“Then we pull the threads in order,” Violet said. “Kit takes the carrier’s direction off the waybook.”
“I will have my cousin to dine,” Henry said, “and look at him myself.”
“And tonight,” she turned toward the room, “we find what this room is hiding.”
He lifted the candle and turned to face the room properly. He walked past the workbench against the wall and stopped.
“What is it?” she asked.
For a moment he didn’t answer. He was looking at the far wall, the one with a dresser against it.
“There was a door,” he said. “There. A cold store. Three stone steps down. Harold and I used to steal the damson preserves and eat them on the steps in the dark.” His lips curved into a faint smile. “My mother always knew. She said the cold kept the jars and the thieves both.” He lifted the candle. “There is no door there now.”
The dresser stood floor to lintel against the far wall, old and laden. He walked its length once, slowly, then crouched andbrought the flame close to the flagstones. And there it was: a pale quarter-circle scored faint into the stone, the arc a heavy thing leaves when it is swung many times.
He gripped one end and pulled on it until he could squeeze through. Behind it was a wall, and in the wall, a flush plank door, limed in the same coat as everything else, with no frame to catch the eye. The thumb-latch had been painted over with the rest.
The door opened smoothly without a sound. Three stone steps down, and cold air that smelled of stone and tallow reached them.
The little room below was the size of a pantry and as cold as a well, and it was not abandoned. Bottles stood ranked on the stone shelf, stoppered and clean. Muslin, folded. A spirit lamp. She lifted one bottle of rectified spirit to the candle without drawing the stopper. The way it moved told her enough.
A mortar which was scrubbed white. Bundles of dried leaf hung from a string, rue and raspberry leaf and rosemary. She went along the string twice, looking for the one leaf that mattered. It was not there.
“Do you see it?” Henry asked.
“No. I see the harmless kind, but not belladonna. She’s very careful. She likely keeps it where she can watch it.”
They climbed out and repositioned the dresser along its arc. Violet knelt down and set three rue seeds in its path, invisible against the stone, and certain to be crushed to powder by anything that moved.
She stood and brushed her knees. “If she so much as looks inside, we will know. I will have Kit check daily.”
Henry nodded approvingly. “Does she need to access this room to use it? Could she have it extracted in a bottle?”
“She could, and she does. A tincture in good spirit keeps a year or two when stored in the cool and dark. She doesn’t need this room to poison me, but she does need it to make more.”
“Then the trap may sleep for months.”
“Unless we wake it.” She looked at the dresser. “We make her spend it. Let her watch the marriage warm. Let the tray come up. The day the bottle runs dry, she will need to go into this room.”
“Absolutely not.” Henry’s words came out flat and final. She blinked at him.
“You are proposing to use yourself as bait. One morning you may be forced to drink in front of her to hold the pretence, and it might be the one drop that makes you ill or worse. No.” He turned to the door. “Whoever brews does so at night when everyone sleeps. Have Kit watch the room. The moment someone enters it, he shall identify them.” He turned back to face his wife.
“Very well,” Violet said with a sigh. “But Kit does not apprehend her. We need evidence first.”
“Agreed.”
“I do wonder…” Violet met his gaze. “Why murder your wives unless… Has she tried to seduce you?”
Henry stiffened. “I…”
Her eyes snapped back to his. “She has. I can tell by the look on your face.”
“Well…” He scratched the stubble on his chin.
“When?”
His hand went to the back of his neck this time. “Not overly forwardly but just in the tone of her voice or with the movement of her fingers to her…décolletage.”