Page 62 of An Artful Dodge
She leaned forward in her chair, her voice rising over mine. “When your father left—when he betrayed her—itbrokeher. Do you understand? Shelovedhim, and she thought he loved her. Then, a month after Sarah’s born, he up and runs off with that woman, Violet. So, aye, your ma might have been drinking and neglecting you girls, but that was years later. Back in the day, Annie was good-hearted and clever and loyal to the ring, the way we all were.”
“Then how did the police find out about the hotel theft?”
Amelia’s eyebrows rose, questioning.
“Fanny’s mother told her that Maggie’s sentence was doubled because the police linked her to a hotel theft. Now, it could’ve been just the police pinning it on her, but—what if my ma told the police about it?”
Amelia’s expression stilled. “Your ma didn’t do that.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she didn’t know,” she said, her voice thin. “Good lord. Oh, good lord.” Amelia wrapped both arms around her belly. Then, with a moan, she stood and began to pace in a semicircle behind the chair like a dog at the far reach of its tether.
“Amelia,” I said.
She turned. “Rosewas Maggie’s jenny at the hotel.”
“Rose?” I echoed. “Mary’s mother?”
Amelia’s face had gone white, and I understood. A chill ran over me.
“So the bad blood over a man was ... between Maggie and Rose,” I said, my voice faint.
“Over Tim Lowry,” she said. “Damn that man.”
“What did he do?”
“Oh, nothing other than be stupid and selfish,” she replied, her eyes darkening at the memory. “He strung Rose along, and she liked him, but then he started chasing Maggie, who knew he was only chasing her because she’d refused him. She had her eye on a bloke she’d met at the theater where she’d been an actress.”
“What did he look like? Tim Lowry?”
“Tall, fair, handsome, wore a mustache.”
“A small one, like this.” I drew it above my lip.
“Yes,” she said, surprised.
“He was in a picture Fanny showed me,” I said. The pieces were falling into place, properly this time. “So you think Rose tagged Maggie somehow? She wasn’t there.”
“She could’ve sent a note to the jeweler. She could have known where Maggie was going that day.”
“And then she told the police about the hotel theft to have Maggie sent away for longer,” I guessed.
She bit her lip. “It’s possible. Terrible, but possible.”
“And somehow Maggie learned that Rose had betrayed her. But when? Before she left?”
“Police would’ve had to present evidence at trial, yeah? Likely a written statement about the hotel theft.”
“All this over a man’s attentions,” I said in disbelief.
“It might’ve been more than that.” Amelia’s eyes darted about, the way they did when she calculated figures. “If Rose was already carrying his child, she’d want a father for her bairn.”
Carrying a child?But Mary has no siblings.
“Mary?” I asked. “She’s Tim Lowry’s daughter, not her father’s—I mean, not Charles’s?”
“It’s likely, near as I can figure. Rose took up with Charles soon after, but she said Mary was born early. No one questioned it, she was such a little thing. I remember holding her.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Mary looks a good bit like Lowry, the fair hair, the high forehead, the roundness of her chin.”
