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Sarah rolls her eyes at that.
Annis turns to Isla. “You wished to speak to me? Something about a Mr. Ware and whether he was involved in my husband’s business affairs?”
“Yes.”
“I have heard of the man, but only in passing, and not through Gordon. And, yes, I hardly needed to deliver that answer in person, but if I stayed in that house a moment longer, I feared I might indeed murder someone.”
“We ought to take lodgings at a hotel, Annis,” Sarah says.
“And let Helen toss my belongings into the rubbish heap? No. It is still my house, and I will stay there and graciously allow her to do the same, until I have removed everything that is indisputably mine.”
I glance at Isla.
“What is that look for, girl?” Annis says. “You have something to say. Speak. I know you are quite capable of it. Too capable.”
“We have a witness who reports seeing you at Mr. Ware’s office yesterday, arguing with him about your husband’s business dealings.”
Her brows rise. “My husband was murdered yesterday. I would hardly go off chasing business matters under such circumstances.”
“No?”
She pauses. “All right. I would. But I did not. When did this witness purport to see me?”
I hesitate as I realize I should have pressed Morris for more details. No matter—I know his business address. “I will obtain that information, ma’am.”
“Then do so, because I was not at Mr. Ware’s offices. As far as I know, I have never met him. If he does have business with my husband, I know nothing of it.”
“I was under the impression youranyour husband’s business.”
She gives me a thin smile. “My husband allowed me to ‘play’ businesswoman—as he put it—because such a thing is for people like me, born to the middle class. I have a natural ability for it. In the genes, apparently, and men like him lack it because they have evolved—as Mr. Darwin would put it—to a higher level of being.”
“One would think that survival of the fittest means having the skills to make money. So that one might actually survive.”
“Why do they need to make money, my dear, when they get it from the poor? And from those of us in the middle class who happily labor for them in recognition of their superior qualities? Yes, I ran his business, but that does not mean I knowallhis business. I gave Gordon money to play with. It kept him happy.”
“Play with?”
“Investments and such.”
“Would they have anything to do with the funerary business?”
“Oh, I am certain they did. My husband had early success with such speculation—thanks to my father and later to me—and he is not a man to stray from what worked once, even if it did not seem tokeepworking quite as well.”
“Without you or your father to advise him.”
“Yes, but Gordon made enough to keep him occupied. Between that and his mistresses and his hunting, I hardly ever saw him. This is why I did not kill my husband, child. I had no reason to do so. We had reached a point where we quite happily pursued our own lives, rarely intersecting.”
“You have your own money.”
“I do. When I took over the business, I made Gordon promise that I could keep five percent as a managerial fee, for ribbons and whatnots. I invested much better than he did.”
“So Helen inherits the house and the title.”
“Yes.”
“And the money and business?”
Here she sighs and leans a hip against the poison-garden fence. “His money, yes. The business, however, goes to me, and without the income it generates—or the ability to sell it—I daresay she will not be able to keep the house.”
