The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,13

her brains. When you didn’t know the answer to a question, the first thing was to find out who did.

She knew someone who knew bees. Thomas’s elderly mother, Eva Ladler Griffin Stowe: a woman who had given three husbands back to God but kept their names. She also kept a few hives of bees in her garden.

It was somewhere to start, anyway.

Agatha hauled young Ashton back to work, gave Downes instructions to let nobody near aisle 28, and was out the door.

Agatha liked her mother-in-law a great deal, but the time they had briefly shared a home after Thomas’s death had been difficult. It had been a relief for both of them when Mrs. Stowe announced her intention to move back to Melliton. Now Mrs. Stowe shared a small house with a spinster friend on the west edge of town. Miss Coningsby managed the house and Mrs. Stowe the garden, so they each had their kingdom.

Agatha didn’t bother to knock at the door but simply let herself in through the side gate and walked around to the small walled plot at the back.

There Mrs. Stowe sat, as she always did in fine weather, watching her roses slowly spread their petals.

Her hands were crawling with bees.

Agatha had seen this trick before, but it never failed to make her shudder a little. “Are you sure you should be doing that?”

“Their stings help with the aches.” Mrs. Stowe turned her head and the delicate parchment wrinkles of her face folded into a grin. “They don’t sting me often, of course, but I appreciate the sacrifice when they do.”

She lifted her hands and shook them gently, and the bees detached themselves and flew back to the hive against the low wall at the back.

“So you might enjoy a gift of more bees?” Agatha said, moving closer and dropping a kiss of greeting on the older woman’s proffered cheek. “I happen to know of some that are in need of a new home.”

“You’ve seen a swarm?” Mrs. Stowe brightened. “Were they flying or had they settled somewhere?”

“Very settled—they’re colonizing the back corner of my warehouse.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Stowe laughed. “Then they need rehiving. You’ll be wanting to talk to Mrs. Flood.”

“I’ll talk to anybody who knows how to get rid of bees.”

“Mrs. Flood knows everything about bees.” Mrs. Stowe’s voice was emphatic with conviction. “What’s more—she’ll know if someone’s in need of a new colony. And she’s kind. A little too kind for her own good, probably.”

Agatha huffed. “What does kindness have to do with it?”

Mrs. Stowe clucked her tongue, as though Agatha were a stubborn child avoiding her lessons. “Because you don’t know anything about bees, and you’re asking her a favor.”

“I could pay—”

“Don’t you dare.”

Agatha snapped her mouth shut.

Mrs. Stowe’s smile broadened. “This isn’t London,” Mrs. Stowe went on, more mildly. “We don’t usually send invoices around when we help one another. And Mrs. Flood has money enough that she doesn’t worry about getting more.” She raised her elbows to the arm of the chair, steepling her fingers. “You might have to be in Mrs. Flood’s debt for a little while, is all. Until you find a way to pay her back in kind.”

Agatha shrugged, though even the mention of the word debt made her itch between the shoulder blades. She skated too close to that edge too often, and the anxiety of it was rarely far from her thoughts.

But she couldn’t just leave the bees in the warehouse. It was untenable. That meant the bees would win.

There was only one decision to be made. Agatha steeled herself, and made it. “Where might this Mrs. Flood be found?”

Chapter Three

The Four Swallows tavern stood where Melliton met the river Ethel, and it was the custom for some of the local beekeepers to take their nuncheon together there on the small pier that stretched out into the water. Penelope had walked her usual southern circuit in the morning, and would circle around the cottages and farms to the north in the afternoon, checking on everyone’s hives, but the summer days were long and left plenty of time for a leisurely midday meal.

A willow overhanging the bank offered some shade, its fluttering leaves making the light shimmer in a way that would have been much more pleasant had Mr. Painter not been clouding the air with tobacco smoke from the pipe he was huffing into.

Mr. Koskinen shook his head and took an aggrieved draught of his beer, blowing smoke away from the surface of the liquid before