Scarlet Widow by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

armchair.
    Aunt Felicity’s chaise was waiting outside in the early afternoon gloom, ready to take her back to her house on Blackheath, south of the river. She was anxious not to leave her return too late because of the snafflers who came out on the road when it began to grow dark.
    ‘You will have to sell the business,’ she said. ‘It should fetch a fair amount of money, though, and that will pay for your fare to Birmingham and cater for your needs for quite some time to come. I have a lawyer friend at Lincoln’s Inn, Mr Lacey, whose clerks can manage the sale for you.’
    ‘Thank you, Aunt Felicity,’ said Beatrice. ‘You’ve been very kind to me.’
    She had met her cousin Sarah Minchin only once before. Sarah had come down from Birmingham to stay with them when Beatrice was seven or eight years old, and she remembered her as a tall, sharp-nosed woman who had seemed to find everything in life disagreeable – her bed, the food that Beatrice’s mother had served her, the smell of the London streets, the weather, even the dresses that Beatrice had been wearing.
    ‘A young girl should always look obedient and demure,’ she had said of a red pinafore that Beatrice’s mother had made for her. Beatrice had had no idea what ‘demure’ meant, but she had assumed it meant sour-faced, like cousin Sarah.
    *
    When Aunt Felicity had left Beatrice went into the darkened shop and looked around at all the gleaming bottles arranged on the shelves. It was so silent. The smell of herbs and spices permeated everything, even the wooden counter. She found it almost impossible to believe that her father was dead and that her life here was all over. She had always imagined that she would be working with him until he retired, and that the Society of Apothecaries would accept her as a member, even though she was a girl, and that one day she would be running the business herself.
    Her father had taught her so well that she believed she could almost run the business now, on her own, but she knew that it was impossible.
    She went back into the parlour and started to clear up. Only fifteen mourners had come to the funeral because the snow had made it so difficult to send letters to all of his old friends and acquaintances who might have wanted to pay their respects, and equally difficult for any of them to travel here. He had been laid to rest in the crypt of St James’s, next to her mother, whose body had been retrieved by the constables from The Fortune of War.
    As she carried a candle up the narrow stairs to her bedroom she stopped halfway and started to sob. She stood there, gripping the banister rail, with tears running down her cheeks, trying to swallow her grief and almost choking on it.
    In a city of more than seven hundred thousand people, she had never felt so alone in her life.
    *
    Cousin Sarah was there to meet her when the stage chaise arrived mid-afternoon at the Rose Inn in Birmingham. It was a very cold day, but bright, and the coach had made good time from Selly, which had been their last stop for refreshment and changing horses.
    A broken spring had held them up the day before at Banbury, but it had taken them only three days to cover the hundred and twenty miles from London. Beatrice had been able to afford fivepence for an inside seat, and she had been glad of that, especially on their first day, when they had been overtaken by a ferocious hailstorm as they passed through Watford and the passengers on the roof had been chilled and soaked through in spite of their heavy cloaks.
    Beatrice didn’t recognize cousin Sarah at first, not until she came pushing her way through the crowd in the courtyard, calling out, ‘Beatrice! Beatrice! Here , you silly girl! Here !’ as if she were calling a pet dog.
    Cousin Sarah was not nearly as tall as Beatrice remembered her – in fact, she seemed tiny and very thin. Under her plain black bonnet she had a face like a ferret, with close-together eyes and protruding front teeth.