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“But you do care,” she says without looking up from her work. “You need to overcome that peculiar disease, Dr. Gray.”
“What disease would that be?”
“Giving a bloody damn what anyone else thinks of you.”
Gray elegantly lifts one shoulder and says nothing.
“You’re young,” she muses, still grinding her pestle. “The world will beat the caring out of you soon enough.” She turns to me. “Has it beaten it out of you, child? The pretty girl who takes a job working for the likes of him? The girl who eyes a higher rung on a very unusual ladder?”
“Jack makes some bold assumptions based on a brief acquaintance,” I say.
“Is our friend wrong?”
“She is not.” I steer the conversation onto the right track with, “So you’re the infamous Queen Mab.”
“Not what you expected?”
“Honestly? No. You’re named after a fairy. I expected more…” I gesture. “Theater.”
“More theater than a secret passage?”
“Thatwasa nice touch.”
“As for the title, yes, I am not as flashy as a fairy. But they wanted to call me Queen Sheba, being the only ‘queen’ they know who looks like me. Better for me to choose my own moniker.”
“That of a fairy, able to take any shape she likes.”
“Yes.”
“Also, if one goes back to Shakespeare’s reference, midwife to the fairies. That’s really why you chose it. Maybe for help with childbirth, but mostly for help preventing it.”
She laughs, a low, musical sound. “Jack is right. You are more clever than you appear. Such disguises serve us well.”
“You know why we’re here?”
“Of course. The police believe I supplied the poison to kill three men, and you will protect me from them… you, whoworkfor them.”
“You know there’s more to it, or you wouldn’t have invited us to your home.”
“Myhome? This belongs to an elderly couple who never venture into the basement and have no idea there is a very wicked woman working behind a secret passage. A passage which will, once you leave, not reopen, leaving you looking very foolish indeed if you return with the police. Consider my bringing you here an act of trust in the reputation of Dr. Gray as a fair and honest man. Or of his sister, whose work interests me far more.”
Mab is playing an intricate game here, one above my pay grade, having dealt with the black market only in a law-enforcement capacity. Bringing us here seems to putusin a position of power, but that’s an illusion. She’s subtly threatening us… while making this an act of trust… while also letting us know that even if we use this information, it will get us nowhere, which is a show of power in itself.
She’s right that we wouldn’t tell the police where to find her. We won’t even tell McCreadie, mostly because—if I’m judging him correctly—he wouldn’t want the information. If he doesn’t know where to find Queen Mab, he can’t be expected to pass the information on to his superior officers.
“I did not supply that poison,” she says. “Which is what you would expect me to say.” She purses her lips. “Does anyone ever admit to such a crime?”
“Occasionally,” I say. “If they’re mentally disturbed. Or if they’re proud of it.”
Or, if they just want a place to sleep with regular meals.Having experienced Victorian prisons, I find that hard to imagine, though I suppose anything is possible, if one is destitute enough.
“Well, I will take the expected course, as dull as that may be, because it is true. I will admit to many things I should not, but never to things I have not done, including supplying poison.”
“Intentionally,” Gray says.
She wags a finger at him. “Correct, and being the brother of a chemist, you well know that most remedies can be poisonous if taken wrong. However, I have heard that the poison used here is arsenic, which I do not carry. Nor strychnine nor cyanide. I know only too well how people presume that any woman who deals in herbal or chemical remedies also sells poison.”
She waves at the shelves. “You may check for yourselves, though I am not certain how much that would help. It is not as if someone who sells arsenic would have it labeled as such.”
