A Perilous Perspective (Lady Darby Mystery #10)(93)

We greeted them before sitting on the sofa opposite where others had moved to make room.

“We apologize for the delay,” Gage told them before glancing toward my Aunt Cait. “But I imagine the reason for our absence has already been explained.”

Aunt Cait nodded. “It’s just awful. Poor Mr. MacCowan.”

“Was it poison, the same as his daughter?” Jack asked. His wife, Morven, shot him a quelling glare, as if her busybody self hadn’t wished to ask the very same question.

“I’m afraid so,” Gage said.

“Then that makes our reason for comin’ here all the more pertinent,” Miss Campbell informed us in a tight voice before reaching out to touch her sister. “But perhaps this conversation should be conducted wi’ just Mr. and Mrs. Gage.”

“Och, dear. We’ve made ’em too curious noo,” Miss Margaret replied, patting her sister’s hand where it rested on her arm. “Let ’em listen. ’Twill do no harm.”

“If you’re sure?” she asked doubtfully. Her eyes were fretful, but I thought it was more on behalf of her invalid sister’s health than whatever she was about to reveal.

“I am.” She cleared her throat. “I’ve had a thought. Aboot the poison. Ye see, I . . . I dinna eat so much as I once did. Often I dinna feel like eatin’ anythin’ at all. Which troubles my sister.” She darted a look at her sister out of the corner of her eye, whose mouth had primmed. “So sometimes I encourage the maids who attend me to take food from my tray. Treats and sweetbreads and such. Whatever they like. So, my trays are no’ so full when they return to the kitchen, and my sister willna pester me aboot my lack o’ appetite.”

No wonder the other maids had been jealous of her partiality to Mairi. Except, in this instance, it might have saved their lives.

“Did Mairi take food from your tray? Did she take food the morning of the day she died?” I specified.

She nodded. “Aye. And dinner the evenin’ before.”

“Meg!” Miss Campbell exclaimed softly in scolding.

Miss Margaret’s face flushed guiltily. “?’Tis only that you nag me so when I canna help it.” Her eyes glistened with shame. “But if that poison was meant for me, and Mairi—and her father—ate it instead . . .” She broke off to take a deep breath. “I dinna ken if I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.”

Miss Campbell clutched her sister’s hand firmly. “What nonsense!”

She turned to her sister in startlement. “But Anne . . .”

“If the poison was in your food, if it was meant for you, then it’s no more your fault that it killed Mairi than it is the Stuarts lost the throne. No one blames ye.”

“She’s right,” Gage assured her. “But it does alter things considerably if Miss Margaret was, in fact, the intended target and not Mairi and Mr. MacCowan.”

I nodded. It also meant that, for Mr. MacCowan to have been affected, Mairi must have taken some of that food to him. But he’d told us she’d only brought him the bilberries she’d picked from a well-known patch along the way.

I frowned. No, wait. That wasn’t right. We’d never specifically asked if she’d brought any food with her. He’d told us about the berries when I asked if the dinner she’d cooked them had included mushrooms or berries. So it was possible she had brought him something from Miss Margaret’s tray. He had told us that Mairi hadn’t eaten anything he hadn’t also consumed.

“What did Mairi take from your tray, both at dinner and breakfast?” I asked Miss Margaret.

She sniffed, wiping her nose with her handkerchief. “A bit o’ cheese and a plum, and a raspberry compote wi’ some oat cakes.”

“The compote, then, would be the most likely culprit,” I declared, shifting to look at Gage. “Which would have been transported in a jar.”

“I told both Mr. Mallery and Anderley to examine the pantry. They should be able to tell us whether such a jar is in Mr. MacCowan’s cottage.”

“Then we may have some sort of confirmation soon enough.” I focused my attention on the sisters—Margaret with her head and eyes downcast and Anne with her back rigidly straight and a martial gleam in her eyes that did not entirely mask her fear. “Do either of you know anyone who might have wished Miss Margaret—or either of you—harm?” I asked not unkindly.

Miss Campbell’s gaze flicked momentarily toward Lord Barbreck, but she did not actually speak his name. “No’ Meg. Who could wish to harm her?”

Barbreck seemed chastened by this look. Enough that it prodded him into speech. “Anne, I ken I havena been kind or even very civil these last decades,” he admitted in a gravelly voice. “But I would ne’er wish you . . .” He nodded to Margaret. “Or your sister to come to such an end.”

She listened to this avowal with quiet dignity and then, with the same controlled grace, nodded in acceptance of this partial apology. It was easy to see why my mother had so admired her.

“Could it be a member of your staff?” Gage inquired with some reluctance. Servants were often blamed for the sins of their employers, which had made us leery of accepting such a suggestion in the past. But maids and footmen were people, too, with their own failings and prejudices, and so they could never be entirely ruled out.