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Again, she didn’t say anything.
I took that as a sign to go on. “If you’re so close, you won’t want to leave her for another position.”
“I’d leave her for a duchess. I don’t owe Lady Q anything. We stopped being friends when she stopped being nice to me. Marrying Lord Q turned her into a right snob. They warned me. Everyone warned me that Mary—Lady Q—wouldn’t be the same once she became a lady, but I thought we had a bond. I thought we’d have great adventures here in London together, and that she’d tell me everything. But we drifted apart. She treated me like just another one of her servants, like we hadn’t shared everything, once.”
“You’ve been loyal to her, haven’t you?” I pressed.
She downed the rest of her beer and held the empty mug out to Harry, requesting another. “Ain’t no one can fault my loyalty.”
“You’ve kept her secrets, even about her past.”
She lowered the mug. “You know about that?”
“Of course. The duchess employed private detectives to investigate you before sending us here. She can’t hire just anyone for the role of lady’s maid. She wants someone she can trust. Someone with integrity. Since investigating you inevitably meant investigating your mistress, she learned about Lady Quorne’s past.”
“I’ve been loyal,” she said again, this time without meeting our gazes. No doubt she was recalling how she’d told Ambrose McDonald her mistress’s secrets. He must have paid her handsomely.
“You’re an honest woman,” Harry went on. “Honest and hard working. That’s the kind the duchess wants to employ. It’s a shame your past is tainted too, because of what Lady Quorne did before her marriage.”
His leap of faith got results. She was eager to defend her good name. “Me? Why should I get tainted becauseshewas a dancer? I never trod the boards. I never met the gentlemen backstage for a bit of—” She winked at Harry. “That weren’t me. That was all her. You tell your mistress that I’m respectable.”
Harry signaled to the waitress for another mug of beer. “We’ll make sure she knows.”
Miss Docherty looked relieved. “It ain’t fair that I should be tarred with the same brush because I was her friend. Then again, nothing in life is fair, is it? I was a shop girl, back then. I worked hard but I was satisfied. Mary was never satisfied. She worked in the shop too and danced at night. She liked the attention. She was real pretty, so she got a lot of it.” She sighed. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re a man. But the pretty girls, well, they get whatever they want. They can marry lords. The rest of us are considered lucky if we get to serve them.”
Harry signaled it was time to leave, but I had one last question. “Earlier, you mentioned the man who was murdered. I read about it. Nasty business. Was your mistress at the Bunburys’ ball that night?”
“Aye.”
“How did she seem when she arrived home? Was she upset about the murder? Did she seem worried?”
Miss Docherty lifted her shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t remember.”
“It wasn’t that long ago.”
“I said I don’t remember!” She snatched the beer mug out of the waitress’s hand and took a long drink.
Harry and I thanked her and left.
Outside, I flipped up the collar of my coat against the biting wind. “I don’t think she connected McDonald’s murder to her mistress’s blackmail.”
Harry agreed. “I don’t think she’s in any state to make that connection. I also don’t think she was in any state to notice Lady Quorne’s behavior upon her return home on the night of the ball.”
It did seem likely that Miss Docherty would have been drunk if she spent the evening at the Hound and Fox. “They may have been friends in their youth, but Lady Quorne is very generous to keep her on. Most ladies would dismiss a maid who gets drunk in the local pub most evenings.”
“Perhaps Miss Docherty was blackmailing Lady Quorne, too. Perhaps she’d agreed to keep quiet about her mistress’s past if her ladyship continued to employ her.”
He made a very good point. It explained much about their arrangement. “If Lady Quorne was being blackmailed by two separate people over the same thing, wouldn’t she kill both to stop the truth leaking out? Why just kill Mr. McDonald?”
“Perhaps she couldn’t pay McDonald what he demanded. In Miss Docherty’s case, it’s easy enough to continue to employ her. But if McDonald wanted money, perhaps Lady Quorne couldn’t obtain it.”
He was full of good points this evening. “So what do we do now?” I asked.
“Now I escort you back to the hotel and hope no one notices your arrival.”
“You mean aside from the night porter?”
“I’ll have a word with Philip.”
