Mrs. Jeffries Speaks Her Mind Read Free

about saying too much in front of the others.
    “It doesn’t matter whether you live in or not, no one here is forced to go to church. That’s not the custom in this household,” Mrs. Goodge, the cook, declared. She was elderly and white haired, but her mind and her opinions were both still sharp. “The inspector believes in letting people make up their own minds about such things. A person’s religion is their own business and employers should have no say in the matter. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Jeffries?”
    Mrs. Jeffries ducked her head to hide a smile. When this household had first come together, the cook would have been the first to say that a servant should be made to go to church and that the master of the household always knew best. But, like the rest of them, Mrs. Goodge’s attitudes about society had changed greatly in the past few years. Having worked for some of the richest and most aristocratic families in all of England, Mrs. Goodge had appeared to be a hidebound old snob when she’d come to work for Inspector Gerald Witherspoon. Yet the first chink in her armor had already been made before she’d even walked in the door. Her previous employers had sacked her without so much as a by-your-leave just because she’d gotten old. When Mrs. Jeffries had first interviewed her, Mrs. Goodge had mouthed a number of platitudes about what was right and proper in the world, but the housekeeper had seen that despite her stuffy manner, behind her wire-rimmed spectacles her eyes had been haunted with fear. She was old and she’d no place to go. She’d learned firsthand how cruel life could be when one was at the mercy of the whims of the rich. In the years that had passed, their investigations into Inspector Witherspoon’s murders had completed the task of changing the cook’s attitudes. “Yes, that’s precisely what I told Reverend Cheney,” she replied.
    “I thought you said you held your tongue,” Betsy, the pretty blonde maid, said as she reached for the teapot.
    “I did. I wanted to say far more than I actually said.” The housekeeper laughed. “Believe me, the urge to speak my mind was very strong, but I was very polite—when what I wanted to tell him was to mind his own business.”
    Everyone laughed.
    “Reverend Cheney isn’t at all like the other one, is ’e?” Wiggins commented. “Reverend Glassell didn’t give a toss if we went to church or not. I liked ’im.”
    “I liked him, too.” Betsy glanced at her husband, Smythe. “And I’m glad it was him and not Reverend Cheney that married us. Did Miss Euphemia Witherspoon ever make you lot go to church?”
    Smythe was the coachman. He and Betsy were newlyweds, having only just tied the knot at Christmas. He grinned broadly. “You’ve got to be joking. I don’t recall her ever setting foot in a church. As long as we did our work, she left us alone.”
    Smythe’s history with the household of Upper Edmonton Gardens was the longest of all of them. Years earlier, he’d come to the Witherspoon house as a young coachman for the inspector’s aunt, Euphemia Witherspoon. She’d paid a good wage and treated her servants decently. He’d worked hard and saved his money until he had enough for passage to Australia. He wanted to seek his fortune and he’d gotten lucky. He’d made a fortune mining opals in the outback, used that as seed money for other investments, and, years later, come back to England a very wealthy man. He’d only stopped in to pay his respects to his old employer. But Euphemia Witherspoon was sick, lying in squalor, and dying. The only one of her servants trying to take care of her had been a very young Wiggins, who kept vigil by her bedside and did the best he could.
    Smythe had immediately taken charge. He’d sent the lad for a doctor, fired the lazy servants, and set about putting the house in order so the poor woman could have a bit of comfort.
    But though she hung on for a number of weeks, even the best medical care