Bessie. I recalled Elsie mentioning a maid by that name, and telling me the girls called her Old Miss Nick. I could understand why.

Bessie snapped out a foul word and stomped off. She shouted down the rows, and a woman in an apron that covered her from neck to ankles turned, craning her head to eye me curiously.

The cook appeared in no hurry to leave her table, so I went to her. I knew how to avoid the assistants swinging platters or pots of food, the knives wielded in wild chopping, the water, grease, and blobs of lettuce and vegetable peels on the floor.

“Can’t stop,” Mrs. Compton said to me as I halted at the end of her table. She had a nasally voice with an accent that put her from the East End. “Dinner comes too soon. Who are you?”

“My name is Mrs. Holloway.” I watched her basting a hen, and my fingers twitched. “Might I suggest a bit of parsley in the broth? Perhaps a pinch of flour to thicken? I find it fills out a thin sauce.”

“Do you now?” The woman sneered. “Your man likes that, does he?”

“I am not married,” I said primly. “I’m a cook.”

The woman threw a doubtful look at my brown frock, which I regularly cleaned and mended. “You don’t look like no cook to me. What you doing in my kitchen? If you’ve come to look over the lads and lasses, that’s on Sunday. Unless you’re going to adopt one away.” She snorted a laugh. “Fat chance. No one wants the poor motherless things.”

The last was said with some sympathy. I snatched up a bunch of parsley that had been left to wilt on the end of the table, rolled it into a neat bundle, lifted a knife, and proceeded to slice the parsley. Mrs. Compton looked on with raised brows.

“Elsie told me to speak to you,” I said. “Elsie Dodd. She’s the scullery maid in my kitchen.”

Mrs. Compton’s eyes widened. “Elsie? Sweet girl. Out a few years now. She well?”

“She is very well. Likes to sing.” I used the knife to scoop up the chopped parsley, and pointedly sprinkled it into the broth in the pan.

“That she does. Well, well. Little Elsie. Why does she want you to speak to me?”

I glanced at the others at the table, hands moving, eyes on their work, but I knew they listened.

“In private, perhaps?”

Another snort. “Do I look as though I’ve time for a nice chat?”

“We can fix an appointment.”

Mrs. Compton banged down her ladle in exasperation, exactly as I’d have done had someone interrupted me at my cooking. “What is this about? Be quick and tell me, or go.”

“Nurse Betts,” I said.

The change on her face was remarkable. Mrs. Compton’s expression moved from annoyed curiosity to dismay, to fear.