A Pretty Deceit

Book 4: Verity Kent Mystery

by Anna Lee Huber

Genres: Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

In the aftermath of the Great War, the line between friend and foe may be hard to discern, even for indomitable former Secret Service agent Verity Kent, in award-winning author Anna Lee Huber's thrilling mystery series.



Peacetime has brought little respite for Verity Kent. Intrigue still abounds, even within her own family. As a favor to her father, Verity agrees to visit his sister in Wiltshire. Her once prosperous aunt has fallen on difficult times and is considering selling their estate. But there are strange goings-on at the manor, including missing servants, possible heirloom forgeries, and suspicious rumors—all leading to the discovery of a dead body on the grounds.



While Verity and her husband, Sidney, investigate this new mystery, they are also on the trail of an old adversary—the shadowy and lethal Lord Ardmore. At every turn, the suspected traitor seems to be one step ahead of them. And even when their dear friend Max, the Earl of Ryde, stumbles upon a code hidden among his late father’s effects that may reveal the truth about Ardmore, Verity wonders if they are really the hunters—or the hunted . . .

Release date: October 6, 2020

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 386

Sample

There are few things more wonderful than seeing the face of someone you love lit with pure joy. Particularly someone who has faced so much darkness, so much horror and grief. It makes your breath catch in your throat, and turns your heart inside out and then right-side out again at the realization you would do anything to preserve that happiness, that delight.

Anything but die, that is.

“Darling, I’m glad you’re enjoying your new roadster,” I called, raising my voice to be heard over the roar of the engine and the cool rush of the wind past my cheeks. “But if it’s all the same to you, I would like to make it to my aunt’s house in one piece.”

Sidney’s eyes gleamed with exhilaration. “Isn’t she a beauty?” he exclaimed, his hands caressing the driving wheel much as he had caressed me the night before.

“She is,” I agreed, and I meant it. Though not as zealous a motorist as my husband, I could certainly appreciate the fine craftsmanship and performance of a magnificent motorcar. Just as I could appreciate his enthusiasm. After all, his previous Pierce-Arrow had been destroyed during a dangerous investigation we’d undertaken in war-ravaged Belgium, and Sidney had waited three long months for this replacement to arrive from America. Even I had felt a surge of elation at my first sight of her, all sleek lines and glossy deep carmine-red paint. Which only made my desire not to collide with a tree, or worse, another motorcar, even greater—for the roadster’s sake and mine.

The motorcar soared over a slight rise in the road and then raced downward, fast approaching a sharp curve. My fingers gripped the seat beneath me until I felt Sidney apply the brakes and ease around the turn with precision handling, only for the car to spring forward again, like a young horse pulling against its traces.

Not that I minded the speed, in general. I relished the thrill of the world whipping past and the raw power of a good engine driving beneath me as much as anyone. But the roads in this part of Berkshire were narrow and lined with tall hedges and dense coppices, making it impossible to see what was around the next bend until you were already upon it. So the use of this new Pierce-Arrow’s extra surge of speed was perhaps a trifle reckless. But reckless always had been Sidney’s driving style.

He threw me a disarming smile as we approached another curve, and I felt some of my tension ease. After all, four months ago I’d still believed him dead, and here he was, returned to me, to the life he’d lived before that fateful day in August 1914 when war was declared. The last thing I wanted to do was crush his enjoyment. But nonetheless, he seemed to recognize from my clenched fingers and tight jaw that perhaps I wasn’t enjoying myself as much as he was. As he straightened out of the turn, he trod more gently on the accelerator, hurling us forward at a slightly less hell-for-leather pace.

“Tell me about your aunt,” he urged me as he scraped a hand back through his dark wind-rifled hair. He’d long since discarded his hat in the seat behind us. “She’s your father’s sister?”

“Yes, or else I doubt my father would have bestirred himself to interrupt my mother.” I turned to gaze through an opening in the hedge line through which I could see the rolling hills of the North Wessex Downs and the winding blue ribbon of the River Kennet.

I thought back to my mother’s telephone call the day before. It had been at least a fortnight since I’d last heard from her, and she rarely let a period of such length pass without calling to harangue me about one infraction or another, or to complain about my sister or one of my brothers. But the reason for this call had been something of a shock. Even more so when my father had pried the mouthpiece from her fingers to add his voice to her request.

“What your mother’s trying to say, Ver, is that your aunt’s had a rough time of it since the war,” he had told me in his warm, gravelly voice. “Losing Sir James and Thomas almost one right after the other nearly broke her. And then for Reginald to have come home the way he did, well, she’s done in.”

“I’m sorry for Aunt Ernestine, I truly am,” I had replied. “But Mother said she needed my help, and I honestly don’t know what I can do. Have they tried one of those specialty hospitals I’ve read about, the ones that are supposed to treat returning soldiers in situations like Reg?”

“Aye, yes. They’ve tried all that. In fact, he’s just returned from one. But this is nothing to do with your cousin.”

“What do you mean?”

Father had exhaled a long, weary breath, letting me know Mother had already talked circles around him on this subject, and all for naught. For once my father made up his mind about something, it would take a force greater than a whirlwind to move him from it. And my mother was very nearly that. “As I understand it, the manor is in shambles thanks to the airmen who billeted there from the neighboring aerodrome during the war. And now your aunt has discovered she hasn’t the coffers to pay for it. Apparently everything is already mortgaged to the hilt, and a number of the estate’s priceless heirlooms have gone missing from storage, so she can’t even sell her most portable property to raise some of the funds.”

I had felt a pang of empathy for my aunt. And my father. Aunt Ernestine had always been a woman enamored with her own consequence, and never content enough until everyone knew it. This situation must be extremely lowering for her. While my mother must be silently crowing with delight—evidence that the vain and mighty shall fall, and the meek and humble shall flourish. At least, when the vain and mighty were her enemies.

“But surely this is an issue for the War Office to sort out, if there are damages and theft to be reported?” I had countered.

“Yes, but your aunt has watched her orderly world crumble around her, and I’m not certain she’s thinking clearly.”

“You think she’s lying?” I had said in surprise.

“Not lying. Just . . . confused. To hear her speak, Littlemote House is practically crumbling to pieces around them, and yet I find it difficult to believe the Royal Air Force would ever have allowed it to get to such a state.” My mother’s voice mumbled in the background, and my father turned to speak to her before heaving another aggrieved sigh. “She was also rambling on about a missing servant and a ghost, of all things. Yes, yes, Sarah,” he shushed my mother. “I admit it sounded all a little mad. Certainly unlike Ernestine.”

“Yes, very odd,” I had acknowledged hesitantly, already conscious of where this was going.

“Can you and Sidney pay her a visit at Littlemote? Find out exactly what the situation is there? I would ask your cousin Reginald, but he’s in no state to deal with all of this.”

I wasn’t certain I agreed with his final statement. After all, Reg was the new baronet, and blinded or not, he would have to confront the concerns of his baronetcy at some point.

But there was another reason I was reluctant to go to Littlemote, though I would never have voiced it aloud. Not to my father, in any case. Moreover, he didn’t give me a chance.

“Please, Verity. You are the closest, and your husband undoubtedly has the most clout to get something done should your aunt’s claims prove true. After all, they did just pin a Victoria Cross to his chest for valor. We’re dashed proud of him, by the way.”

I had smiled tightly into the mirror that hung above the bureau where our telephone rested in our London flat, refusing to examine the unsettling jumble of emotions that mention of Sidney’s medal always threatened to dredge up. Instead I focused on my father’s voice, on the evident worry and uncertainty that tainted his normally stoical tones. When, if ever, had my father asked me for anything? It seemed churlish to say no. But still I resisted.

“I’ll speak with Sidney. If he has no objections, we’ll drive out to Littlemote tomorrow,” I had promised, privately hoping my husband would nix such a plan, though I’d known he wouldn’t. We were bound for Falmouth anyway, and a stop in northeastern Wiltshire was virtually along the way.

So here we were, slowing to motor through yet another of the tiny villages that dotted the English countryside in counties as fertile as Berkshire and neighboring Wiltshire. “Aunt Ernestine is father’s younger sister,” I explained to Sidney. “He’s always been a bit protective of her, to Mother’s everlasting annoyance.”

His lips quirked in amusement.

I lifted my hand to return the excited wave of a little girl perched on her stone house’s front step. “Sadly, her husband, Sir James Popham, died two years ago. A heart attack, from the strain of losing their eldest son, Thomas, the doctor said.”

“Thomas served during the war?”

I nodded. “Part of the Irish Guards. Killed at Loos.”

There was no need to reply. His heavy silence said more than enough. Simply the name of some battles told the entire story in and of themselves, imbued forever with the death and destruction that had happened there. Loos. Verdun. Passchendaele. The Somme.

I took a deep breath, forcing myself to continue in a light voice as the Pierce-Arrow reached the edge of the village and again began gathering speed. “By comparison, their younger son, Reginald, seemed to live a charmed war. Ostensibly.” For I understood, as Sidney certainly did, that no soldier had survived the horrors of trench warfare without some sort of scars, invisible though they might be to the eye.

“Until he didn’t,” he surmised.

“He was blinded at Ypres in 1917.”

“Poor bloke.”

“Yes, well, don’t let him hear you say that.” I turned to peer out over the countryside to the north at the sound of the familiar buzzing rumble. “Last I saw him, he was already feeling sorry enough for himself, and he won’t thank you for it.”

“Noted.” His eyes darted between the road and the same patch of sky I was monitoring.

When finally the aeroplane soared into sight, passing over the copse of oak trees just beginning to burst into autumn color, and the welcome roundel insignia could be seen painted on the underside of the wings, we both seemed to inhale a breath of relief. I wondered how long it would take before the sound of approaching aircraft no longer filled me with dread. How long until the instinct to duck and cover was no longer my first impulse?

Sidney’s hands tightened and then relaxed their grip on the driving wheel. “We must be close.”

“Yes,” was all I could manage, my heart still racing from the instinct of prey. After all, during my time working behind enemy lines in the German-occupied territories of Belgium and northeastern France, that had been very much what I was.

Sidney rested his hand on my leg and offered me a consoling smile, letting me know that I hadn’t hidden my alarm as well as I’d hoped. But his attention was soon reclaimed by the aeroplane as it wheeled about, returning toward us. I shielded my eyes to gaze up at its metal frame glinting in the crystalline-blue sky. Rather than fly off in the direction of the aerodrome, from which it had come, the light bomber seemed to swerve back and forth over top of us. Something I was none too comfortable with.

“I’d wager that pilot is a bit of motor enthusiast,” Sidney proclaimed with pride. His eyes glinted with challenge. “Shall we give him a show?”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the Pierce-Arrow surged forward, its engine revving as it gained speed over a relatively straight stretch of open road. I pressed my Napoleon blue cloche hat down tighter on my head, my stomach fluttering as the wind whipped past my cheeks. However, I wasn’t unmoved by the exhilaration of such speed, and a breathless laugh escaped from my mouth, belying my trepidation.

The bomber kept pace with us, more or less straightening out his flight path. Though, of course, had the pilot wished, he could have left us in a trail of his fumes.

“Sidney,” I gasped. “Tell me you are not trying to race that aeroplane.”

The widening of his grin was my only answer.

I shook my head and clutched the seat beneath me, my fingernails biting into the leather even through my kid gloves. “I’m all for a bit of fun,” I shouted over the wind. “But I cannot promise your prized car’s upholstery won’t have claw marks in it when it’s over.”

He glanced over at me, perhaps recognizing for the first time the uneasiness underlying my banter, and eased up on the accelerator. And not a moment too soon. For the motorcar whipped around a bend and into the outskirts of another village, where a man and woman stood yelling at each other in the middle of the road.

Sidney stomped on the brakes, fighting to bring the Pierce-Arrow to a safe stop while I braced myself against the dashboard. When the motorcar shuddered to a stop, dust from the road billowing up around us, the couple stood but inches from our front fender.

The man appeared frozen with shock, while the woman seemed to teeter and then stagger backward a few steps, her face contorted in a grimace as she blinked rapidly. For a moment, I feared we had struck her. But once she’d righted herself, she swayed back toward the man, her head bobbling on her shoulders as she raised her finger to resume whatever tirade she had been delivering. The man ignored her words in favor of scowling at us. And rightfully so. Though what had he expected, standing in the middle of the road, and a rather well-traveled thoroughfare at that?

I heard the metallic squeal of a lorry’s brakes as it rumbled up behind us and then the blast of its klaxon, clearly impatient to be on his way. I suspected that was all that saved us from a blistering rebuke from the fellow in the road. He grasped the woman’s elbow and pulled her from the thoroughfare, and all the while her stream of words never stopped.

Sidney eased past the couple and their neighbors, who were watching while I struggled to steady my breath. Once we were beyond the village of quaint stone and brick buildings, he increased his speed, but to nothing close to the pace he had been driving before. I looked overhead, noticing his aerial competitor had flown on to wherever his destination was.

“Sorry about that,” Sidney murmured, shifting gears. “I suppose this isn’t the most ideal place to be putting her through her paces. But on the bright side, at least we now know her brakes are tip-top.”

I glared at him in mild annoyance that he could be so blasé about the matter.

His eyes cut to me before returning to the road, and then he reached over to press his hand over mine where it rested in my lap. “I didn’t mean to unsettle you. I shall take more care from here on out.”

I arched a single eyebrow at him. “Is that out of concern for me, or because you’d rather not see your new Pierce-Arrow come to rack and ruin like the last one?”

His deep blue eyes flashed with humor. “You, of course.”

“Uh-huh,” I replied, unconvinced.

He squeezed my hand before releasing it, gripping the driving wheel with both hands to navigate around a sharp curve. Once the road straightened, a sign on the side of the road proclaimed we were entering Wiltshire.

“The turn for Littlemote House is just up here,” I directed, pointing off to the right.

Sidney followed my directives, turning the motorcar onto the rutted single track. Here he kept the roadster at a slow speed, lest the rough, pockmarked lane damage it.

“So what do you think that row in the road was all about?” he asked, nodding his head back in the direction we’d come as we bumped and trundled down the track. Perhaps using the eastern entrance had not been the wisest choice. I could only hope the main drive farther along the road, leading away from the house to the south, was in better condition.

“I don’t know. But it seemed obvious she was three sheets to the wind, and I have to wonder if he was at least a trifle zozzled himself. I’m simply glad we didn’t hit them,” I added in a softer voice.

Soon enough, we caught sight of the squat guard house, which now stood abandoned, ivy and creeping vines overgrowing its pocked stone walls. Beyond this point, the lane widened and, happily, smoothed out, being better maintained than the rest of the approach. Passing a copse of poplar trees, Littlemote House sprang into view, its sprawling flint, limestone ashlar, and brick edifice dominating the highest elevation for miles in either direction. Though not to my taste, my aunt had reason to be proud of the Elizabethan manor, particularly the extensive gardens, which had always been her pride and joy. Though I had to wonder if any of it had been planted over with vegetables when the government had begun urging citizens to utilize any arable land for crops.

We rounded the circular drive, pulling to a stop at the arched portico standing over the heavy wooden double doors. My eyes scanned the structure for signs of the damage my aunt had eluded to, but other than a broken and patched window, and a general air of unkemptness, I couldn’t say it looked much different from what I remembered. But once I stepped out onto the crushed-stone, I began to note the things I’d missed from a distance. Smashed and broken shrubbery, a few fallen roof tiles, and pits in some of the brick, as if someone had fired a gun at it. The trellised greenery covering the exterior, which had always been so lovingly maintained, and was even now bursting into bright red in the autumn chill, had quite obviously been the victim of some airmen’s prank. Why they had taken it upon themselves to climb the structure, I didn’t know, but it was fortunate the iron brackets fastening it in place had held, otherwise the entire wooden lattice might have come crashing down along with its foliage. As it was, there were broken and splintered rungs, as well as some badly bruised ivy.

So absorbed was I in taking inventory that I didn’t notice the doors had opened until I heard my aunt’s voice.

“Oh, Verity, thank heavens you’ve come,” she exclaimed as she hurried across the portico to wrap me in her lavender-scented embrace. “They’ve ruined everything!”

“Hullo, Aunt Ernestine,” I replied, hugging her back as she continued to heave aggrieved sighs. “Who’s ruined everything? Our flyboys?”

“Pack of savages!” she exclaimed with vehemence. “Why on earth Sir James ever allowed them to use Littlemote, I’ll never understand.”

Her husband likely had no choice, but I refrained from saying so.

She shook her head. “Oh, I should never have allowed him to convince me to stay in London. I should have insisted on keeping a corner of the manor to myself.” Her dark eyes flashed martially and her spine stiffened. “I should have kept those young men in line.” She sniffed through her dainty nose—the daintiest part of her matronly form swathed in blond silk and tweed wool—and turned toward Sidney, her demeanor softening. “Lovely to see you, Sidney. The family is all quite proud of you, my dear boy.”

“Thank you, Lady Popham,” he replied, taking her proffered hand as he bowed over it. He’d quickly learned it was the only response he could make. Demurring the honor bestowed upon him and his own actions only seemed to somehow disparage the sacrifices made by other men and their families, so rather than convey an unintentional slight, he simply said very little about it.

She patted his hand where he held hers. “Please, dear. Call me Aunt Ernestine. We are family, after all.” Then she pulled him forward, lacing her arm through his. “Now, let me show you what else those savages have done.”

I smiled at my aunt’s ancient butler standing by the doors and then followed in their wake. There was no doubt from whom I’d inherited my figure. All the women in my father’s family, including Aunt Ernestine, were pleasantly rounded, while my mother was whipcord lean. Being young and inclined toward sport, no one could accuse my form of running to fat, but I looked nothing like the thin, boyish figures beginning to grace the covers of the fashion magazines.

Stepping out of the bright sunlight and into the entry and then through to the great hall, where the majority of the walls were covered in dark wooden paneling, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. But once they did, I recognized what had so dismayed my aunt. The airmen had evidently put the large open space with high ceilings to good use as some sort of recreation area, though what precisely they had been playing, I could not say. There were gouges in the walls and paneling from some sort of ball or other projectile, and a number of window panes in the large latticed windows had been replaced by new glass of uneven quality. Even the flagstone floor sported its share of scuffs, cuts, and dents.

“You were wise to put the weaponry in storage,” Sidney remarked as he gazed up at one rather impressive broad sword now reaffixed to its position on the wall.

“I should say so,” my aunt proclaimed, fairly quivering with outrage. “I shudder to think what state this house would have been in had I left them and our best furnishings to those scoundrels’ uses.”

I tilted my head to study the pair of mismatched wall sconces that had been hung to replace their eighteenth-century predecessors. That they’d been switched rather than repaired indicated the condition they must have been in.

“We were told officers would be residing here, but that is obviously not the case.” She sniffed. “For I cannot believe gently raised men would treat an ancestral home so shabbily.”

Sidney’s head turned, his gaze meeting mine in silent communication. Yes, but what is an Elizabethan manor but wood and stone when a man was faced with the very real possibility of his death—and a horrendous fiery one at that—not to mention the deaths of his friends and the pilots under his command every time he took to the skies for their bombing runs. There was a reason the casualty rate for the Royal Flying Corps, and its successor, the Royal Air Force, was so high.

“You can’t tell me your brother would have behaved so appallingly.”

I should have expected it. I should have been prepared for my aunt to invoke Rob’s name and dredge his memory into the matter purely because he had been an airman. But I wasn’t. And it cut me to the quick. As if someone had slipped a stiletto under my rib cage and extracted it before I could even flinch. The pain radiated outward, and it was all I could do simply to draw breath.

That Sidney’s eyes happened to be locked with mine at that moment was both troubling and reassuring. For I could tell he’d witnessed the hurt I struggled to hide and even deny. Rob had been dead for over four years. I knew this, and yet part of me, perhaps foolishly, still wished to pretend it wasn’t true. That he was merely far away, and next week or month or year I would see him again.

Sidney measuredly crossed the room toward me as I inhaled a steadying breath and turned to face my aunt. “Is there more damage?”

“Oh, yes,” she assured me as my husband pressed a supportive hand to the small of my back. Her eyes flickered toward him, observing our allied front. “But for the moment, that can wait. At least until you’ve had some fortification.” She pivoted on her heel, moving toward the entry to the Elizabethan Room, where her butler stood waiting to open the door, having anticipated her wishes.

In that room, the blue silk wallpaper and gold drapes had largely survived the flyboy invasion intact, save for a few stains, but the paper and plaster chandelier had clearly seen better days. Aunt Ernestine swiveled to face us before the gold chintz settee arranged before a low table, catching my gaze directed at the ceiling. Her mouth pursed into a moue of displeasure. “Yes, needless to say, Lady Elizabeth is not best pleased.”

As always, when that ancestor was mentioned, the chandelier lightly swayed and trembled. But then it had already been doing so.

My aunt nodded at it, as if in proof. “See.”

I smiled tightly and then shook my head at Sidney before he could voice his evident confusion. I had no desire to rehash the sad tale of Lady Elizabeth Popham, or debate whether her ghost roamed Littlemote House, shaking chandeliers to indicate her ire.

So instead I introduced a subject certain to distract my aunt as we settled on the settee opposite hers. “What of Reg? Will he be joining us?”

She sighed, her normally indomitable energy deflating. “I think not.” Her eyes dipped to a spot on the bare wooden floor—the carpet being another casualty, I suspected. “Today has not been one of his good days.” Her eyes lifted to meet mine, heavy with grief. “But you may visit him later, if you like. He’s normally out on the terrace, when the weather allows.”

I nodded in acceptance, intensely curious about the state in which I would find my cousin. Though I had spoken with Reg since he was evacuated home, it had been half a year since my last visit.

“Father said matters have been a bit chaotic since you reclaimed the house,” I said, turning back to the reason we were there. “That some heirlooms have gone missing.”

“Not just missing, my dear Verity. I’ve reason to believe a number of our paintings and other objets d’art have been replaced by forgeries.” Her voice was aghast as she sank deeper into the cushions. “Why, I was never so humiliated in all my life than when the appraiser I invited here told me nearly everything of value I’d thought to sell was, in fact, worth almost nothing!”

Sidney and I shared a look of surprise. “And these were objects that were placed in storage before the airmen arrived?”

“Of course. I oversaw their removal to the attics myself. The doors were secured, and I gave Miles the keys.” She dipped her head toward the door through which we’d entered and the butler had since slipped away. “But that doesn’t mean some unscrupulous person didn’t pick the locks.” Her hands fluttered before her until she clasped them together in her lap. “It’s all quite distressing.”

If what Father had said was true, and I could only imagine it was—for my aunt would never have admitted how low their coffers were unless the estate was in dire straits indeed—then Aunt Ernestine must have been relying on those sales to help keep them afloat. Upon reflection, I’d realized their circumstances were not all that surprising. Uncle James had never been the frugal sort, and I had heard Father bemoan his brother-in-law’s horrid choice in investments in the past. Add to that the inflation, income taxes, and heavy death duties owed not only from the passing of Uncle James, but also Thomas, and any estate not on a healthy footing before the war would now be crippled. Sadly, it was an all-too-familiar story among the landed elite, and but another indication of how the world was changing.

However, the discovery that a number of heirlooms had not just been stolen, as my father had indicated, but replaced with forgeries, was troubling in a different way. Such maneuvering required a level of calculation and prolonged access to the house that I had not expected. Particularly when one considered that some of the objects were paintings, and possibly large ones at that.

“Can you show us later which heirlooms are forgeries?” I asked.

“Of course. After our tea.”

As if awaiting just such a pronouncement, Miles slipped into the room, carrying the tea tray. That he was waiting on us thusly told me more than I’m sure my aunt wished, for in the past she’d always been quite the stickler about the separation of duties, and carrying the tea tray was not the butler’s job. Which could only mean that my aunt was short of staff. I didn’t know whether that was because she couldn’t pay them, or they simply weren’t available. Since the war, there was a shortage of people willing to go into or return to service, particularly young women. I suspected it was a bit of both.

Once we were settled with our tea and the dry biscuits my aunt preferred—for her digestion—Sidney took it upon himself to broach another crisis my father had mentioned. “I understand you’ve also had a servant go missing?”

“Oh, yes. It’s quite vexing. The girl apparently packed her bags and took off for parts unknown,” she declared with a bob of her head as she lifted her teacup. “For her family in the village has no knowledge of her whereabouts either. But they were certain to collect her owed wages.”

I frowned. “I doubt that whatever the maid’s motive was, it was to inconvenience you, Aunt Ernestine. How long ago was this? Has no one seen her since?”

Her eyebrows snapped together. “About two weeks, and I honestly wouldn’t know. My mind has been preoccupied by more pressing matters, Verity, than an absent maid.”

“Then why mention her to Father?”

She huffed in annoyance. “Because I didn’t know then that her absence wasn’t truly troubling. Her family isn’t worried about her, so why should I be?”

She had a fair point. Surely if there was some cause for concern, her family would be the ones to raise it. Maybe they knew more than they were saying. In any case, whatever she’d told my father and mother, she evidently wasn’t anxious about the maid’s fate, merely the loss of a staff member. She’d probably mentioned it only as additional evidence of her strife to elicit sympathy from my