Mingled With Venom mb-54 Page 10

‘And what do you suppose those are?’

  ‘You took me in and have cared for me. If Maria had not been widowed and so had not come back to you, would your provision for her have been different?’

  ‘You mean to ask whether, in such a case, Headlands would have been left to you?’

  ‘I have served you well.’

  ‘A paid employee would have been less expensive.’

  ‘I need to know where I stand. Are you really going to leave me nothing?’

  ‘Is that what you gathered at last night’s meeting?’

  ‘I was left with little alternative.’

  ‘Were you not? If you left me once, you may leave me again. Why should I continue to provide for you after my death?’

  ‘Because you have given me no chance to train for any kind of profession which would allow me to provide for myself.’

  ‘I needed your companionship. I shall no longer need it when I am in my grave.’

  ‘Would it have made any difference if I had not gone to live at Seawards?’

  ‘I shall not answer that. You may draw your own conclusions. I am not a vindictive woman.’

  Fiona walked back to where her horse was cropping the grasses. Scrambling she mounted and turned the animal’s head towards home. At the stables she changed her mind. She turned from the headland and followed the narrow track away from the house and towards the village. At the turning she took the steep road which led to the National Trust property on which the rent-free Campions was enclosed in trees. To the frenzied yapping of Diana’s dachshunds she hitched the horse’s reins to the gatepost and shouted.

  A maid came out from the back door and yelled at the dogs, who subsided.

  ‘Is Mrs Bosse-Leyden at home?’ asked Fiona.

  ‘No. Taken the car into Truro, miss.’

  ‘Mr Bosse-Leyden?’

  ‘Working. But you come in, Miss Bute, while I see if he’ll disturb himself to see you.’ She ushered the dogs into their wired enclosures and returned to the house. Fiona opened the gate and walked into the untidy garden. Rupert came out by the french windows which overlooked it. The pen with which he had been writing was still in his hand. He clipped it into his top pocket and took Fiona in his arms.

  ‘Is Fiona coming back here to live?’ said Gamaliel.

  ‘Only until Rupert and Diana have settled their affairs, if she comes at all,’ said Garnet, ‘and that will not be until after my grandmother’s death.’

  ‘Why will they wait until then?’

  ‘Because she won’t let them settle their affairs in the way they would like.’

  ‘It’s to do with the money, I suppose. She did not tell us very much that evening, did she? Will she leave you anything?’

  ‘Yes, a good deal, I think. Some would say that I should have it all.’

  ‘Rather than my mother and Rupert?’

  ‘Well, I’m the nearest male heir.’

  ‘Would you like to have it all?’

  ‘I should like to have enough to give some to Blue.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she rather have it left to her by my great grandmother?’

  ‘It would make no difference, so long as she got it.’

  ‘It would make a difference to me.’

  ‘You are a man, Greg. Women think differently.’

  ‘Fiona doesn’t. That’s why she won’t come back here to live. It is because she feels sure she will not be left anything if she does. Is Rupert still fond of her?’

  ‘Yes. Rupert will marry her as soon as my grandmother dies.’

  ‘You mean he will get a divorce from Diana?’

  ‘Yes, I mean that.’

  ‘Won’t Diana mind?’

  ‘Oh, dear me, no. She will welcome it, and so shall I.’

  ‘But my great grandmother has to die first?’

  ‘Yes, that is so.’

  ‘And then everybody will be happy?’

  ‘I hope so, yes.’

  ‘There are three who will not be happy.’

  ‘How do you make that out?’

  ‘Will Diana come to live here with us?’

  ‘Oh, now, there’s no need for you to jump to any conclusions.’

  ‘My mother will never share a house with Diana.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She told my father she wouldn’t. If Diana comes, will Quentin and Millament come to live here too?’

  ‘Oh, do stop anticipating what is going to happen!’

  ‘I hope my great grandmother goes on living for years and years, that’s all,’ said Gamaliel, ‘because, if she dies under the present circumstances, it will mean that someone has murdered her.’

  ‘Where do you get these ideas?’

  ‘I have studied the situation. Garnie, do you want to marry Diana as much as she wants to marry you? I think not.’

  ‘I can’t discuss it, Greg.’

  Chapter 9

  Death of a Matriarch

  « ^ »

  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?’