Mingled With Venom

Chapter 16

What’s in a Name?

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When Dame Beatrice gave voice to what appeared to be a controversial remark, Laura knew that somewhere behind it there was something to be puzzled over and sorted out. It was of no use to ask for an explanation, so she put her mind to work but could not believe that Dame Beatrice thought Garnet guilty.

She was so silent at breakfast on the following morning that Dame Beatrice asked her how she had slept. Laura replied that she supposed she had enjoyed her usual four hours, which, indeed, was her average period of sleep and all that she appeared to need, and then said plaintively: ‘Won’t you at least give me a clue?’

‘To what, dear child?’

‘To the identity of our murderer, of course.’

‘But I am not able to prove anything. I know who the murderer must be, but that, as you know, is not enough. Of course I can tell you what is in my mind, but I don’t know whether it will convey anything to yours. I learnt, when I visited Mrs Porthcawl and Miss Bute yesterday, that Mrs Leyden’s first name was Romula.’

‘How does that help?’

‘I think it may account for the method which was used to murder her. It appears that her father would have preferred a son and would have named him Romulus. Earlier I had learned from Mrs Bosse-Leyden that Mrs Leyden was less generous in helping her blood-relations than in giving financial aid and sometimes her affection to what one may call the co-opted members of her family.’

‘So that looks as though one of the real family was the murderer.’

‘Except that sometimes people are less grateful for benefits received than the donors think they should be.’

‘In other words, it is more satisfying to give than to receive, leaving blessedness out of it for the moment.

‘But wouldn’t a divorce have cut him straight out of the whatever?’

‘I have thought all along that the method used to kill Mrs Leyden was unnecessarily elaborate. Why, I asked myself, go to all the trouble and take all the risk of preparing a poisoned condiment, digging up, for the purpose, roots from somebody else’s garden, invading Mrs Plack’s kitchen in order to substitute a jar of poison for a similar but innocuous jar—all this when a simple, determined push in the back when she was on one of her cliff walks would have settled the outcome in a matter of seconds?’

‘But somebody did try that, I thought, and it didn’t work.’

‘It didn’t work because it was not, in my opinion, a murderous attempt, but I shall know more about that when I have questioned the person concerned.’

‘And the person concerned was not the person who provided the jar of poison?’

‘I think not, for the simple reason that a similar slight but not really dangerous push seems to have been given to Mrs Bosse-Leyden when she was out with her dogs.’

‘The same person could have it in for both of them.’

‘True. You refer, no doubt, to—’

‘Rupert Bosse-Leyden. According to the gossip we’ve heard, and what with one thing and another, he would have been glad to get rid of Diana and marry Fiona Bute, and he can’t have loved the old lady very much if she threw his illegitimate birth in his face.’

‘He had only to divorce Diana. There was no need to kill her.’

‘But wouldn’t a divorce have cut him straight out of the old lady’s Will?’

‘He had no expectations there, and (mark this, for it is very important) neither had his wife.’

‘But his children were included.’

‘It seems that nobody in the family had ever thought they would be. That may have been the one big surprise contained in the Will.’

‘What about the inclusion of young Gamaliel?’

‘That seems to have surprised nobody. It appears that the old lady had taken a great fancy to the lad. Besides, he is on my list of those who had been co-opted into the family. Included are Fiona Bute, Antonia Aysgarth, Parsifal Leek and Diana Bosse-Leyden. Each of them, in one way or another, seems to have received generous treatment, apart from what was left to any of them in the Will.’

‘Yes, they didn’t come off too well in that, did they? Do you mean that one of them murdered her out of pique?’

‘Not altogether, and certainly not because he or she was not mentioned in the Will. We have it from reliable sources that nobody really knew what the terms of the Will would be, although there seems to have been a considerable amount of guesswork. All the same, pique (or, as I would put it, bitter resentment) did come into the matter.’

‘How are you going to get the proof you need?’

‘Ultimately by the murderer’s own confession, but to extort that confession there are one or two facts we need to know, and here your acquaintanceship with Mattie Lunn may be of help. I would like you to get her to confirm that her brother took Mrs Leyden and Mrs Porthcawl out in the car on the Friday, ask her what he did on the Saturday and whether, on either afternoon, she saw any visitors come to the house, and particularly anybody who slipped in by the side door.’

‘Can do. Maybe she’ll hire me out another horse. That was a fine animal I rode yesterday and down here you don’t need to dress the part, so jeans and a sweater will fill the bill.’

‘One more thing: I want you to find out from Mattie Lunn the name of the person who supplies dairy produce, including the fresh cream for the horseradish sauce, to Headlands and whether he also supplies Campions and Seawards.’

‘Ah!’ said Laura, looking thoughtful. ‘Clotted cream not suitable for Mrs Plack’s recipe, eh? So the murderer had to get—’

‘Exactly.’

‘I had never thought about the murder from that angle. Of course there had to be fresh, unwhipped cream for the killer to use and, unless Mrs Plack or the kitchenmaid Sonia or Mrs Porthcawl or Miss Bute is the guilty party, the fresh cream which was used for the poisoned horseradish sauce was never delivered at Headlands.’

‘I have written off the four people you mention, so give some attention to the delivery of fresh cream to the other two houses.’

‘I suppose,’ said Rupert to his wife, ‘you know it was I who pushed you over the clifff?’

‘I could hardly help knowing. Nobody else had any reason to do a thing like that. I don’t hold it against you. It was not a very vicious attack and it was done only because I happened to be there on the spot while you were doing the field-work for your book. I think it was done on impulse, wasn’t it? Besides, I had just given your grandmother a similar push. I did not intend to kill her, any more than I believe you intended to kill me.’

‘I don’t think I did intend it. I had a sudden fit of exasperation, I suppose. Did you really give Grandma Romula a shove?’

‘She has always exasperated me, the same way you and I always seem to exasperate one another. Why should you be blamed for your illegitimate birth? It has happened to the best of people, and you told me about it before we married.’

‘All the same, Diana, I did not kill her, and I didn’t intend to kill you.’

‘We both know who did kill her, don’t we?’

‘That’s only speculation, isn’t it?’

‘What can we do but speculate? I wish they had not arrested that wretched girl. She didn’t do it.’

‘It is not up to us to say anything of our suspicions. We haven’t a shred of proof.’

‘I know, but that terrifying old lady who is staying at The Smugglers’ Inn knows something, I think. I shall speak to her.’

‘Look, the family is the family, isn’t it? Do you want a convicted murderer as a member of it? Think of our children!’

‘I have thought of them. They are the only reason that we are remaining together.’

‘So we say nothing of our suspicions—for they are nothing more than that. Agreed?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well, ask yourself what proof anybody can have. Unless the guilty party chooses to confess, nobody is ever going to know the truth.’

‘Don’t be too sure of that. The truth has a diabolical way of coming to the surface. Drowned bodies do, sooner or later, and the truth has the same disconcerting habit.’

‘Well, let us help it by confessing our misdeeds, if you think fit. If we confess to pushing people over cliffs it may save us from the major charge of murder by poison.’

‘I don’t see why. How do you make that out?’

‘Well, people who would do the one would not be likely to do the other. Dame Beatrice is a psychiatrist. She will understand that.’

‘Confession is supposed to be good for the soul, so let us clear our consciences, then, if you think fit.’

When Laura reached the Lunn’s cottage, Mattie was hanging out the washing on a line rigged up behind the stables so that it could not be seen from the windows of the big house. She greeted Laura warmly and in her own fashion.

‘My, my! Look who’s here!’ she said. ‘Come for a gallop, have we? You can have what you fancy this morning, so long as it’s Emperor.’

‘You can have any colour you like, so long as it’s black,’ countered Laura in happy quotation. ‘Later on, Mattie, if I may, but first to business of another kind. I am on an errand for Dame Beatrice. She wants to know whether you spotted any visitors who came to the house, particularly to the side door, on either the Friday or the Saturday before Mrs Leyden died on the Sunday.’

‘I been asked that, time and again.’

‘So what’s the answer?’

Mattie delivered a forceful unladylike expectoration into a small gorse bush.

‘Search me,’ she said. ‘So far as I’m concerned, there ent one. I could do you Thursday, but not Friday or Saturday, the reason being that I wasn’t here neither of them days. The Friday I was in the pub from twelve till closing time and stopped on until four to give a hand with the chores, that being my way of a Friday while the landlord’s wife be carrying their first, and on the Saturday, being as I was no longer in Mrs Leyden’s service, her having sacked me because she said as Redruth could do all that needed to be done in the stables, which, of course, he can’t and never will, I took myself off to the races at Brighton. Me and my darts mates hired a couple of cars and off us went and had a good day of it out on Brighton Downs. Great it was, and I come back with a profit of six pounds fifty in me kick.’

‘Well done! Look, Mattie, would it be of any use for me to call again when your brother is at home? I know he was out with the car on one of the afternoons in question, but—’

‘Even if he hadn’t a-been, it would be a waste of time to expect that one to notice anything. When he ent out with the car he’s got his head stuck inside the bonnet saying his prayers to the engine. He wouldn’t notice the Archangel Gabriel unless the Archangel Gabriel stuck a flaming sword into his petrol tank. It’s no good depending on him to tell you anything.’

‘Come and introduce me to the kitchen staff,’ said Laura. ‘I want to talk to the cook.’

In the kitchen the elevenses were over and the bread and jam for the maids and Mrs Plack’s private pot of honey had been cleared away and the plates and cups washed up. Laura, introduced by Mattie as ‘the lady who goes with Dame Beatrice’, was received with cautious respect and offered a chair. Mattie, at a nod from Laura, retired, and Laura stated her errand.

‘Who delivers the cream for my horseradish?’ said Mrs Plack, her air of dignity increasing. ‘If you mean what I think you mean, madam, there’s no reason to suppose as there was anything wrong with the cream. It comes along with the milk of a Friday morning and comes from Trewiddick in Polyarn, as has been passed down from father to son in three generations, to my certain knowledge.’

‘I’m sure there was nothing wrong with the cream. I just wondered where it came from, that’s all.’

‘Likewise the milk’, went on Mrs Plack, determined to make her point clear. ‘All the years I been here, never a complaint against Trewiddick’s never a one. Every afternoon Sonia makes a nice cup of tea and brings it up to my room and we has it together, me being democratic and my kitchenmaids being more like my daughters, if you follow me, and then Sonia reads me off to sleep with a nice book without it’s her afternoon off, which is a Thursday.’

‘A Thursday?’

‘That’s right, a Thursday. As for the others, the parlourmaid, as ranks next to me, she retires to her own room likewise. The housemaids, being sisters, shares a room and either goes along to it to put their feet up, as they are entitled to do, having worked hard and faithful all morning, or else they takes the air and has a bit of a walk. Drawing-room tea is at half-past four, tooken in by the parlourmaid if it ent her afternoon off, and our own tea is at five, ready to clear the table in the drawing-room at half-past five, and never no complaints about the milk.’

‘So if somebody slipped into your kitchen on a Thursday, it would be just as easy to do so undetected as it seems to have been on the Friday, when your freshly-made horseradish sauce was exchanged for the poisoned jar.’

‘I don’t see what Thursday has to do with it, madam.’

‘Neither do I, except that Mattie Lunn mentioned it.’

She returned to Mattie.

‘What about that Thursday?’ she demanded. ‘You said you could tell me nothing about the Friday and Saturday, and you gave your reasons. What made you think of the Thursday?’

‘Because somebody, though not exactly a stranger, come over that day, as I remember telling the police. Not but what he’d a perfect right to visit here, being family.’

‘Did he sneak in by the side door?’

‘Course not. A gentleman wouldn’t do that. He goed up bold to the front door, Mr Leek did, as was usual with him now and again.’

‘Mr Leek? Was he alone?’

‘Being as his wife and her brother and the young blackamoor was off to London in your old lady’s car (or so my mates at the pub told me) of course he was alone. He come up to me and asks if anybody was at home, as he was on his own and at a loose end. I telled him I think as Mrs Leyden and Mrs Porthcawl are in, to the best of my knowledge, so up he goes to the front door and in he’s tooken and must have had tea with ’em, I reckon, because it was near enough half-past five when he come out. Looked very pleased with himself, too, I thought, for all that he’d got a seven-mile tramp to get back to Seawards and spend the night on his own. But there! He’s always odd man out over to Seawards.’

‘Looked pleased with himself, did he?’

‘As usual, when he come away with some of the old lady’s money, which I reckon he did, because young Pabbay once told me that was the way of it.’

‘This wasn’t his first visit on his own, then?’

‘Oh, he didn’t come very often. Missus wouldn’t have stood for that. But servants hear a good bit, one way and another, and Redruth hears things in the car, there not being any screen between him and the passengers, and the old mistress not always guarded in her words when she talked to Mrs Porthcawl or Miss Fiona. The parlourmaid used to hear bits, too. Seemed that Mr Leek used to come cap in hand when the rates or the electricity or sommat expensive was due, and the old lady—she liked to play bountiful at times—she’d give him enough to foot the bill, whatever it was, and tell him it was to keep the wolf from Mrs Leek’s door and not for any love of him.’

‘So Mr Leek had reason to be grateful to Mrs Leyden?’

‘If anybody’s really grateful for charity,’ said Mattie. ‘It wouldn’t be my way, I can tell you, but, then, I wouldn’t ask for charity in the first place. Cap in hand never did fit in with my ideas.’

‘And he always came alone on these errands?’

‘Oh, yes. Mrs Leek would be far too proud to have any truck with such goings-on.’

‘She must have known he came here, though.’

‘I don’t reckon she did. Always at her painting and kind of innocent, if you know what I mean. I don’t reckon she either knew or cared what Mr Leek got up to, most of the time. He was the dreamy, wandering, helpless sort, you know. A real rabbit of a fellow he is. You’d hardly call him a man.’

‘So there’s one person who certainly did not have a grudge against Mrs Leyden,’ said Laura. ‘Anyway, for what it’s worth, the name of the dairyman who supplied milk and cream to Headlands is Trewiddick of Polyarn.’

‘You might look up his telephone number for me. We can readily establish whether he also delivers to the other two houses.’

‘Isn’t it simpler to—oh, no, of course not. But what happens if he says that Campions and Seawards both place a regular order for fresh cream?’

‘We must hope that such is not the case.’

Laura looked up the number and Dame Beatrice made the enquiry. The result was not helpful. Neither house had a regular order for fresh cream, although both had their bottles of milk daily from Trewiddick’s and to neither house had any fresh cream been delivered on a special order.

‘I hardly thought we should obtain a different reply,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but it was worth making sure. The murderer must have been a personal shopper for the cream and it is possible that he or she did not buy it from the regular milkman at all. A person with murder in mind would exercise every possible precaution, one supposes.’

‘So what’s the next move?’

‘You mentioned Parsifal Leek and pointed out that he, at least, bore Mrs Leyden no grudge, so perhaps I had better have a word with him and this is as good a time as any. Mrs Leek is out on the hillside with brush and easel, Gamaliel and Mr Porthcawl have just entered the water and Mr Leek, I perceive through my field-glasses, is seated on the terrace and appears to be preparing vegetables for lunch. Will you take me to Seawards in your car? I have just sent George back in mine to his public house to have his own lunch.’

‘But you believe there is something that Parsifal Leek can tell you?’

‘I know there is.’ They soon reached the gate of Seawards. ‘Will you object to waiting for me? I have no idea how long my interview with Mr Leek will take,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘All right if I take a stroll down the garden and watch Gamaliel and Garnet frolicking in the water? Incidentally, I’d be interested to know what you think this Leek can tell you.’

‘He can tell me how he occupied himself while his wife, his son and his brother-in-law were buying Gamaliel’s boxing gear in London.’

They left the car and descended the two flights of steps to the front door, but, instead of knocking, Dame Beatrice led the way round the side of the house to the back.

‘I notice that the clump of monkshood which used to occupy the angle of the garden wall has been dug up and got rid of,’ she remarked.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Laura. ‘I suppose it became too painful a reminder of the way the old lady died.’

‘Yes, of course.’ At the back of the house Laura strolled down to the sea beside the tumbling little stream, fast-running from its tiny waterfall, while Dame Beatrice called in her melodious voice to the man on the terrace above her. Parsifal, in a thin tenor, called back that his wife was not at home.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to shout my business from here?’

‘No, no. The steps up from the garden are at your service.’ When she had stepped on to the terrace, Parsifal went on: ‘Is your business with me, then?’

‘Well, I expect so. Perhaps there is a typewriter in the house.’

‘Yes,’ said Parsifal, looking astonished, as well (she thought) he might. ‘Garnet has one in his room. I borrow it to type my verses.’

‘I would like you to borrow it again, unless you would prefer to take dictation in your own handwriting.’

‘What dictation? Are you—I mean, the sun has been unusually hot today—’

‘I am not suffering from sunstroke, neither am I mentally afflicted. It is that I have a passion for the truth,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Will you borrow the typewriter?’

‘I would like to oblige you, Dame Beatrice, but, as you see, I am busy preparing the vegetables for lunch. If you will take a seat in a basket chair while I complete my task, I shall be at your service, strange though your request seems to be.’ He made a grab at the sharp little knife which was lying among the peelings.

‘I really shouldn’t advise violence,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I could break your wrist, you know. Nature did not frame you for physical combat. Who destroyed the wolfsbane which used to be in your garden? It was not used for the murder, so in what way had it fastened itself upon somebody’s conscience?’