Sowing Poison by Janet Kellough Page A

what she was.
    â€œMr. Lewis! How is your sister? Recovering, I hope.” The voice came from the corner of the store. Lewis hadn’t seen the girl behind the huge oak table. She was so short she nearly disappeared when she sat behind it.
    â€œShe’s as well as can be expected, I suppose. Thank you for asking.”
    â€œYou must have your hands full over there. I hear the inn is nearly booked up now that Mrs. Elliott is so famous. I don’t know what to think of her, to be perfectly honest. It all seems so odd, but it certainly is good for business.”
    Lewis knew that she was fishing for more information about the mysterious sessions that Clementine held in her rooms, but he knew little more than she did, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have said a word. She had, however, given him an opportunity to jump directly to the matter at hand.
    â€œIt’s busy, that’s the truth. And that’s why I thought I’d consult you.”
    â€œOh, if there’s anything I can do, just say, Mr. Lewis.”
    â€œI’m wondering if you would know of anybody in the neighbourhood who might like to earn a little money. We can’t keep up with the work over there.”
    She screwed up her face in thought. “Well, there might be one or two. It would depend on what you were asking them to do.”
    â€œThe cooking, mostly,” he replied. “Maybe a little cleaning. It’s too much for us. My brother-in-law and I can manage to get the food to the table all right, but it’s the business in the kitchen that we’re having the most difficulty with.”
    She laughed at this. “I don’t think there’s a man alive that truly knows his way around a cookstove,” she said. “Well, you might ask Sophie Carr, that’s Fred Carr’s daughter. You know, her brother Martin went with you when everyone was looking for Nate Elliott.”
    After Lewis recovered from his astonishment that Meribeth knew, much less remembered this small detail of such a wide search, he considered her suggestion. Martin had seemed like an intelligent boy, and if his sister was in any way similar, she could be a good choice.
    â€œShe’s free at the moment, do you think?”
    â€œI expect so,” Meribeth said. “She spent the last year nursing her father, but he died three months ago. The family could probably use the money. They’ve been living on what Martin makes at the sawmill.”
    â€œExcellent. I’ll go along and ask Martin about it right now.”
    â€œIt’s a funny thing, though, isn’t it? About Mrs. Elliott, I mean.”
    â€œI don’t understand.” She was still fishing, but she’d get nothing from him. “If she is so good at communicating with the spirit world, you’d think she could tell us whether or not her husband is dead.”
    As he walked along the street to the mill, he had to reflect that, although Meribeth was a dreadful gossip, she was by no means a stupid girl, for he had been wondering about that very same point. Surely if Nate Elliott was dead, and at this point it was almost certain that he was, Clementine would be in constant communication with his spirit. After all, she seemed to be able to summon up everyone else’s dear and departed practically on demand.
    Her activities at the inn had nettled him from the start. “Treating with the devil” would be the church’s objection, and one that would easily explain his unease to anyone who asked, although no one else seemed to make any connection between the tenets of their faith and table-rapping or spirit-calling, or whatever it was she did. In all honesty, his objections were far more practical; he was convinced that she was a fraud.
    He considered what Spencer had told him. “Near an island,” she had said to him. Well, that wasn’t difficult, was it? The Anthea had been in a part of the lake that had a number of