“Take your hands off me,” she hissed as she pulled her sleeve back in place. But the damage had been done.
“Your husband did that?” Martha asked. “Not so surprising, I suppose. He can’t have been happy to learn you’d cuckolded him with one of his Aldermen.”
“Or perhaps he found out that you plotted to kill Mr. Breary,” I said. “If you’re merely a wanton strumpet, he’d be mocked throughout the city. If you’re a murderess, he’d find himself expelled from the council.”
“Which is it, girl? Are you a whore or a killer?” Martha had crept up behind Agnes, and hissed these last words in her ear. “Or are you both?” For a moment I regretted our cruelty, but I knew that we had little choice, and that she deserved little better.
Then the tears began again, this time in earnest, and Agnes Greenbury collapsed against me. As if by their own volition, my arms wrapped around her. The scornful expression on Martha’s face made clear that she was having none of it.
“He is so cruel,” Agnes gasped at last. “You must help me.”
“You have to tell me the truth,” I replied. Martha disguised her snort of disgust as a cough, but I could read her expression well enough.
“You are right,” the girl—and at that moment she did seem to be a girl—moaned into my chest. “You are right about everything. My husband found out about George and did this to me. He said that he’d not be made a fool of by so fresh a whore, and that George would suffer for debauching me. He must have done it.”
“You think your husband killed Mr. Breary?” I asked.
The girl looked up at me, her clear blue eyes now red with crying. “What else could he have meant?” she asked. “I did not kill George, I … I…” Agnes’s voice trailed off.
“You loved him?” Martha asked, not even bothering to hide the contempt in her voice.
Agnes slipped from my arms and sat in one of the lavishly covered chairs. “Of course I didn’t love him.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve, leaving a trail of snot from elbow to wrist. You could put a country girl in a silk dress, but teaching her manners was a different matter entirely. “But he was nice enough. I didn’t kill him.”
Though I knew it was a hopeless task, I gazed at the girl’s face, trying to find a sign of the soul within. She seemed as sincere as any girl could be, but I’d heard too many lies to give her much credit.
“You didn’t, but your husband might have?” I asked.
Agnes looked down at her hands as they fiddled with a ribbon on her dress. “I don’t know. Maybe. He was angry enough. I’ve never seen a man so furious.”
I looked up at Martha, and she inclined her head toward the door. She’d seen enough of the girl.
Martha and I slipped from the drawing room into the parlor where Will waited for us. I did not know how much of our conversation he’d heard, but the expression on his face told me that the sound of the girl’s wails had escaped.
Before we stepped outside the three of us wrapped ourselves as best we could, with Will stealing glances in our direction, anxious to hear what we’d discovered. Once we were away from the Lord Mayor’s house, Martha and I took turns telling Will what Agnes had said to us.
“Do you believe her?” he asked. We’d reached the Ouse Bridge and paused to watch as the children ventured back out on the ice. They avoided the spot where Tree had fallen through, but otherwise showed no fear.
“About what?” Martha shrugged. “That her husband gave her those bruises and swore revenge? Or that she didn’t want Mr. Breary killed? We know she’s a liar and a adulteress, so we can’t believe much of what she says.”
“She didn’t give herself the bruises,” I said. “And I cannot imagine Matthew Greenbury would tolerate such behavior in his wife.”
“Well, he couldn’t have killed Mr. Breary himself,” Martha said. “He is so old he can spit into his own grave.”
“He could have hired a man,” I replied. In these times of war, even respectable gentlemen kept killers close by. That was why Joseph, and Edward before him, tolerated Mark Preston. “But would he kill one of his own Aldermen for committing adultery?”
“Not for adultery, but perhaps for making his new wife a whore, and giving him the cuckold’s horns,” Will said. “There’s many a man who would kill to avenge that wrong.”
“But Mr. Breary’s murder also could have been her doing,” Martha said. “She’s a thoughtless trollop. Who knows what she might have done in a moment of anger? Mr. Breary crosses her, she flatters a soldier, and the next thing we know he’s dying in an alleyway.”