Snare of Serpents by Victoria Holt Page B

voice was getting fainter. I was sure she was almost asleep.
    I said: “When I first saw you, I thought I had never seen anyone less like a governess.”
    “Thank you, dear. That’s a compliment. How am I doing then?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Governessing,” she said.
    “You are a very strange governess.”
    “Hm,” she murmured.
    “You are quite different from Miss Milne.”
    “The one who stole the necklace?”
    “She didn’t steal it. It was put in her drawer … by someone.”
    She opened her eyes and some of the sleepiness dropped from her. “You mean, someone planted it?”
    “I mean that someone did it deliberately to make trouble for her.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “Nobody told me. I just knew.”
    “How could you know?”
    “Because Miss Milne couldn’t possibly have stolen anything.”
    “Is that the only reason you know?”
    I nodded. “I wish I could find out the truth.”
    “You never know people, dear. They do the oddest things. You never know what’s going on inside people. They go on and on … in the same old way and then suddenly they break out and do something you couldn’t have believed they ever would.”
    She was growing dreamy again.
    “You don’t seem to be interested in the usual things,” I said.
    “Like what, dear?”
    “Mathematics, geography, English, history. Miss Milne was ever so keen on history. My mother was, too. She knew a lot about what happened in the past and she used to talk to me about it. It was very exciting. Once I went to Holyrood House.”
    “What’s that?”
    I was astounded.
    “Surely you know. It’s the old palace. Mary Queen of Scots was there, Rizzio was murdered there. And then there’s the castle where King James was born … the Sixth of Scotland and the First of England. His mother was Mary Queen of Scots.”
    She was almost asleep. Then suddenly she began to sing:
    Wasn’t it pitiful what they did to Mary Queen of Scots?
    Of her emulsion I have taken lots and lots and lots.
    They locked her up in Fotheringay,
    Fotheringay was not so gay,
    Mary, Mary, Hanover Squarey, Mary Queen of Scots.
    I listened in amazement. Then I thought: she is drunk.
    How COULD MY FATHER, who was so stern and so conventional, allow such a woman to remain in the house, and moreover to have brought her in in the first place?
    Of course, he had never seen her lying on her bed singing “Mary Queen of Scots.” She changed her personality when he was there. She wore the black dress often. It seemed to me that she could adjust herself to fit the occasion.
    She did refer to that afternoon.
    “I don’t know what I said, dear. You see, I had been to lunch with a dear friend. She’d been in trouble … it was a love affair and suddenly everything came right. I was so happy for her. She wanted to drink. She told me what had happened … how it had nearly gone wrong and then come right. And there was champagne … to celebrate, you see. She made me drink with her. Well, I’m afraid I’m not used to it.”
    I thought of the brandy in the locked cupboard and she must have guessed my thoughts for she went on quickly: “I just keep a little something in case I’m off-colour. I know I look robust, but I have my little weakness. Internal, dear. I get quickly upset if something doesn’t agree with me and a spoonful always puts me right. I had to drink with her. It would have been sort of unkind not to. You understand?”
    “Oh, yes,” I reassured her.
    “I must have said a lot of silly things, did I?”
    “You sang a song about Mary Queen of Scots.”
    “It was … awful?”
    “Well, it was joking about Fotheringay, which was very sad really, and something I didn’t understand about ‘hanover squarey.’ I didn’t know what that meant.”
    “It’s a well-known place in London. Hanover Square, actually Squarey, to rhyme with Mary. That’s why that’s there. It was silly. An old music hall song. Was that all? Did I say anything else?”
    “Only that