by Anne Morice
‘No, or at any rate she can only have swallowed a fairly mild dose, for he said her pulse was normal and there was no need to disturb her. Nevertheless, he insisted on ferreting around in their bedroom and in the bathroom and after that he went upstairs and checked through the nursery wing again. He wouldn’t tell us what he was looking for.’
‘I think I can guess.’
‘Me too, in view of what he said this morning, but it was a complete mystery at the time. It was a shame really, because if I had known what he was after I could have warned him he was wasting his time.’
‘How come you were in a position to do that?’
‘Because if you and I are on the same wavelength, he was looking for what are politely called specimens for analysis, but the fact was that Lindy had discreetly used the lavatory to be ill in and, in Nannie’s case, Serena had gone to work before he arrived. She cleared everything up and then threw several quarts of disinfectant around.’
‘Odd thing to do, would you say?’
‘No, just natural reflex. She’d spent half a lifetime waiting on Nannie and taking care of her and anyway she can’t bear any sort of mess and untidiness.’
‘With the unfortunate result that Soames now wants a post mortem, before he signs the death certificate.’
‘Yes, and isn’t that extraordinary of him? Serena nearly fainted dead away when he came to tell her about it this morning. He blathered on about how it was a pure formality and a safeguard against the thousand to one chance that it hadn’t been a natural death, but personally I think it’s the most officious thing I ever heard of and Serena told me afterwards that she could never have believed he could be such a traitor.’
‘It didn’t occur to her that his aim might be to protect her, as much as anything else?’
‘No, and I must say it wouldn’t have occurred to me. I mean, supposing the thousand to one shot comes off? There’ll have to be an inquest, in which he’ll testify that at the very least her death had been hastened, and that will mean finding out whether this poison was fed to her by accident or with malice aforethought, and if so who by; none of which is going to be very pleasant for Serena.’
‘It is never very pleasant when that sort of thing happens, but on the whole most people prefer it to having an unconvicted murderer on the premises.’
‘Most people, but not everyone. Not for example the unconvicted murderer.’
‘Who you think might be Serena? I got the impression you were backing Pelham?’
‘I still am, one hundred per cent, but that’s only a personal opinion and, on the face of it all the cards would be stacked against Serena. She had motive, opportunity, everything. It might never be possible to bring a case against her, or to prove it if they did, but most people would believe she was guilty and that’s not a very agreeable prospect, you’ll agree?’
‘Was her motive really so strong? I know the old nurse was a great trial and created merry hell on the domestic front, but I don’t see someone like your godmother committing murder on that account.’
‘No, I’m not suggesting she did, but unfortunately there’s a bit more to it than that. Take Primrose, for a start.’
‘Must I? There could hardly be a less promising one.’
‘Exactly. We all know what a creep she is, and where do you suppose Serena lays most of the blame for that?’
‘On herself, presumably?’
‘Well, that too, of course. I know she does blame her own feebleness in having allowed Nannie to exert so much influence, but that’s only with hindsight. In the beginning she was so disappointed not to have a son that the maternal instinct lapsed a bit. Primrose turning out to be such an unattractive lump didn’t do much to revive it and by the time she’d acquired a sense of responsibility, as a substitute for affection, the damage was done. Primrose had become Nannie’s property and far more devoted to her than to her mother and Nannie knew exactly how to exploit that situation. She’d had years of practice with Rupert and Pelham, when she was up against a brigade of strong minded aunts and poor old Serena was a very weak vessel by comparison. Mind you, I’m not the only one who knows this. There are very few people around here who wouldn’t privately sympathise if Serena had finally stepped in and put a stop to it.’
‘You really play the devil’s advocate sometimes, don’t you, Tess? You’ve almost persuaded me that she’s guilty and I can give you another nail for the coffin, if you like?’
‘No, I hate, but we may as well know the worst.’
‘It could be said that she chose this particular evening simply because the house was full of people, two of them virtual strangers, so that, in the event of things going wrong, suspicion would be spread over half a dozen possible culprits. I suppose one can assume that if this had happened on a normal day there wouldn’t have been much speculation as to who was responsible?’
‘Oh, I agree, but even that’s not the worst of it. This particular occasion wasn’t only unusual for that reason. There was an added factor which made it positively unique.’
‘Jake?’
‘No, although she did rather drag him into the party at the last minute, on a pretext which might sound thin to anyone but me. However, the really sensational bit was that Alice, or Mrs Thorne as we are now required to call her, had returned to the fold. Apparently, she’d been helping out in a kind of undercover way for months, doing errands and jobs at home and so on, but Serena was already worn out and a week of Pelham and Lindy had just about finished her. Mrs Thorne was the golden hope. She was loyal to the backbone and she knew the situation at first hand, so it wasn’t too much to hope that she would be able to handle Nannie tactfully. Unfortunately, she is also rather stupid and she seized the first opportunity to bounce into the lion’s den and give the lion’s tail a naughty little tweak. Needless to say, she soon scuttled out again when she got the full force of Nannie’s wrath, and personally I have reason to believe that she had learnt her lesson and would be more circumspect in future; but there were witnesses to the fact that Serena had heard about the incident and one could argue that she was under the impression that drastic steps were needed to prevent Mrs Thorne handing in her notice.’
‘Well, you’ve certainly built up one hell of a case against her. I begin to wonder that you have so little faith in it.’
‘For the reason you mentioned. It is simply not in Serena’s nature to resort to that particular solution, which is why I consider Dr Soames to be so irresponsible in stirring up the mud. He must know what the consequence will be and how ill equipped she is to face it. She’s the kind who drifts through life, perpetually hoping that all the nasty things will have gone away in the morning.’
‘That type can be the most ruthless of all when they do make up their minds.’
‘Yes, that’s what people will say. I don’t suppose they could bring a case, but the rumours will fly and it’s going to be awfully hard for her to live them down. Honestly, I could slay that Richard Soames. Her father’s junior partner too! You’d think he’d have more loyalty!’
‘Cheer up! There’s always the chance that he’s on a false trail. It may still turn out that death was due to a surfeit of gooseberries.’
I shook my head: ‘No, I don’t think so. I have a terrible feeling he’s right, and one reason is that my erratic old subconscious has come to life again and reminded me why I spoke of arsenic in the sugar. Last night, when I was making coffee, I couldn’t find any, and yet I know it was there at dinner. It was that soft brown kind and it was in a silver bowl. It probably means that after we’d all gone to bed someone came downstairs and removed it, poison and all.’
We walked on in silence, which was broken by Robin saying: ‘Then why weren’t the rest of you affected?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ I admitted, ‘and it’s not really so puzzling. I have to reconstruct these things in a visual way and here’s what I see: at one point the whole party is collected in the dining room, including Primrose who has just
returned from the kitchen. She was the first to go out again and she left in her usual boisterous manner, on the pretext of taking Nannie’s tray upstairs, having first thrown a pile of sugar all over it. In fact, she never came down again, so that gets her out of the way. Jake was the next to depart, although he doesn’t count anyway because he’s diabetic and was eating that custard stuff.’
‘That still left three of you, apart from Lindy.’
‘Yes, but hang on, because the picture’s still unfolding. Now I’m looking at Lindy and she’s helped herself to sugar, a good whack of it too, as befits the yum yum, little girl image; but gooseberries are evidently a new experience in her life and after one mouthful she screws up her face and makes another dive for the sugar bowl.’
‘Interesting! How about Pelham?’
‘That’s even more so, because, after all the build up, he didn’t eat any pie at all; which can’t have been because he wasn’t hungry, I might add. Serena took a tiny helping, but she was in a very distrait mood and hardly touched it.’
‘Which only leaves you. What happened there? Did some sixth sense come to your rescue?’
‘I wish I could say so, but I’m afraid I owe my salvation solely to greed. There was a great jug of that lovely thick yellow cream, you see, and I rather let myself go with it. There are limits though and you’d have to be truly disgusting to want sugar as well. In fact it would probably ruin the whole gourmet beauty of the thing.’
‘Yes, well I suppose that opens up a narrow field of speculation.’
‘Doesn’t it, though? Hard to know where to start.’
‘Perhaps with the premise that the poison was really intended for Lindy, and Nannie only got hers by accident?’
‘Except that it didn’t kill Lindy, or even make her seriously ill, so what would have been the point?’
‘Oh, it wouldn’t be the first time that sort of thing has been bungled, but there remains the question of who would have wanted to harm or kill her. Only Pelham, surely? And he could have found far less clumsy ways of doing it. On the whole, I think we must take it that she was merely part of the cover up, the plan being that at least three people should develop mild symptoms of poisoning, so that Nannie’s attack would be seen as part of the pattern, the only difference being that it proved fatal, on account of her age and condition.’
‘We progress,’ I said. ‘We have found out who our intended victim was and that up to a point the plan succeeded. Unfortunately, it doesn’t bring us any nearer to naming the culprit, although I suppose we can eliminate Jake, which is rather disappointing in a way.’
‘Why is it?’
‘Oh, mainly because he’s the great outsider and it’s always fun when they come romping in ahead of the field. Besides, if the poison was in the sugar he’s such a suitable candidate for the job. There was no risk of his being offered any and I should think it might be almost instinctive to choose that particular method, wouldn’t you?’
‘So why eliminate him?’
‘Because he must surely be the one person who had no opportunity to doctor the sugar, or to remove it later on. He went home quite early, probably even before Mrs Thorne.’
‘Could he have got back into the house after you were all in bed?’
‘Yes, I expect so. Primrose took it into her head to go calling on a pregnant mare and she’s more than capable of leaving the front door wide open. In any case, I don’t think much locking up goes on in that establishment. There’s nothing valuable enough for the professional thieves to bother with and it’s too far off the road to attract a casual breaker and enterer. I can’t see Jake having any difficulty there, but it still doesn’t explain how he could have got at the sugar in the first place.’
‘Slipped into the house at some quiet moment during the day, perhaps?’
‘No, because he and Primrose didn’t get back from Newmarket until tea time, which was after I arrived. The whole party was on the premises then, and Mrs Thorne turned up soon afterwards, so there wasn’t a moment when he could have come into the house unobserved. He’s about nine feet tall and not easy to miss. Besides, why should he have got his knife into Nannie? Still more to the point, how could he ensure that the sugar would get to her at all? The gooseberries were a very last minute addition to the menu. No, despite my preference for the outsiders, I had to admit that this one is a non-starter.’
‘Never mind,’ Robin said. ‘We’ve cleared some of the ground. At least you now only have four suspects to choose from.’
‘Why four?’
‘Well, you can’t leave Serena out simply because she came to your christening, still less Lindy, who got a dose of the same medicine. You wouldn’t be taken in by an old trick like that?’
‘Certainly not, but I wasn’t thinking of them. It’s more a question of which one you left out. Probably the most important of all.’
‘I won’t ask who that is,’ Robin said, perhaps feeling that he had humoured me enough. ‘Then if it does turn out that you have a murderer in your midst, you can have all the fun of pretending you knew who it was from the start.’
Rather put out by this somewhat patronising attitude, I was tempted to lay all my cards on the table there and then, and it would have saved a great deal of trouble for some of us if I had.
CHAPTER TEN
The result of the autopsy was made known to us on Saturday evening, whereupon Serena, who had spent the day looking as though she were ready to sink into her own grave, perked up in no uncertain manner. While not precisely humming a merry tune, she had the air of one from whom a great burden had been lifted.
There was no obvious reason for this, for Dr Soames’s suspicions had been amply justified and there now remained no possibility of Nannie’s death having been due to natural causes. However, she explained to us that it was the type of poison involved which made everything all right and proved conclusively that it had been due to a very sad accident.
He had come in person to break the news, in an interview at which Serena, then still in a state of utmost gloom, had begged me to be present.
‘I suppose there is no harm in your hearing it too,’ he agreed reluctantly. ‘It is bound to come out now, but I hope I can count on both of you not to say a word to anyone before the inquest.’
‘And what is the word?’ Serena asked in a faint voice.
‘Death by poisoning, as I had feared all along. Not in a large enough quantity to be fatal in the ordinary way, but quite sufficient in her case.’
‘What kind of poison?’ I asked, since Serena now seemed incapable of putting the question into words.
‘It is called Warfarin. Principally used for the extermination of rats and mice.’
It was this simple statement which brought about the phenomenal change in Serena’s mood, causing her to drop back in her chair as tears of relief clouded her eyes.
‘Oh, thank God, Richard! Thank God for that!’
‘You see it as something to be grateful for?’ he asked in understandable surprise.
‘Yes, in a dreadful kind of way, I do. Poor old Nan! I can’t bear to think of her suffering, but just imagine how much worse it might have been! Oh, you’ll never know how worried I was! I was so afraid, well, you know, that someone had made a hideous mistake and we’d never find out how it happened, and then all that terrible business would start up again.’
‘What terrible business?’ he asked, still more at a loss.
‘Oh, you remember all the malicious gossip there was when Alan Thorne died? It went on for months and all it did was to bring misery to innocent people. I felt I couldn’t live through an experience like that again.’
‘There is no reason why you should have to; there is no similarity whatever between the two events. Unless of course,’ Dr Soames went on, now looking almost bug eyed with astonishment, ‘you were implying that, having accused Alice Thorne of murdering her own child, people would now say that she had put poison in Nannie’s soup?’
‘No, nothing
quite so blatant as that, but the shadow of such a thing had been looming over me, I do confess it. Poor creature, she’s always been so stiff and reserved, more so than ever since her breakdown. People imagine it’s either because she’s wrong in the head or thinks herself too good for them and everyone knows about the feud between her and Nannie. Unfortunately, poor old Nan was one of the worst offenders in that business with Alan. She said some very unkind things and it wouldn’t surprise anyone if Alice had nursed a grudge all these years.’
‘Well, I’m with you up to a point, Serena, but being a bit run down as you are, I think you’ve allowed yourself to make too much of it. What I can’t understand though is why you now feel so certain that all the dangers you’ve been talking about have passed. What on earth difference can it make what sort of poison was used, so long as it was easy to get hold of?’
‘Oh, all the difference in the world, my dear. You may not be aware of this, but Nannie had an absolute phobia about mice. It was one of the ways she managed to make life so difficult. She was always nagging me about the house being over-run with them, and it was also her excuse for keeping a private store of food in the nursery, although I’ve always believed the real reason for that was to give herself all those little between meal snacks.’
‘So?’
‘Well, don’t you see that the one infallible way to attract mice is to keep unwrapped food in a cupboard? Of course they got in all the time and her way of coping with it was to put down masses of this Warfarin stuff you’ve been talking about. I always thought it was dangerous. She kept a great tin of it on the toy cupboard. You must have seen it there, Tessa, when you were talking to her before dinner yesterday?’
Dr Soames glanced at me enquiringly and I nodded back. I should probably have done so in any case, but it happened that Serena had spoken no more than the truth.
‘So you think that through an oversight, some of this stuff got mixed into her dinner? Isn’t that rather stretching it?’
‘Ah, but you see, Richard, she hardly ever went to bed without eating a last, late night snack. She maintained she couldn’t sleep on an empty stomach, if you please, and it usually took the form of a bowl of cereal, with lots of milk and brown sugar all mixed up with some kind of wheat germ which she also kept in a tin on the cupboard.’
