Mingled With Venom

Chapter 9

Death of a Matriarch

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In the middle of the second week of her holiday at the Smugglers’ Inn, Dame Beatrice received an invitation from an unexpected source. The reason for it was that she bought the second picture which Bluebell had painted.

It was a distinct improvement on the first one, a charming impression of the cove and the old entrance to the hotel. The white walls, the flattish weathered roof-slates, the fuchsias, the small rockery were there, and so were the ancient gateposts and the flagged path up to the door. Newly-painted fishing-boats were drawn up on the grey, uninviting sand and beyond them, under the green hill from which the short cut to Campions had been taken by Parsifal, the fishermen’s little stone jetty thrust out into the cove.

Beyond the jetty the waters broke in foam against the spurs of the two headlands and beyond their flurry, spume and spray lay the open sea as blue, in Bluebell’s picture, as the cloudless sky above it.

‘Your artist wields a persuasive brush,’ Dame Beatrice had said to Trev when the picture was almost finished. ‘Would she take it amiss if I entered into a financial transaction with her? I should like to take home with me so pleasant a reminder of my stay here.’

‘She’d be more than pleased to sell it to you,’ Trev had replied, so, when the picture was completed, Dame Beatrice had entered into negotiations and the painting became her own. The invitation had followed.

‘I suppose, Dame Beatrice, you would not care to come and take tea with us one afternoon? I have other pictures—oh, not for sale—the family’s collection, merely, and one gets a different view of the cove and the hills and rocks from our balconies. It is only a short walk, whether by smugglers’ path and steps or by road. Or you could use your car if you do not care to walk up the hill through the village. We have plenty of parking-space outside the front of our house. You can’t miss the house. It is at the bottom of a little spur of road which leads to the Methodist chapel and has a sign which reads: Seawards. Built 1677 Rebuilt 1952.’

‘I shall be delighted to come. Would five o’clock tomorrow be convenient?’

Tea was served on the lower of the two balconies. Bluebell, whose artistry included a flair for baking, had excelled herself, as the uninhibited Gamaliel, sloshing Cornish cream on top of raspberry jam and scones, exultantly proclaimed.

When tea was over and Garnet and Gamaliel were left to entertain the guest while Parsifal assisted his wife to clear away and wash up, the black boy said: ‘You must see the view from the top balcony. It used to be very rickety, but Garnie and I shored it up last year, so it is perfectly safe now. I do all my early morning exercises out there. The way to it is through my bedroom. I will show you my picture of Muhammad Ali. Do you admire him? He is my great hero.’

‘He is the greatest. We have his own word for that,’ Dame Beatrice solemnly responded. She duly admired the enormous poster which took up almost the whole of one wall in the little room.

‘When I can save up enough money,’ went on Gamaliel, ‘I shall buy myself a pair of proper boxing boots like his. At school I box in plimsolls, but the proper boots would make me more mobile and would increase my self-confidence, don’t you think?’

Dame Beatrice could not imagine, from her impression of him, how any addition to his self-confidence could be necessary, but she assented gravely to his remark and asked where such boots could be bought.

‘I expect I would have to go to Exeter, or even up to London. I shall leave school as soon as my examinations are over and get work to do. Then I shall have money. There is a boys’ club in Truro which I shall join. An old pro is the instructor. I shall soon be beyond him, but no doubt he will teach me enough to be going on with. Tricks, you know, and how to step out of a clinch the best way. These old pros are up to all the dodges, and you have to know them, in case your opponent does. I shall represent England amateurs at the Albert Hall one day; then the Olympics and then my professional career.’

Dame Beatrice, who found the brash and innocent youth refreshing and amusing, made a promise which she was never to regret, since it had the effect of removing three possible suspects from what turned out to be a complicated and difficult case. She glanced at Bluebell, who had accompanied them, and raised questioning eyebrows. Bluebell made a despairing little gesture of assent. Dame Beatrice thereupon spoke briskly.

‘It ought to be London, I think,’ she said, ‘for the boots and perhaps two pairs of boxing shorts, two or three singlets and a boxer’s dressing-gown. My chauffeur, George, a knowledgeable man, will know where to go. Ask for me at the Smugglers’ Inn when you have finished your examinations and you shall be set on the road to fame and fortune.’

She spent the whole of the next week in touring the countryside, for her round of visits had been concluded. She went to Polperro, its narrow thoroughfares crowded even at the beginning of the holiday season, and rode up the long hill back to the car park in the horse-drawn bus which was the only form of transport allowed to the holiday public. She visited the ruins of the near-perfect thirteenth-century circular keep of Restormel, perched on its hill above the River Fowey.

She went to the elvan-built great house which belonged originally to the Arundell family, the Elizabethan mansion called Trerice, with its scrolled gables, its oriel and lattice windows, its decorative plaster ceilings with their pendants and its splendid fireplaces of 1572 and 1573 in hall and drawing-room.

She also went to look at the even more interesting and important Cotehele, another Tudor house, but of earlier date than Trerice, some of its walls dating from the middle of the fourteenth century, the rest added by the Edgcumbes during the reigns of Henry VII and his son.

She walked the cliff path from the Dodman and, although she did not know it at the time, passed almost under the walls of Romula Leyden’s house before she reached Nare Head, that other vast expanse of turf and sea-views, before going on to Portholland where her chauffeur George was waiting with the car.

She went to Tregony, Grampound, St Austell, Veryan with its five round houses, St Mawes and Truro and she paid a nostalgic visit to the church of St Just-in-Roseland, pausing at the lychgate near which she had left the car and taking in the luxuriantly flowering hillside with its June roses, its rhododendrons, its varied trees and its wealth of plants both cultivated and wild. Below her, at the very foot of the slope, was the church on its little creek and she made her way slowly, by narrow, steep paths, down the hill to where, as the tide was almost out, a red and white cabin cruiser was marooned on the shore. It was perfectly reflected in the shining gleam of shoal water which also reflected the church and the pines until the making tide would float the boat again and break up the still and perfect images in the restlessness of the oncoming sea.

The days passed, Laura and her companions returned to The Smugglers’ Inn, spent a couple of nights there and then, finding Dame Beatrice well and happy, Kitty and Alice returned to their homes and Laura went to London to spend a week with her husband who was on leave from New Scotland Yard.

His examinations over and his refusal to consider returning to school apparently irrevocable, Gamaliel went with Bluebell and her brother to London in Dame Beatrice’s car and, at Dame Beatrice’s expense, as she had promised, equipped himself with the gear his soul desired.

He turned up at the hotel on his return home and said, ‘Could I change in your bedroom?’ He received permission and, Dame Beatrice having been bidden to wait outside the door, he opened it when he was ready and invited her in.

When she had sufficiently admired the result of his purchases he said: ‘I must not stay long. We have had strange news, bad news. My great grandmother, my mother’s grandmother, has died and there is going to be a lot of trouble. She ate something she should not have eaten and the doctor thinks she has been poisoned. There is to be all sorts of fuss. We did not know about it until after we got back from London. We spent the night at Exeter, as you said we should, and it happened at Sunday lunchtime. There are police asking questions and there is to be an inquest. It is all very sad and very alarming.’

‘Oh, dear!’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘It is indeed.’

‘I will change back again now, if you will kindly go away. I am needed at home. Everybody is very much upset and bewildered. My aunt and uncle, Diana and Rupert, are there and Ruby has been sent for from London. Nobody is allowed to leave my great grandmother’s house until the police give permission. She was very rich. Do you think one of us poisoned her to get a share of the money more quickly?’

‘I don’t think I would mention that, if I were you,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Oh, well, nobody can blame my mother and Garnie and me.’

The news was soon all over the hotel. George, calling, as usual, for the orders of the day next morning, reported that it was all over the village, too, and that it had been the previous evening’s only topic of conversation at the pub where he was staying.

‘A very wealthy old lady, it appears, madam,’ said George. ‘Owned a big house right out between the two headlands. Had a host of relatives by the sound of it, so no doubt some of them will come in for something pretty substantial.’

‘How did it happen?’ asked Dame Beatrice, hoping for a check on Gamaliel’s story.

‘Beyond she took poison, nobody seems to know, madam. The county police are there and there’s talk of handing the case over to New Scotland Yard as having more experience than the Cornwall men.’

‘That sounds as though a case of accident has been ruled out, otherwise the local doctor and the county police could manage. She took poison, you say. Are there any details?’

‘Nothing except that the inquest is fixed for tomorrow morning at ten, madam, and is to be held at the house itself, the village having no available accommodation otherwise.’

‘I should like to attend it. I am acquainted with certain members of the family.’

‘I will come in good time to take you to the house, madam. Where would you wish to go this morning?’

Dame Beatrice was about to reply when Trev came out from his office which was just inside the entrance. ‘A telephone call for you, Dame Beatrice.’

She went with him into his office and found that the call was from the house she and George had been discussing.

‘Speaking from Headlands,’ said the voice from the other end. ‘This is Bluebell Leek, Dame Beatrice. I am here with my mother. You will have heard, I expect, that we are in terrible trouble. Could you—would you—come here and advise us? Fiona has told us of your great reputation. It would be so good of you. The police have just left, but I am sure they will be back again with more questions about my grandmother’s death. Everything is so horrible and there is to be an inquest here tomorrow. I expect you will hate me for asking, but please, please come.’

Dame Beatrice promised, put down the telephone and went out to her car. ‘Can you find your way to that house, George?’ she asked.

‘Yes, madam. I made full enquiries before I started out this morning, just in case.’

Bluebell was awaiting the visitor at the end of the trackway which led up to the big, solitary house. ‘This is so awfully good of you,’ said she, her plain, good-tempered face flushing and tears coming into her eyes. ‘I shall not ask you to stay to lunch. You would probably suspect poison in every mouthful.’

‘Is the poison—has it been identified?’

‘Oh, yes. There doesn’t seem to be any doubt. Cook, our temperamental Mrs Plack, has given in her notice, but of course she can’t leave until the police are satisfied.’

‘Your relative died of food poisoning, I gather. No wonder your cook is upset.’

‘It was the horseradish sauce, you see, or so the analyst says. The whole thing is a complete mystery. Mrs Plack has been making it for years and there has never been anything wrong with it before.’

‘Did nobody else experience any ill-effects?’

‘That is what has made the police and the doctors so suspicious.’ Bluebell led the way into the house and they took chairs in a small sitting-room from which a very young woman edged out as soon as they had entered. ‘That was Ruby Pabbay, an orphan who was my grandmother’s protégée,’ Bluebell explained. ‘She was in London studying to become a singer when grandmother died, but, of course, we sent for her.’

‘You were about to tell me what makes the police and the doctors—one of them is the police surgeon and the other the family’s medical adviser, I imagine—so suspicious.’

‘Yes. It puts a very bad complexion on things. You see, grandmother was the only person who liked horseradish sauce. Nobody else ever touched it. This was known to the whole household.’

‘Did the servants not partake of it either?’

‘No. It was Mrs Plack’s contention that the recipe she used was much too good for the servants’ hall. It was more than a servant’s life was worth to touch grandmother’s jar. Either they took mustard with their beef or they paid for a manufactured pot of horseradish out of their own money.’

‘I wonder whether I might have a word with Mrs Plack?’

‘She is rather hysterical, I’m afraid.’

‘That is hardly a cause for wonderment. Have the doctors named the poison?’

‘Oh, yes. It was aconitine. They asked about liniment ABC, but there was none in the house. My mother told them that the household had never had any use for it.’

‘I believe you keep horses.’

‘There are three. The groom, Mattie Lunn, could tell you about them.’

‘Aconitine is a deadly poison for which there is no specific antidote. The only treatment is gastric lavage and that should be done without delay.’

‘Unfortunately there was delay, fatal delay. There is no doctor in the village and my grandmother’s own man lives in St Austell. By the time Lunn came back with him grandmother was dead. According to what my mother has told me, grandmother’s symptoms came on during the meal.’

‘Yes, aconitine is a poison which acts quickly.’

‘Yes. In a few minutes after eating her plate of beef with a very liberal helping of the horseradish sauce, she complained of tingling and numbness in her mouth and a constricted throat. They thought and said that Mrs Plack must have over-stressed the mustard in the mixture, but the other and more dreadful symptoms, stomach pains, vomiting and a sort of horrible frothy dribbling followed rapidly. Her breathing became difficult and she found she could not move her limbs and, as I said, she died, before her doctor could get here, in a state of total collapse.’

‘Yes. Will you take me to see the cook?’

Mrs Plack was in her kitchen superintending the kitchenmaid’s preparations for lunch.

‘For touch another bit of food in this house except what I gets for myself and my own eating, I will not,’ she said, rising from her chair as the visitors came in.

‘Very reasonable,’ said Dame Beatrice in her beautiful voice. ‘We must get this whole matter cleared up as soon as we can, so that the household may resume normal working. I expect you are tired of talking to the police—’

‘Sick and silly of ’em.’

‘So I wonder whether you would do me a favour? I am attached to the Home Office. I am also a medical practitioner. This story about the horseradish is a strange one and will probably become a classic case of aconitine poisoning. It interests me very much and I should like to write it up for publication. This I cannot do without your expert help.’

From the cook’s red-rimmed eyes and blotched countenance and the reserved air of the kitchenmaid, Dame Beatrice deduced that the latest fit of hysterics was just over.

Mrs Plack, who had resumed her seat at the kitchen table, sniffed in a suspicious manner and said: ‘I’ve talked till I’m sick and silly of talking. Police, doctors, Mrs Porthcawl, Mr and Mrs Bosse-Leyden, and now you and Mrs Leek. I’m sick and silly of it all, I tell you.’

‘You realise, I suppose,’ said Dame Beatrice, changing her tone and speaking sternly, ‘that for your own sake—no, no more tantrums, I beg of you—that for your own sake you had better give the authorities every scrap of assistance in clearing up this dreadful business. I shall not harass you or keep you for more than a few minutes, but you must co-operate with me.’

Mrs Plack pushed back a lock of hair which, escaping from her cap, had been adding to the disoriented and raffish nature of her appearance and, cowed by the sharp black eyes and even sharper tones of the masterful invader, said weakly that she would be glad to do what she could.

‘Although I’m telling you, madam,’ she began.

‘That you’re sick and silly of the whole business,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I know and I sympathise. Let us take all that for granted. Now, Mrs Plack, all I want from you at present is exact information on two points. How do you prepare your horseradish sauce and when was this particular consignment put into your stock-cupboard? I believe that a properly-constituted horseradish sauce will keep for some days.’

‘That’s right. It’s the vinegar in it, I suppose,’ said Mrs Plack. ‘Well, I don’t mind giving you my recipe. It’s in the cook book, anyway, so it isn’t no secret.’

‘Splendid. I will write it down. We shall soon have you cleared of suspicion.’

‘Suspicion? But I never—’

‘Of course you didn’t, but we have to prove it. Come, your recipe.’

Cowed by her visitor’s uncompromising attitude, the cook said:

Grated horseradish, four tablespoons

Sugar, one teaspoon and salt ditto

Pepper, half-teaspoon

Mustard, ready made up, two teaspoons

Vinegar, that’s guesswork for quantity

Double cream, not whipped, three tablespoons.

‘Thank you,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Where does the horseradish come from?’

‘I orders it where I orders my garlic when I uses garlic. It’s the village greengrocer brings it, but it depends whether he’s got any or not. If he hadn’t got none, the mistress had to have mustard with her beef like everybody else, or the ready-made horseradish from the shop.’

‘Did you often cook joints of beef?’

‘It were the usual Sunday dinner unless we had chicken for a change, but most Sundays it was beef.’

‘And when did you make the last lot of horseradish sauce?’

‘Also, as usual, on the Friday, soon as the greengrocer called, mine being, like I say, a regular weekly order most weeks.’

‘Who usually grated the horseradish root?’

‘That be kitchenmaid’s work.’

The kitchenmaid, who was now busying herself at the sink, looked round. ‘That’s right,’ she said.

‘Are you familiar with the appearance and texture of horseradish?’

‘Never seen it until I come here. Only ever seen it in a jar in the supermarket.’

‘And how long have you been here?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘My last kitchenmaid,’ said Mrs Plack, ‘had words with Ruby and had to go.’

‘Miss Ruby would sound more in keeping, cook,’ said Bluebell in a tone of gentle remonstrance. Mrs Plack glared at her.

‘Forgetting my place for the moment, Mrs Leek,’ she said with ponderous dignity, ‘but call that jumped-up bit of preciousness Miss I cannot bring myself to do. She was only give the name Pabbay because the orphanage lady had just come back from a holiday in Scotland when Ruby was admitted. Ah, and there’s things I could tell you about that, if I’d a mind. I could put a name on her—’

‘Well, I beg that you won’t,’ said Bluebell hastily. ‘Ruby is beside the point.’

‘Not if she was the reason for the last kitchenmaid’s having left her employment here,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘What is your name child?’ she added to the girl at the sink.

‘Sonia, madam.’

‘Well, Sonia, tell me a little more about the horseradish. Where was it put when the greengrocer left it on the Friday?’

‘In the vegetable rack with the turnips and carrots and taters and such.’

‘And you took it out and grated it?’

‘I took it out and give it her to grate,’ said Mrs Plack. ‘I ain’t going to have the girl blamed, not if it was ever so.’

‘That is a very handsome observation, cook. So you handed Sonia the roots, she grated them for you and then—’

‘Then I made the sauce same according to the recipe I just give you.’

‘There’s one thing you haven’t said, cook,’ said the kitchenmaid deferentially.

‘Oh, and what’s that, then?’ demanded Mrs Plack.

‘You haven’t said as when the sauce was all finished and ready you tried it yourself to see was it what you called “up to sample,” cook.’

‘How much of it did you eat?’ asked Dame Beatrice,

‘Does it matter? A cook’s entitled—’

‘Yes, of course she is. This is important in quite a different way. How much?’

‘Oh, well—’

‘It was a heaping great tablespoonful on a piece of bread,’ said the kitchenmaid, ‘cook being partial to the cream, like what we all might be, given the chance.’

‘Hold your tongue, girl! None of your business,’ said Mrs Plack sharply.

‘It is the business of all of us,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Surely you have wit enough, as this intelligent child obviously has, to realise that if you ate a heaped tablespoonful of your horseradish sauce and took no harm, it was not your horseradish sauce which caused Mrs Leyden’s death.’

The cook stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment; then she flung her apron over her head and rocked herself to and fro to the accompaniment and almost (Dame Beatrice thought) to the rhythm of hysterical sobbing.

Encouraged, apparently, by Dame Beatrice’s approbation, the kitchenmaid, having regarded the cook with something which looked like an air of resignation, said calmly, ‘I don’t know if I should mention it, madam, but it’s quite a wonder as it wasn’t cook herself as was poisoned, instead of the missus, ain’t it?’

At this, Mrs Plack lowered her apron and stared round-eyed at her fellow servant.’

‘Why,’ she said, ‘that’s right, too an’ all. It could have been me, if I’d a-taken a taste of it when I usually do.’

‘You tasted your mixture as soon as you had made it, did you not?’

‘For the very first time, your ladyship, it being my custom, as Sonia knows, for all she’s been here for only three roast beef dinners, not to try the horseradish until I ladles it into a dish to go to table. I only tastes it then to make sure as the cream has kept.’

‘Why did you not do the same last Sunday?’

‘Well, we’d run out of honey on the Friday, me preferring it to the jam as does very well for the gals, so I puts the horseradish on a bit of bread as a relish for myself, Sonia and the housemaids and the parlourmaid making do with jam for their elevenses, as usual. On the Sunday we was a bit late with lunch, so missus rung down very, very peremptory, so while I dishes up I says to Sonia to spoon out the horseradish all quick, as there seems to be a tiger in missus, and to hurry up about it so as the lunch could be tooken in and missus pacified.’

‘So, if Mrs Leyden had not been so peremptory, I suppose you would have tasted the condiment again?’

‘To see if it was still all right, the day being unusual hot, yes, I’m sure I would have.’ She looked at Dame Beatrice and then buried her head in her apron once more.

‘Well,’ said Bluebell, as she and Dame Beatrice left the kitchen, ‘Mrs Plack undoubtedly had a lucky escape, but I’m very glad that a release from tension does not take me like that. But why on earth didn’t she tell the police that she had sampled the horseradish sauce?’

‘On her own confession, the home-made variety was taboo to the servants. I am surprised, but very glad, that she allowed the kitchenmaid to see her helping herself to it so lavishly.’

‘Of course, it doesn’t help in one way,’ said Bluebell. ‘ll it wasn’t Mrs Plack’s horseradish sauce which killed grandmother, it was somebody else’s, and that’s going to look very bad indeed for the rest of us. We all knew that she was the only one who liked it.’