The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,116

for convenience’s sake.

She coughed a hello. The vicar waved to ask for her patience. He had one of the skeps tilted up, and was peering within it for something. He found it, eventually: a young queen bee, new and energetic. She squirmed in his fingertips as he gripped her at the waist, then raised a small pair of scissors toward her fragile, fluttering wings.

Penelope turned away before she saw the snip.

Some beekeepers thought clipping the wings of a queen kept a hive from swarming. The most words Penelope had ever heard Mr. Koskinen say at once had been a fifteen-minute impassioned explanation of why this was both absolutely untrue, and detrimental to both the queen and the hive.

Mr. Oliver replaced the poor clipped queen in her skep, and set the hive back onto its stand. “I am always disappointed that they turned out to be queens,” he said. “Not kings, as Virgil calls them.” His smile was sad, and fond, and for a moment Penelope felt as if she’d imagined their years of friendship.

His smile stayed sad. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Flood?”

Penelope put on her most polite tone. “I have come to speak to you about the beehives, Mr. Oliver.”

He pulled off his gloves one at a time. “Then let us go inside, where we may be more official.”

Penelope had once found the vicar’s study a comforting place: it smelled of old books, and leather, and candles burnt late into the night. But now she only noticed how dark it was with the curtains shut to keep out the sun, and the books all crammed together on the shelves like captured creatures in a zoo.

Mr. Oliver sat in his favorite armchair, folding his hands on the shining surface of the table; Penelope took a seat in a spindly chair with a wobbly leg, and braced her feet against the moth-eaten rug on the floor.

“I imagine you have some questions,” the vicar began cordially.

“Just the one,” Penelope said, just as carefully cordial. “A great many Melliton folk depend on their hives as a supplement to their income, you know: Mr. Scriven, Mr. and Mrs. Koskinen, Mr. Cutler, many of the smaller farms and cottagers.”

“I am well aware, Mrs. Flood. I am their vicar. Do you have a point?”

“Just this: are you truly certain you must take their hives away?”

He nodded piously. “They will get their hives back, if they deserve them.”

“Some may lose a great deal of their work, in the time that may take.”

The vicar steepled his fingers together and gave her a stern look. As if he were a teacher and she a recalcitrant student. As if they hadn’t been friends for twenty years, trading thoughts on centuries-old poems. As if that time counted for nothing now. His voice was sweet and syrupy as cordial: “If those cottagers had been more prudent, they would not be in a position to suffer from the loss of one or two hives.”

“Prudent enough to simply have more money, you mean?” Penelope muttered, and shook her head. “How can it be a fiendish crime to steal six hives from Abington Hall, but it’s justice when you steal bees from half the people in the village?”

“It is justice when the law does it, Mrs. Flood.” Mr. Oliver’s cordiality slipped, and he scowled openly. “You said you had only a single question—that was two, by my count.”

“Indulge me one more time,” she said softly. “Is there nothing I can say, to make you change your mind on this subject?”

He shook his head, pale hair floating on the air.

Penelope sighed. “Then I’m sorry, Mr. Oliver.” She pulled out a sheet of paper, scribbled over with a spidery hand. “This is a letter from Mr. Oglevey, a London antiquary who specializes in art with certain . . . carnal tendencies. He was quite happy to tell me all about the deals he’s brokered on behalf of Lady Summerville, for several high-quality works by the late and much-admired Isabella Abington. And here,” she said, laying down another sheet, “is a list of everything I could find that Lady Summerville has spent money on since the founding of her virtuous moral society. Handbill printing, special constables’ wages, informants’ bounties—even the rectory glass, after your windows were broken during the Queenite agitation. I’ve spoken to every artisan and tradesman on the list, to confirm that the sums are accurate and verifiable.”

Mr. Oliver’s eyes were coals now, hot and luminous in the dimness. “What are you getting at,