and she had a cough. But I just assumed she’d caught a bit o’ a cold or the beginning of an ague.”

“Did she complain of a stomach upset at any point?”

He shook his head. “Nay, but she felt cold. And clammy. I asked if she wanted to lie doon for a bit, but she kept insistin’ she was fine.” His mouth turned down at the corners. “Then she begged me to show her the paintin’. The one you’d discovered was a fake.”

“Did she say why?” Though I’d tried to keep my tone even, my eagerness must have been evident, for he hesitated a moment before answering.

“She said Miss Campbell had sent her to look at it.”

Gage and I shared a speaking look.

“Miss Campbell sent her?” I repeated.

“Aye. Wanted her to report back on what she saw.”

And yet when I’d asked Miss Campbell earlier that morning if she knew why Mairi had been in the long gallery, she’d denied knowing anything.

“Did she say why she wanted her to report back?” I asked, struggling to suppress the flash of anger I felt at Mairi’s employer.

“Nay.”

Gage draped his elbow over the back of the pew, his watchful expression telling me he was aware of my irritation. “What happened when you reached the gallery?”

Liam swallowed again, his arms clutching the towel tightly around him and his gaze far away. “Mairi’s coughin’. It grew worse. It got so she couldna catch her breath. And then . . . and then she dropped to her knees and started twitchin’, like she’d fallen in an icy loch.” His tone was rough with emotion. “I tried to help, but there was nothin’ I could do. And then she started to bleed—from her eyes and nose and . . . I didna ken what to do!” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Before I could even cry for help, she was dead.”

We all sat silently for a moment, contemplating the horror of what he’d just told us.

“Puir Mairi,” Bree murmured, voicing all of our thoughts, before crossing herself. Her lips moved in a short prayer. I bowed my head to silently join her.

I tried to place myself in Mairi’s shoes. She must have been terrified and in great pain. But how had she come to be in such a state? What poison had she been given? And who had given it to her, and why?

I amended what we now knew about the poison. It caused not only bleeding from the facial orifices, ulcers in the mouth, and coughing, but also convulsions. Toward the end, the symptoms seemed to have progressed at a rapid rate. Liam said that she’d struggled to catch her breath, which made me wonder if her lungs had also been hemorrhaging and filling up with fluid. Whether that hemorrhaging ultimately caused her death or her heart gave out from the strain on her system, I couldn’t say, but the results were the same.

Either way, this was not a natural death, nor was it caused by physical violence. Mairi had undeniably been killed by some type of as-yet-unknown-to-me poison.

What also seemed certain was that Miss Campbell had been the reason she went to the long gallery, despite her protestations to the contrary. It was possible Liam had lied, seizing on the excuse that Mairi’s employer had sent her in order to explain away his infraction in sneaking her up to that chamber, but I didn’t think so. I could detect no artifice in his statements, only pain and grief and confusion. Miss Campbell, on the other hand, had multiple reasons to deny her involvement, chief of them being her feud with Lord Barbreck.