The Fatal Fashione by Karen Harper Page B

parties we must investigate when your privy plot counselors probe a murder.”
    She steadied herself with her hand on the back of his chair and leaned over his shoulder. As she watched, he made a big question mark in the center of the ruff where the wearer’s neck would go. He’d left three sections of the ruff itself blank, but he’d written in three others: Competitors Dirck and Dingen v. d. Passe? Lover? Disgruntled worker?
    “It bolsters me to know, Cecil, that your mind is already at work on this, too. I warrant we shall have additions to that chart, and hopefully deletions, for, yes, it could lead to economic chaos with our tailoring and textile commerce if our fledgling starch industry collapsed. If, that is, the van der Passes are somehow involved with the murder, so that I would lose Dingen as well as Hannah.”
    “Please, Your Grace,” Cecil said, jumping to his feet, evidently when he realized she stood while he sat, “just see that in all this, in addition to your regular royal duties, you don’t collapse.”
    “As dreadful as this is, I’ve been through worse,” she assured him. “I just pray God this investigation will not come near the throne or those I must rely on to rule and reign. Who would have known,” she added under her breath as she turned away to call for her coach and cloak, “that starch could become a fatal fashion?”
    “Can’t thank your lady and you both enough for your help,” Ursala Hemmings told Meg and Jenks for the fourth time since they’d awakened.
    Last night the woman had become nearly incoherent when she’d learned her friend had been murdered, so Her Majesty had asked the two of them to take her home and stay the night with her. As of yet, Meg realized, Ursala did not know the one she called “your lady” was England’s queen.
    Ursala Hemmings lived in two back rooms near St. Martin’s fields with her sister and sister’s husband, whom they had not roused. When Meg, Jenks, and Ursala finally became exhausted, they curled up for fitful sleep in big baskets of sheets amid washtubs and smaller soaking vats and barrels. As daylight crept into London’s narrow streets, only now, Meg judged, did Ursala Hemmings seem calm enough to question.
    Meg herself didn’t feel calm, though, and not only because she was anxious to get back to her daughter. Meg feared that if she hadn’t been sent along to watch him, Jenks might have comforted Ursala in more ways than one. The man was obviously smitten with this—this laundress, when Meg had never known him to be one bit fond of any woman but the queen and herself.
    And what if it turned out that Ursala was racked by guilt instead of grief? More than one woman—even purported friends—had murdered another over something or other, usually a man, which reminded Meg that she’d have to ask Ned privily if he had ever tried to entice Hannah with his charms. That’s all she’d need, Ned involved personally with the dead woman when the queen was hell-bent on solving this crime.
    As light seeped into the room to replace the glow of two tallow candles, Meg realized the laundry room’s vats and barrels of liquids reminded her of the starch tub in Hannah’s loft. Shelves lined two walls here, and Ursala had long wooden stirring sticks.
    “What’s all this liquid besides wash water?” she asked as the woman started to open the two small front street shutters. Though he wasn’t needed, Jenks scurried over to help. Meg glared at him behind Ursala’s back.
    “That first tub’s for soaking stubborn stains,” she explained, pointing. “Got alkaline water of lye in it. We buy wood ash from ovens, strain and mix it here. Real good to take out grease, tallow, and fat stains, sure is.”
    “And this?” Meg asked.
    “Oh, that’s just powder from ground sheep’s hooves for treating grease spots. Lots of those on tablecloths. Lemon juice takes out iron stains, and we rub fruit stains with butter, then wash them quick in hot milk.