The Questioning Miss Quinton

Victoria sat front once more, placing her elbows on the desk. “That’s another thing that puzzles me, Willie. There’s something about that miniature that bothers me. I don’t ever remember seeing it before, for one thing, but it’s my inability to reconcile the miniature with the man I knew that is most difficult. I imagine it is hard to conjure up a real sense of recognition when faced with an image of one’s parent at an age closer to one’s own.”

Willie backed hurriedly away from the desk, turning her body slightly away from Victoria’s as she extracted a cloth from one of her apron pockets, and then proceeded to make a great business out of dusting one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs that comprised the only seating for visitors in the room. “Doesn’t quite look like the old geezer, does it? It’d be the smile that’s throwin’ you off, I wager, Missy, seein’ as how he did precious little of it in his lifetime.”

Victoria allowed a small, appreciative grin to show on her face before prudently hiding it with her hand. Willie had always been fairly outspoken about her lack of love for the Professor during his lifetime, but now that the man was gone she seemed to be pulling out all the stops. If she only knew… But no, Victoria didn’t dare tell her.

“I won’t scold you, Willie, even though I must remind you that you are being disrespectful of the dead. You have every right to be upset over the pittance he left you after all your years of service,” Victoria went on, urging further confidences. “Even Mr. Pierre Standish—although he was extremely rude to voice his opinion aloud—said that thirty pounds was a most sorry sum.”

“It was thirty pounds more than I was expectin’, Missy,” Wilhelmina replied, flicking her cloth briskly over the seat of the chair before sitting herself down with a thump and looking her mistress straight in the eyes. Victoria suppressed the sudden urge to flee, knowing that somehow the tables had been turned and Wilhelmina was about to ask some very probing questions of her own.

“What I wants to know now, Miss Victoria, is this—how much did the cheeseparin’ old skinflint set by for you? I’ve been watchin’ you and wonderin’ what it is that’s put you so badly off your feed. You’ve been sittin’ in here day in, day out for over a week now, shufflin’ those papers back and forth from one pile to another. It’s bad news, isn’t it?”

Victoria hesitated a moment, wondering if it was exactly fair to pour out at least a part of her troubles to Willie, who could do nothing more than commiserate with her—other than to throw a few colorful curses the Professor’s way, of course—but she did feel a great need to talk to somebody.

“Well,” she began slowly, a note of bitter self-mockery in her tone, “as you must know, Willie, there existed between the Professor and myself a certain, er, want of openness while he was alive.”

“He treated you like an unpaid servant, lovin’ and trustin’ none but hisself and his useless scribblins’,” Wilhelmina cut in candidly. “Let’s call a spade a spade, Missy. There’s naught but ourselves here to listen, you know.”

Victoria lifted her head, throwing her long, slim neck and clearly defined, fragile, square jaw into prominence. “You’re right, Willie, as usual,” she said with some asperity. Then, losing a bit of her bravado, she began to ramble, hoping to change the subject. “It’s time to call a spade a spade, whatever that silly saying means, for whatever else would one call it—a flowerpot? Willie, did you ever stop to consider just how silly some of our time-honored sayings are? Like ‘right as a trivet.’ Whatever could that mean? Could it just as easily be ‘left as a trivet’? Or ‘wrong as a trivet’? After all—”

“Are we soon goin’ to be servin’ tea in the parlor to the sheriff’s officers?” Willie interrupted brusquely, not about to be sidetracked now that she had nearly gotten her mistress to the sticking point.

“You mean like Lord Barrymore did years ago, Willie?” Victoria asked, obviously still more than eager to digress from the distasteful subject of her current financial embarrassment. “I read somewhere in the Professor’s notes that Lord Barrymore was dunned so much that the sheriff’s officers seemed as much at home in his house as did his own servants.”

Wilhelmina nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes. His lordship had them dress up as servants when he was throwin’ a party. I know all about it, Missy. Us that serve know everythin’. Now stop tryin’ to twist out of it and tell me—are we rolled up?”

It was no use, Victoria decided, opening her mouth to speak. “The Professor held the purse strings entirely, of course,” she began slowly, “and I doubt even you could find anything unusual about that.”

“Not out of the way, Missy, just stupid,” Wilhelmina answered baldly. “As if there was yet a man born who knew the real cost of things—yellin’ for fresh peas in the dead of winter like I was goin’ to take m’self off out into the back garden and find ’em hangin’ on the trees.”

“But although he kept the household on quite a strict budget,” Victoria pressed on, wishing to get over this rough ground as smoothly as she could, “he always seemed to have funds enough to purchase his expensive books and his favorite tobaccos and, of course, his finely aged brandy. Oh dear, that sounded rather condemning, didn’t it?”

“He knew how to live, that he did. I’ll say that much for him,” Wilhelmina put in thoughtfully. “I can’t say I liked his choice of tailors, with the dull as ditchwater browns that he fancied for everything, but the quality was always there, wasn’t it?”

Victoria nodded her head up and down firmly, as if Willie’s confirmation of her assessment of the Professor’s finances had reinforced her own feelings. “Naturally I assumed that the Professor had some private form of income—monies invested in the Exchange, or some income from an inheritance. You know what I mean.”

Wilhelmina sat forward at attention. “But?”

“But his solicitor tells me he has no record of any such matters, and I have searched and searched this room without unearthing a single clue as to where the money came from. Even this house is rented.”

Wilhelmina’s expressive brows came together as she frowned, considering what she had just heard. “Are you tryin’ to tell me that the old bas—, um, that the Professor left you without a penny to scratch with? I can’t believe it! It doesn’t make a whit of sense, Missy.”

“Oh, there’s some money in the house,” Victoria explained hastily. “I found nearly one hundred and fifty pounds locked in a small tin box in the bottom drawer of his desk. There’s more than enough to honor the Professor’s bequests to you and Betty, and the rent for this quarter’s already been paid. If nothing else, at least I didn’t find any unpaid tradesmen’s bills.”

“So there’s naught but a hundred pounds standin’ betwixt you and the street?” Wilhelmina pursued intently, shaking her head in mingled anger and disgust. “You keep my thirty pounds. I’ve got more than enough put away that I don’t need to be takin’ the bread out of a child’s mouth. Lucky thing for old Quennel that he’s dead, let me tell you, for I’d like to strangle him with my own bare hands, and then go off to the hangman singin’!”