She got the coin and tossed it out the window, telling the guard to bring some food, already prepared, from a cook-shop. Obviously she did not intend to do anything herself. And later in the day when he asked her to change the bandages she refused, saying that every nurse she knew who had dressed an ulcer was dead now but that she intended to die another way.
Bruce was furious, but he answered her quietly. “Then, if you won’t help, you may as well go.”
She gave him an insolent grin and he was afraid that she had guessed already he was far less strong than he pretended to be. “No, m’lord. I was sent by the parish. If I don’t stay I won’t get my fee.”
For a moment they stared at each other, and then he flung the blanket about himself and got out of bed. She stood there, watching him closely as he knelt on one knee beside Amber, measuring his strength, and at last he turned with a flare of exasperated anger.
“Get out! Go in the other room!”
She grinned again but went, and closed the door. He called out to her to leave it open but she ignored him. Swearing beneath his breath he finished dressing the wound and then got back into bed to rest. There was no sound at all from the parlour. It was half-an-hour before he could get up again and then he crossed the room, opened the door quietly and found her going through the drawer of a table. There were articles scattered everywhere and she had evidently been searching methodically through each piece of furniture for secret drawers and hiding places, which were almost always built in.
“Mrs. Maggot.”
She looked up and met his stare coolly. “Sir?”
“You’ll find nothing of value hidden away. Whatever you may care to steal is in plain sight. We have no money in the house beyond a few coins for food.”
She made no reply but, after a moment, turned and went into the dining-room. Bruce found that he was sweating with rage and nervousness, for he did not doubt the old woman would murder them both without an instant’s hesitation if she learned that there was almost seventy pounds in the house. He knew that the nurses were drawn from the lowest social classes: lifelong paupers, uncaught criminals, and—in plague-time—from women like Sykes who had been forced into it through necessity and misfortune.
He did not sleep well that night, aware of her in the parlour, for when she had found evidences of Sykes’s illness she had refused to go into the nursery. And when he heard her get up, two or three times, and move about he lay tense and apprehensive. If she decides to kill us, he thought, I’ll try to strangle her. But he clenched and unclenched his fists with despair, for the fingers had but little of their usual strength.
The next morning, just before daylight, he fell deeply asleep and when he woke she was bending over him, her arm thrust beneath the mattress on which he lay. As his eyes opened she straightened slowly, unalarmed. He could not tell, by her expression, whether she had discovered the bagful of coins and jewels.
“Just smoothin’ your bed, sir.”
“I’ll take care of that myself.”
“You said yesterday, sir, that I might go. If you’ll give me fifty pound now, I will.”
He looked at her shrewdly, aware that she had made the offer to find out whether or not he would admit to having that much money in the house. “I told you, Maggot—I have only a few shillings here.”
“How now, sir? Only a few shillin‘s—a lord, and livin’ in lodgings like this?”
“We put our money with a goldsmith. Is there any food left from yesterday?”
“No, sir. The guard stole most of it. We’ll have to send again.”
Throughout the day, whenever he got out of bed, he could feel her watching him, even though most of the time she was not in the room. She knows there’s money here, he thought, and tonight she’ll try to get it. But if there had been not a farthing in cash the furnishings alone were worth what would be a fortune to her—even if she sold them to a broker-of-the-dead.
He spent the day thinking and planning, aware that if he was to save either of their lives he must be ready for her, no matter what she might try to do. And while he lay there the dead-carts came by three times; there were now too many deaths to bury the bodies at night.
He considered every possibility.
