Page 18 of Mrs. Holloway's Christmas Pudding

Her eyes were wide with distress, her movements agitated.

“Mr. Whitaker has taken a turn for the worse,” she announced. “He was very ill in the night, and the family fear he’ll not see Christmas.”

Chapter 6

“This will not do.” My voice rang down the passageway, all my ideas of the previous day made topsy-turvy. “This will not do at all.”

“But how are we to help him?” Cynthia demanded. “He rallied after your soup and custards, so his nephew said. Bobby and I drove young Herbert to his uncle’s house early this morning, after following him to a gambling hall last night, I’m sorry to say. He became highly inebriated, and Bobby and I had to drag him out. We left him staggering into the house on Brook Street but he came running out a moment later, saying his uncle was in a bad way. He was weeping, poor lad. I hurried home to tell you.”

I paced the floor, pressing my fist into my palm. What could I do? I had no business rushing to the Whitakers’ home, no way to prove my theories.

I could send word to Inspector McGregor of Scotland Yard. But he might not be able to look into things until too late, if he took any notice of me at all.

Daniel could stop at the Whitakers’ and inquire, as could Cynthia’s friends. But Daniel wouldn’t be allowed past the kitchen, and none of Cynthia’s acquaintances were early risers.

My contemplations were cut short by the sound of hurried footsteps in the passageway. I popped out of the kitchen to see Mr. Davis heading into the housekeeper’s parlor. Mrs. Redfern had not yet come down, so I hastened there to see what was the matter.

“Mr. Davis?”

Mr. Davis turned from rummaging in a cabinet where we kept things locked away from the underservants. He held a large black bottle.

“Paul is feeling poorly this morning,” he said in annoyance. “Overindulgence, I say. He went to visit his aunt yesterday, and she fed him an early Christmas dinner. He ate heartily and drank just as much. The mistress wants him up and about his duties and has asked me for her favorite bottle so she can dose him. I think he’d be better off with weak tea, but the mistress insists.”

I knew what was in the bottle. Mrs. Bywater spooned its contents liberally into servants who complained of the smallest stomachache. It was a very common remedy, and every household I’d worked in supplied it.

“We must go to Mr. Whitaker on the moment.” I pulled off my apron and barked a command to Lady Cynthia, who’d followed me. “Hail a hansom, at once.”

Instead of upbraiding me for forgetting my place, Cynthia instantly dashed back to the kitchen and out the door, her feet flashing by the high window as she hurtled herself upstairs to the street.

“Mrs. Holloway?” Mr. Davis asked in a baffled tone behind me.

“I will return as soon as I am able,” I told Mr. Davis as I hurried to the kitchen. “Tess can see to breakfast. Do not let on I am gone to Mrs. Bywater, please.”

Without waiting for his reply, I tossed down my apron and snatched up my coat before following Cynthia up the stairs.

When I reached the top, I turned toward South Audley Street, where the closest hansom stand would be, and found Cynthia already in one rolling toward me. The driver barely halted long enough for me to scramble inside, then we were off at a rapid pace to the Whitaker’s home.

Once we reached the house on Brook Street, Cynthia plunged out of the hansom and ran past the portico’s elegant columns to pull frantically on the doorbell. I thrust a shilling at the cabbie before I hastened down the stairs and into the kitchen, without bothering to knock.

Mrs. Provost swung from the stove where she was cooking eggs to death, and Agnes’s head popped up from where she rolled out dough at the table.

“Mrs. Holloway,” Mrs. Provost said, aghast. “What the devil do you mean, bursting in here?”

I ran through the kitchen without explanation, pushing past a startled maid on my way to the stairs. I dashed up them and through the green baize door into the quiet of the main house. On the ground floor, a footman was just opening the front door to Cynthia.

“Quick,” I cried to her. “We must stop him.”

“Must stop who?” Cynthia stepped around the footman who tried to block her way, and hurried after me as I mounted the stairs to the upper floors.

“Mr. Whitaker,” I panted in answer to Cynthia’s question.

Mrs. Whitaker herself stepped out of her husband’s bedchamber as we reached the second-floor hallway.

“Lady Cynthia?” She took in Cynthia’s male attire and then me panting next to her, her eyes widening. Mrs. Whitaker’s face was lined, her expression that of one who’d lost hope. “What on earth?”

“Is the doctor here?” I demanded.

“Of course, he is. My husband is very ill, and does not need—”

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