Mingled With Venom mb-54

by Gladys Mitchell

  Next to the kitchenmaid at the end of the row of witnesses which included a grey-haired woman whom Dame Beatrice supposed was Bluebell’s mother, sat another servant who was subsequently revealed as the parlourmaid who had waited at table on the occasion under review and another young woman whom Dame Beatrice could not identify.

  A man whom she took to be the family lawyer was seated in the front row next to Maria Porthcawl. The jury, looking wooden to disguise their sense of their own importance, were on chairs of varying heights and were at the side of the room opposite the superintendent and his sergeant.

  The proceedings were informal and seemed unreal. It was both fitting and incongruous that they should be held in the very room in which Romula Leyden had died. The family shifted a little in their chairs as the coroner opened the inquest. He made the usual little speech and, after Maria had given evidence of the identity of the deceased, the medical evidence was taken and those who did not know it already were informed that the cause of death was poisoning by aconitine.

  ‘Have you formed any opinion as to how the poison came to be administered?’

  ‘I find that the deceased partook of a condiment made from the grated root of aconitum napellus, the monkshood or wolfsbane.’

  ‘And such a condiment would be poisonous?’

  ‘Highly poisonous. It is fair to add that such a root has been mistaken for horseradish.’

  ‘Thank you, doctor.’ The doctor, who had been standing beside the coroner to give his evidence, returned to his chair, picked up the hat and case he had left there and hurried away to get back to his morning surgery.

  The next witness was the superintendent. ‘I was called in by Dr Mace to this house to investigate a case of sudden and unexpected death. The doctor suspected the deceased had taken poison. I sent specimens such as I need not name to be analysed. The poison was diagnosed as aconitine, known to be deadly. I set about finding out where the pot of pickle had come from and learned it had been prepared in this very kitchen.’

  He was interrupted by a stricken cry of ‘I never! I swear and declare I never done it!’ from Mrs Plack, who was rebuked by the coroner, comforted by the kitchenmaid and spent the next few minutes quietly sobbing.

  The superintendent was invited to resume his story. ‘Upon further enquiry I elicited that the pickle or sauce or condiment in question had been prepared last Friday ready for the Sunday dinner of roast beef, it keeping that long, in spite of cream being one of the ingredients, because of the vinegar. I ascertained that a vegetable substance reputed to be horseradish had been grated up ready for use by the kitchenmaid, Sonia Hills—’

  ‘Oo-er! I never knew what it were! I swear I never!’

  ‘Quiet, please, Miss Hills. You will have an opportunity to state your case later on. Go on, please, Superintendent.’

  ‘Having been apprised of the nature of the poison which had resulted in death of the deceased, I set about finding out where it could have come from, it seeming to me unlikely as it had come from a greengrocer or grower.’

  ‘Will you explain that to the jury?’

  ‘No need,’ growled a juryman. ‘Anybody as would dig up the wolfsbane, thinking it were horseradish, must ha’ been mad. Nobody hereabouts ud make a mistake like that. Monkshood be another name for the wolfsbane and everybody know them purple flowers. In flower that is already. Got some in my garden I have.’

  ‘Thank you, Isaac Trewethy. You have made your point. Superintendent?’

  ‘Trewethy has said what was in my mind, sir. Monkshood is a common enough garden plant in these parts.’

  ‘Is there not a wild variety, though?’

  ‘Ah, there is, but there again you couldn’t mistake it for horseradish, sir, not if you saw the actual plant growing. Horseradish—’ he consulted his notebook—‘otherwise armoracia rusticana, natural order cruciferae, does not resembel aconitum anglicum, the wild species of aconitum napellus, as mentioned by Dr. Mace—’

  ‘Yes, yes, Superintendent!’

  ‘Natural order ranunculaceae,’ continued the Superintendent, unmoved by the coroner’s testy tone, ‘in any respect as would cause it to be mistooken—’

  ‘We take your point. You mean that the poisonous root of the monkshood could not have got into Mrs Plack’s kitchen by accident. Call Sonia Hills. Now, Miss Hills, there is nothing to be alarmed about. Last Friday you grated up a root of what you supposed to be horseradish. Come right up to my table. Now here, as you see, I have two vegetable substances. Look at them very carefully. You may handle them if you wish.’

  ‘Not me!’ said Sonia, backing away as though she feared the roots would explode.

  ‘I understand your cautiousness. Will you point out which of these two roots resembles that which you grated up last Friday?’

  The girl stared at the objects for several seconds, then hesitantly she pointed out one of the specimens in front of her.

  ‘Reckon that’s the one,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t be sure.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Hills. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, these two roots are identical in substance. Both are genuinely attested horseradish roots dug up yesterday morning under the personal supervision of the police. It is clear, therefore, that the witness is unable to distinguish between the root of the horseradish and the root of the monkshood or wolfsbane. That is all, Miss Hills. You will appreciate, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that, once the fatal root was grated up, no cook on earth would have known that it was not horseradish, so there is no point in my calling upon Mrs Plack to testify to that fact.’

  ‘And why?’ demanded Mrs Pack. ‘I can tell you one thing and it’s this: that nasty stuff as poisoned poor Mrs Leyden wasn’t never made in my kitchen. Tried mine, myself, I did, a whole dollopin’ tablespoon of it, and never took no harm, as Sonia here will testify. Changed over, them jars was, and so I’m telling you.’

  ‘I see,’ said the coroner. ‘Thank you, Mrs Plack.’ He glanced at the Superintendent and then called the parlourmaid. ‘Now,’ the coroner went on, ‘Miss Buskin, you waited at table last Sunday. Will you tell the jury exactly what happened at lunchtime?’

  ‘Mrs Porthcawl carved, there being no gentlemen present,’ said the girl, ‘and I carried round the plates as usual. There was mustard on the table and madam’s horseradish, nobody else liking it, and she helped herself very liberal, being partial to it.’

  ‘Nobody else took horseradish sauce?’

  ‘Nobody else, which on this occasion it was only Mrs Leyden that cared for it, like I said.’

  ‘Please continue.’

  ‘I don’t hardly like to. It was horrible. Madam took to clutching at her throat and all the rest of it, like we told the doctor when he came, and it was awful soon, thank God, before it was all over. Of course, Mrs Porthcawl sent me out quick to call the doctor as soon as she see how bad madam was—sick and all that, I mean—but by the time the doctor got here, all the way from St Austell it was, everything was over and madam gone to her last rest.’

  ‘What did you think had caused the fatal seizure?’

  ‘I didn’t know at the time. I know now, of course, as it was the horseradish. I never did like the stuff, but—’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Buskin. Call Margaret Denham. Now, Miss Denham, you were at one time the kitchenmaid here, were you not?’

  The girl who had been seated at the end of the row stood up. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Though I don’t see why they had to lug me into this.’

  ‘How long ago were you in service here?’

  ‘I left third week in May.’

  ‘How long were you—what amount of notice did you give?’

  ‘None. I were give my month’s wages and told to get out. Sue her for wrongful dismissal I could, if I’d a mind to it. I hadn’t done nothing for to get myself chucked out at a minute’s notice without no previous warning.’

  ‘There must have been some reason for it, must there not? Will you tell the jury what it was?’

&nb
sp; ‘I had words with that there Ruby Pabbay.’

  ‘Mrs Leyden’s protégée?’

  ‘Call her what you like. I called her a jumped-up little cow, for heifer she was not, to my certain knowledge.’

  ‘Miss Denham, you really must not bring these farmyard metaphors into my court.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m sure, but I know very well what sort of capers her got up to when she was kitchenmaid before me.’

  ‘That is a matter we need not discuss. I suppose Mrs Leyden gave you a reference when she dismissed you?’

  ‘Of a sort. She said I was willing, honest and outspoken.’

  ‘You found no difficulty in securing other employment?’

  ‘I been living on my savings with my sister. Ain’t many as can afford a kitchenmaid nowadays. Even cook-generals can’t always get work. It’s mostly the daily help and the missus mucking in, as you might say, or else an au pair from foreign parts which some of ’em are slavies and the other sort is madams and not worth their board and keep.’

  ‘We are wandering from the point. You resented losing your position in this household, it seems.’

  ‘It were wrongful dismissal, like I said, and I wish now as I’d gone to court about it.’

  ‘But you came frequently to visit your former friends here?’

  ‘I come here now and again to have a bit of a natter with Mattie Lunn over to the stables. Plenty of time to pay visits, being out of a job. I never come into the house, though.’

  ‘You could have got a post at one of the hotels, could you not?’

  ‘Happen I could, but I don’t care for the hotel work.’

  ‘You preferred to stay idle in your sister’s house and brood over your wrongs. When was the last time you visited this house before today?’

  ‘Last Friday morning about nine o’clock, and talked to Mattie for p’raps half an hour.’

  ‘The day on which Mrs Plack made the horseradish sauce for Sunday lunch?’

  ‘I suppose so. Anyways, her wouldn’t have made it while I was there. Too early.’

  ‘No, presumably she made it after you had gone. Now, Miss Denham, I would like you to listen to the rest of the evidence. I recall Superintendent Chown. Now, Superintendent, as soon as you knew that poison had been taken by the deceased and as soon as you knew what that poison was, what did you do?’

  ‘Well, sir, I said to myself as the stuff must have come from somewhere and being something of a student of botany, I told myself and my sergeant as it had most probably come from a plant as had a root very similar to the horseradish from which the condiment did ought by rights to have been made.’

  ‘And your botanical knowledge told you that the monkshood plant had such a root?’

  ‘To be honest and truthful, no, sir. It was the doctor as directed my attention to aconitum napellus. “This is a very nasty affair,” doctor he says to me. “If you want a tip, Chown, I should make it your business to find somebody who has monkshood in the garden and what connection, if any, such a person has with the house of Headlands. If the garden variety doesn’t help, you could chase up the wild kind. It grows around these south-west parts and in Wales” he says, which, of course, from my knowledge of botany I was aware, sir.’

  ‘Quite so. Your quest was successful, I believe.’

  ‘That is so, sir. I run the pernicious plant to earth in several gardens near hereabouts, but the garden as interested me most after I had questioned Mrs Porthcawl about possible persons who might have a grudge against Mrs Leyden was the garden of a Mrs Antrobus.’

  At this name the girl Denham half-rose from her seat and was pulled back into it by the parlourmaid, Buskin.

  ‘Hush up!’ hissed this supporter. ‘You ain’t dead yet! Don’t give ’em no back answers. Got you in trouble before.’

  ‘And this Mrs Antrobus?’ asked the coroner.

  ‘Happens to be the sister as Denham has been living along of since she was turned away from this house,’ said the superintendent, trying to keep self-satisfaction out of his voice.

  ‘And thank God as neither of them is Cornish born,’ added one of the jurymen devoutly.

  Chapter 11

  Last Will and Testament

  « ^ »

  ‘You know,’ said Bluebell, accepting a lift in Dame Beatrice’s car and sitting between her husband and Dame Beatrice on the back seat while Garnet sat in front with George, ‘I know it means plain sailing for the rest of us—the family and Fiona and Ruby, I mean—but I can’t help feeling that the police are barking up the wrong tree.’

  ‘The coroner was wise enough to repress that outspoken juryman and insist upon a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown,’ Dame Beatrice pointed out.

  ‘All the same, I am sure they mean to arrest that honest, ignorant girl.’

  ‘Yes, but even if they arrested her as she left the house, there is still a hearing before the magistrates to come.’

  ‘There’s a prima facie case, I think,’ said Garnet, turning his head. ‘The girl fits the classic formula.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked his sister. ‘And how do you know what the classic formula is?’

  ‘I sometimes have a crime in one of my novels, so I need to know such things. Three points arise before a criminal can be convicted. The person concerned must be shown to have had the means, the opportunity and (to a much lesser extent) a motive for committing the crime.’

  ‘Why “to a lesser extent”? I should have thought the motive was of supreme importance.’

  ‘Well, no, because what would be a valid motive to one person would offer no temptation, or very little, to another. Let us take a very simple example: let us suppose that you and Gamaliel are equally hungry; really hungry, I mean. You come to a baker’s shop in which you happen to know that the proprietor is also the only counter-hand. As you are both approaching the shop you see him chasing a small boy down the street. The shop door is open. You—both of you—are almost starving. What happens? You tell me, honestly, what happens.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bluebell, ‘I think you have picked a heavily loaded and very unfair example, but—well, yes, I suppose you are right. Gamaliel would step inside the shop and grab all the bread and buns that he could get hold of: I should not.’

  ‘Yet my premise is that you are just as hungry as he is.’

  ‘Gamaliel needs food far more than I do, so I still don’t think it’s a fair example. What does Dame Beatrice think?’

  ‘I think that if Gamaliel were starving and you had no food to give him, you would steal it. Your motive, in such a case, would be strong enough for that. But one can argue about motive indefinitely. What we have to consider in the far from hypothetical case which has come under our notice, is to what extent we can agree that there is a prima facie case in the matter of Margaret Denham.’

  ‘She had the means,’ said Parsifal. ‘Do not misunderstand me. I do not believe the girl is guilty. All the same, the kind of plant which appears to have wrought the mischief is known to have been growing in the garden of the house where she was living.’

  ‘You would have to prove that the root or roots of that particular plant had been dug up at the requisite time,’ said Bluebell, ‘and, moreover, that Margaret was the person who did the excavating.’

  ‘So “opportunity” comes under two separate headings,’ said Garnet. ‘One: when had she the opportunity to do the digging? That raises another question, you know. The majority of householders, and that includes these cottagers, are very proud of their gardens, I’m sure Mrs Antrobus or her husband (if she has one) would have noticed at once that the plants of monkshood had been tampered with and one or more of them removed.’

  ‘An excellent point,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘and one which must be investigated further.’

  ‘Further? Oh, but the police must have gone into the matter. My second point,’ Garnet went on, ‘is that, granted she had the poisonous root at hand and, for the sake of argument, granted that she had murder in mind, it would
have to be established that she had the opportunity to substitute a lethal jar of condiment for an innocuous one.’

  ‘I thought the cook’s evidence covered that point,’ said Parsifal. ‘The murderer had only to pop into the kitchen while the cook was upstairs resting after lunch and the kitchenmaid was in the scullery washing the dishes and with a closed door between her and the kitchen, for the exchange of jars to be effected in only a few seconds and in perfect safety.’

  ‘But the murderer need not have been this girl,’ Bluebell protested. ‘Anybody living or staying in the house, or even Mattie or Redruth Lunn from outside it, could have had the same opportunity.’

  ‘The means would have been simple enough to come by,’ Parsifal conceded. ‘Mrs Antrobus is far from being the only person hereabouts to have monkshood in her garden. Come to think of it, we’ve got several plants of that genus in our own front garden.’

  ‘But we don’t—I mean, we didn’t until this morning know that the cook and the kitchenmaid would be out of the kitchen at a definite and well-established time,’ said Garnet.

  ‘We might find that hard to prove,’ said Bluebell. ‘Fiona most certainly would have known, and there is no way of proving that she had not told us.’

  ‘Even if she herself denied telling us?’ said Parsifal.

  ‘The law would argue that she was lying in order to protect the people who had taken her in when she had nowhere else to go,’ said Garnet.

  ‘But what motive could any of us have for murdering our grandmother? The very question sounds like a music hall joke,’ protested Bluebell.

  ‘We may have sufficient motive attached to us when the Will is read,’ said Garnet, with a short laugh in which there was no hilarity.

  ‘Oh, gracious me! I never thought of that,’ said Bluebell.

  Her husband said, in his weak and gentle voice, ‘It was the first thought which came into my head. Of course, it depends upon how the money has been left which will determine on which of us the most suspicion falls, for it would be useless for us to claim that we had no idea of what was in the Will, although that would be the truth.’