Mingled With Venom mb-54

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘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?’

  Chapter 17

  Gamaliel’s Law

  « ^

  ‘Why do you call it wolfsbane?’ asked Parsifal, avoiding an answer.

  ‘Because Mrs Leyden’s name was Romula.’

  ‘Ah, yes, you saw the significance of that.’ His attempt at belligerence had faded away completely. ‘But you can’t prove anything, can you?’

  ‘My arguments and the conclusions I have drawn from them are on their way by post to the police.’

  ‘But it’s all theory.’

  ‘Not quite all. Let us apply the rules. First comes the rule of Means.’

  ‘Anybody round here could have found the means of poisoning that poisonous old woman.’

  ‘Opportunity?’

  ‘The same applies. On a Friday anybody could have sneaked into that kitchen and changed over the jars.’

  ‘But only one person could be pretty sure that his antics would not be known. It seems to me significant that the poison was prepared at a time when the rest of your household were absent. That stuck me right at the beginning.’

  ‘Somebody else could have realised that and thought it might implicate me, don’t you think?’

  ‘Perhaps we have not explored sufficiently the question of means.’

  ‘But there isn’t any question about those. Whoever did it used the roots of monkshood from the garden where that girl was living.’

  ‘I was not thinking of the wolfsbane. I refer to the cream.’

  ‘But that wasn’t poisonous!’

  ‘No, but it had to be purchased. Enquiries have been made of the dairyman who supplied milk to Headlands, Campions and Seawards. Headlands put in a regular order for fresh cream. The other two houses did not. The cream, on the Friday before Mrs Leyden died on the Sunday, was delivered to Headlands as usual and was added to the innocent condiment fabricated by Mrs Plack, who tasted the result and passed it as being up to standard. That accounts for the cream which was delivered by the milkman. But the murderer also needed cream. He had sufficient perspicacity not to order it direct from the milkman, but he had to get hold of it somehow. I am sure he took a long walk on the Thursday before he called at Headlands to ask Mrs Leyden for money to meet some outstanding bills, went over to Polyarn—not a particularly daunting objective for a practised walker such as yourself—and bought the cream over the counter. He counted upon not being recognised, as the counter hand would not have been familiar with his appearance, whereas the milkman might have been.’

  ‘I never heard anything so specious in my life!’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘When a description of you reaches the shop and is recognised, will it not require some explanation?’

  ‘Forewarned is forearmed. One would plead a sudden desire for fresh cream, I suppose. People do have sudden desires for things, don’t they?’

  ‘You had a desire—although I do not think it was a sudden one—for a share of Mrs Leyden’s fortune.’

  ‘But surely you were told I stood no chance of that?—and now it is known to everyone that I did not.’

  ‘No, but after the first of the two dinner parties you knew that Mrs Leyden had become interested in Gamaliel, and after the second that, although the actual amount had not been mentioned, your wife would benefit. I think it was after the second dinner that you began to formulate your plans. What I think perhaps you do not know is how nearly you came to killing the wrong person.’

  ‘Nobody else liked horseradish.’

  ‘The cook was fond of it. It was her habit, in any case, to taste her condiment before it went to table to make certain that the cream had not turned sour. Owing to two factors which could not have been foreseen, she ate a quantity of her innocent mixture as soon as she had made it on the Friday and was prevented from tasting your lethal mixture on the Sunday because lunch was late and was rushed to the table at a peremptory summons from Mrs Leyden.’

  ‘If you’re only relying on a purchase of fresh cream to prove your otherwise unfounded allegations, I don’t think you’ll get away with them,’ said Parsifal, with a slight smile on his long, camel-like lips. ‘It was clever of you to spot the Romula-Romulus angle, though. Poetic justice I thought it. Those suckled by the she-wolf deserve to die of the wolfsbane. That thought gave me a great deal of satisfaction.’

  ‘I am sure it did.’

  ‘You see, it would have been so much simpler to have pushed her over the cliff, as Diana tried to do.’

  ‘You know that Mrs Bosse-Leyden did that?’

  ‘Oh, yes, the same as I know that Rupert did the same to Diana. But their attempts were half-hearted. It took me, the poet, to carry my plans to their logical conclusion. All my life, you know, Dame Beatrice, I have been an underdog, despised, neglected, overlooked and poor, but little did that arrogant old woman know that I held her life in my hands.’

  ‘And elected to destroy it. Yes, I see. Oh, well, I will take my leave, Mr Leek.’ She rose from the basket chair.

  ‘Thank you for calling,’ said Parsifal politely. Neither of them realised that the swimmers had left the water, although Dame Beatrice had seen Laura, some few minutes earlier, walk up the garden and disappear round the side of the house, presumably to return to the car. As Dame Beatrice descended the wooden steps which led down from the balcony, however, she was slightly startled to meet Gamaliel who, still in his bathing-trunks, was standing just in shadow outside the back door. He opened it and drew her into the house.

  ‘So it would have been simpler to have pushed my other dear old lady over the cliff, would it?’ he said. ‘What shall we do, my present dear old lady?’

  ‘Leave everything to the police, my dear young man. How much did you hear?’

  ‘Enough. I guessed the truth a long time ago, but he is my mother’s husband. He cannot go to
prison.’

  ‘The girl must not suffer for something she did not do. The law must take its course. You see that, don’t you?’

  ‘There is more than one law.’

  ‘We must not take the law into our own hands.’

  ‘So my mother and I and my best friend Garnie are to live our lives under the shadow of this murderer serving a life sentence? That seems to me unfair.’

  ‘Of course it is unfair.’

  ‘As unfair as that Margaret Denham should go to prison for something she did not do?’

  ‘Quite as unfair.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Gamaliel in a tone of satisfaction. ‘I am pleased to hear you admit that.’ He glanced down at his naked limbs. ‘I am cold. I must get dressed. Do you think the discovery of the truth is an end in itself, even if it benefits nobody and damages three innocent people?’

  ‘Yes, I believe it is, but, in this case, it will benefit Margaret Denham.’ She walked with him through the basement of the house and he let her out by the front door.

  ‘Do you remember, in a story of King Solomon’s Mines, a terrible old person called Gagool?’ he asked as he opened it.

  ‘Dimly but sufficiently. Why?’

  ‘She smelt people out. I think you smell people out, dear old lady.’

  ‘I have been reading my mother’s diary,’ said Maria to Fiona. ‘It seems that she was in the habit of disbursing sums of money to Parsifal Leek. She told me about it once, I remember.’

  ‘I knew,’ said Fiona. ‘As her secretary, there were very few, if any, secrets that she kept from me.’

  ‘You never mentioned anything of her giving money to Parsifal. I should have known nothing of it had she not mentioned it on that one solitary occasion.’