Arsenic For Tea: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery (A Wells and Wong Mystery)

by Robin Stevens

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do we tell Kitty and Beanie?’

  ‘No!’ said Daisy. ‘They’d only spoil things. Detective Society only.’

  ‘Detective Society only,’ I repeated. Inside, I glowed.

  Was Mr Curtis up to something? I wondered as we went into the dining room. I wasn’t sure – but Daisy and I were on top-secret Detective Society business again, and we would find out.

  8

  There was candlelight at the dinner table too, shining softly on the men’s shirt fronts and all the lovely food heaped up on silver dishes. Chapman served us, his brown-spotted hands trembling slightly, so the potatoes and vegetables on my plate were splashed in sauce, but I didn’t mind – although Lady Hastings exclaimed quite crossly when some of it fell on her lovely bright-green gown.

  Uncle Felix was being very jolly. He sat telling uproarious jokes to Bertie and Stephen – and Stephen, who had been so nervous he could hardly hold his fork, relaxed, straightened his back and even began to laugh. I was watching this approvingly when Uncle Felix suddenly glanced over at me, his eyes sharp and blue, just the way Daisy does when she is truly considering someone.

  I flushed red and looked down at the napkin on my lap, and when I looked up next he was pulling a face at Daisy, as though he had never been watching me at all. Daisy kept her face very prim and straight until Lady Hastings turned away to Mr Curtis; then she made the most marvellous monkey face back at Uncle Felix. Uncle Felix and Daisy were two of a kind, I decided. They were just as hidden as each other.

  Aunt Saskia was another matter. She fidgeted in her chair, her scarves billowing about her as she gulped down her wine – and dropped silver teaspoons and salt dishes into her little beaded reticule when she thought no one was looking. I had never seen anyone stealing anything so obviously, and I wondered whether I ought to mention it. Then I saw Lord Hastings looking at Aunt Saskia and sighing, and decided that he knew perfectly well already. I supposed that family was family, no matter what they did.

  But of course the person I was really watching was Mr Curtis. And it was not hard to detect something odd in what he was saying. He went on and on about all the things in Fallingford – but what he said did not seem to match what Daisy had overheard earlier. ‘That vase on the first floor is a fake,’ he told Lord Hastings. ‘Margaret told me that you thought it might be Ming, but I assure you it’s nothing of the kind. Quite a cheap replica. And the furniture – in a terrible state of repair! You haven’t been caring for it at all. It needs seeing to – though it’ll never regain its old value. Terrible, really terrible.’

  ‘And I suppose you’re volunteering yourself?’ asked Lord Hastings, who seemed to be struggling to be a cheerful host.

  ‘I’m something of an antiques expert,’ said Mr Curtis. ‘If you were interested, then perhaps—’

  ‘I won’t hear of it,’ said Lord Hastings. ‘They’re the family’s things, and they’ll stay in the family.’

  He put his hands down on the table, and I could see that as far as he was concerned, that was the end of the matter. But Lady Hastings was looking at Mr Curtis, and I saw her lips say, ‘Later,’ at him. She still wanted to sell to him, I realized – but what if he was not telling the truth about how much everything was worth? Daisy had heard him say ‘Ming’ – and now here he was, saying that the vase was not Ming. Was he lying? He must be!

  I looked at Daisy, and saw that the nose wrinkle was back again. Had we really stumbled across a plot to con Lord and Lady Hastings?

  Someone else was watching Mr Curtis too. I caught Miss Alston’s eyes sliding over to him again and again. Her face remained very calm and proper, as though she didn’t much care, but it happened far too often to be a mistake, or idle curiosity. What was she doing?

  Mr Curtis was still talking about all the things he had found at Fallingford, and being extremely rude about their value. Even Lady Hastings’ jewels were unfashionably cut, and so worth hardly anything. It made me dreadfully uncomfortable. One of the most important things I have learned is that, in England, the more money you have, the less you mention it – it becomes a funny sort of secret: one that you try to bury under dust and faded clothing. (Even my father, who loves all things English, finds this odd.) But Mr Curtis did not seem to know this at all. ‘A new one could be worth fifty guineas at least!’ he said triumphantly. ‘I have one quite similar in my own house. But, sadly, in that state of repair – perhaps only four or five pounds.’

  Bertie made a face at Daisy, and Stephen looked simply horrified. I quite agreed with him.

  ‘But of course,’ Mr Curtis went on, ‘this is still a fine old house. And it has a delightful hostess. Lord Hastings, your wife is simply a jewel, with a face that could launch a thousand ships.’ His teeth gleamed in the candlelight as he gave Lady Hastings another nasty, knowing smirk.

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Uncle Felix as Lord Hastings wriggled uncomfortably in his chair and clutched his knife and fork, ‘I remember how that story goes. Funny, I don’t recall it ending well.’

  He gave Mr Curtis a very cold stare through the lens of his monocle, and just for a moment Mr Curtis wilted slightly. But then he straightened his shoulders, his smug expression returned and he began to speak again. As he did so, I noticed him reaching into his jacket and pulling out a pocket watch. It was a fat gold thing, scrolled round with delicate leaves. Mr Curtis rolled it carelessly between his fingers while he talked. We all gaped at it, and next to me Stephen muttered something under his breath. When I turned to him, he looked as disgusted as I felt.

  ‘How handsome!’ Aunt Saskia was staring at the watch, and her eyes were glinting. She looked as though she wanted to lick her lips.

  ‘Oh – this?’ asked Mr Curtis jauntily. ‘A memento. I do like having beautiful things around me.’

  ‘So you’ve said,’ remarked Uncle Felix, in his most silky voice.

  They stared each other down across the table. Everything had suddenly become very tense.

  ‘Goodness!’ cried Lady Hastings. ‘What has got into you all? We ought to be celebrating. Let’s have a toast. To the party! May this weekend be absolutely perfect!’

  Everyone raised their glasses and drank (the four of us had Robinson’s squash, and had to pretend it was wine). I looked around as we did so, though, and saw everyone staring not at Lady Hastings but at Mr Curtis. Lord Hastings was red in the face, Uncle Felix was pale and cold as he gazed through his monocle, Miss Alston was looking without seeming to again, Bertie was huffing with indignation, Stephen was still pale with disgust and Lady Hastings was misty with a kind of cloying fondness that I hated to see. Only Aunt Saskia was staring at something else: Mr Curtis’s watch, balanced next to his plate. I looked at them all and thought that this weekend would not be perfect at all. On the contrary, it seemed as though it was going to be quite awful. Or, as I could feel Daisy thinking next to me, very interesting indeed.

  9

  After dinner the men stayed in the dining room to smoke, and the women got up and went into the drawing room. Bertie and Stephen sat with the men, but although we four had been allowed to play at being grown-up at dinner, it was very clear that we were no longer wanted with either the men or the women.

  ‘Can’t you go and play, Daisy dear?’ asked Lady Hastings, waving her hand vaguely. ‘The grown-ups want to talk. Miss Alston, make them play.’

  ‘That’s quite all right, Mummy,’ said Daisy sweetly. ‘We can look after ourselves. We’ll play hide-and-seek.’

  ‘Oh, if you’re sure?’ Lady Hastings seemed glad to clear us from her mind. ‘But play quietly.’

  ‘I shall look in on them from time to time.’ Miss Alston stared at us sternly, her handbag held against her stomach like a shield. I wriggled a bit under her gaze. I knew that Daisy was Up To Something – and I felt, uncomfortably, as though Miss Alston might know it too. Her oddness came through to me stronger than ever.

  ‘Beanie, you count,’ said Daisy, once Lady Hastings and Miss Alston had retreat
ed into the drawing room – Miss Alston giving one more searching look back at us as she closed the door. ‘Now, you heard what Mummy said, we must be quiet – and that means staying upstairs, on the first and top floors. Don’t come back down to the ground floor, otherwise she’ll be fearfully cross. All right?’

  I knew at once that Daisy was getting Kitty and Beanie out of the way for whatever she had in mind. Beanie nodded obediently, looking excited, and Kitty, who had opened her mouth to argue, sighed and closed it again. I could tell that Kitty wished she could be sitting with the grown-ups, listening to gossip – but Beanie wanted to play, and so Kitty would not disappoint her. It really was awfully clever of Daisy – as usual.

  We all climbed the stairs to the first-floor landing, and then Beanie stood facing the stuffed owl on its pedestal, put her hands over her eyes and began to count in a very carrying whisper. Kitty sighed again, looked at Daisy and scampered off towards Lady Hastings’ room and the front of the house. Daisy seized my hand, winked and dragged me very loudly up the main stairs to the top floor, which creak and echo awfully.

  But when we reached the nursery landing, we carried on running, across the hallway and down the servants’ stairs again. The back stairs are not exactly a secret passageway, but all the same no one ever seems to think of using them apart from Daisy. They are not for us, they are for Mrs Doherty and Hetty and Chapman, and they are dark and steep and cold. We crept down very quietly, on our tiptoes, hardly breathing, with our hands over our mouths to stop ourselves giggling. It was lovely to be doing something secret with Daisy again.

  We came out next to Lady Hastings’ room and tiptoed past Beanie, who was still counting (Beanie needs all her concentration to count, so while she is doing it she is quite oblivious to the rest of the world – it was very clever of Daisy to have suggested her as the finder: Kitty might have noticed what we were up to, but Beanie, never). Then we crept down the main stairs into the soft light of the hall, with its ticking grandfather clock and worn old paintings on the faded red walls. We sneaked over to the closed dining-room door and stared breathlessly at each other. I could hear deep men’s voices through the wood.

  Daisy grinned at me. ‘Good work, Watson!’ she whispered. ‘The first part of our mission is complete. Now, on to the second. By my calculation we will have at least fifteen minutes before Beanie even begins to suspect that we’ve broken our word and aren’t hiding somewhere on the top two floors – fifteen minutes that I mean to make the best possible use of. It’s clear from what he said at dinner that Mr Curtis is highly suspicious. All that rot about the Ming being a fake . . . Don’t you agree?’

  Now, it is true that Daisy sometimes hares off after the wrong scent, too fast to be altogether decent – but in this case I found myself agreeing with her. I did notice, though, that she was not mentioning how worryingly interested Mr Curtis was in Lady Hastings.

  ‘He is being very odd,’ I said. ‘Which might not mean anything, but—’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Daisy, as if I had backed her up entirely. ‘If even you think so, then we must be on to something. I don’t like him, and I don’t like him being in my house. Mummy is sometimes not very bright about people, and in this case I don’t trust her judgement at all. As I said before, he must be watched – and this game gives us the perfect opportunity to do so. If someone finds us, we can just say, perfectly truthfully, that we’re hiding. And if we aren’t found, we may be able to observe Mr Curtis doing something compromising. He ought to be coming out of the dining room soon, after all. All right?’

  I looked at her. Daisy gets very protective about the things that are hers, and I thought that she had hit on it when she had said, I don’t like him, and I don’t like him being in my house. But it was still the most interesting potential case we had hit on for months – if this wasn’t worth investigating, nothing was. And after all, I told myself, whatever happened, this case would be safe. It could not possibly turn into a murder.

  ‘All right,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ said Daisy, ‘but I think he’s liable to steal something, don’t you, or trick Mummy into giving him something awfully valuable? Snooping around our lovely things and then making out they’re worth nothing. Well, Mummy might fall for that, but I won’t! Whatever he’s planning, we must assume that he’s going to do it this weekend, while he’s here for the party. All we need is enough evidence to take to Uncle Felix, before he can get away with it. Therefore I need you to get under that cupboard immediately. I’ll get under the table here, and we’ll watch and listen for all we’re worth.’

  I looked at the cupboard. The space underneath it looked fearfully small. ‘Daisy—’ I began. But of course, Daisy was already hiding, and naturally she had chosen the hiding place with more space. I had no choice but to squeeze under the cupboard.

  I found it very dark and furry with dust, and extremely close. I lay there miserably, the smell of the men’s cigars drifting out through the closed dining-room door, mixing with the dust and tickling its way up my nose.

  Every time I even moved, Daisy hissed at me like a goose, and by the time the door opened and ten shiny black shoes came trooping past my face, I was thoroughly cross. Sometimes being part of the Detective Society is not enjoyable at all.

  ‘Billiards?’ asked Lord Hastings in his big round voice.

  ‘Not for me,’ said Mr Curtis, his mirror-polished shoes pausing just in front of my nose. ‘I’ve got things to do.’

  ‘Not business?’ asked Uncle Felix, in his lightest, coldest tones. ‘I hope you won’t be telephoning at all hours . . . You’re at a party, you know. You must remember to enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Oh, you mustn’t worry about that.’ Mr Curtis oozed smugness. ‘I always remember to enjoy myself. And I promise you, I shall have no use for the telephone. Everything I need is here in Fallingford.’

  I twitched, and the cupboard creaked around me.

  ‘I don’t like your tone—’ Bertie began hotly, and then stopped, as though someone had put their hand on his arm.

  ‘Shh!’ I heard Stephen say. ‘Bertie, don’t.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Uncle Felix. ‘Nothing to get upset about. Well, Curtis, we shall leave you to it. Come on, George, Bertie, Stephen. Billiards.’

  They walked away, and I heard Lord Hastings say in what was supposed to be a whisper, ‘That man! If he wasn’t a guest in my house . . . How does Margaret know him?’

  Uncle Felix murmured something, and they were gone.

  Mr Curtis was left alone in the hall. His shoes paced to and fro across the faded hall carpet. I wiggled my head forward a bit so I could see Daisy, crouching under her table. She made a cross face at me that I knew meant Stay put, and so I drew my neck back in again, groaning quietly.

  Then the drawing-room door sighed open, and a pair of thin high heels came tapping across the stone floor and onto the carpet next to Mr Curtis’s shoes.

  ‘Denis,’ said Daisy’s mother quietly, like a breath out.

  ‘Margaret,’ said Mr Curtis, just as quietly. ‘Meet you. Nine fifteen. Library.’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Daisy’s mother, and then the library door itself opened, and out came Miss Alston’s blocky brown shoes.

  ‘Oh, what a surprise,’ she said, stopping. ‘I was looking for the girls, to make sure they really are playing hide-and-seek.’

  ‘They quite clearly aren’t here,’ said Lady Hastings in annoyance. ‘Really, can’t you keep them under control? Whatever do I pay you for?’

  ‘You are quite right,’ said Miss Alston blandly. ‘I do apologize.’ But although her mouth was saying the words, I could tell that this was not at all what she meant. She went striding off towards the billiard room – but again, I felt that she was doing quite the opposite to what she wanted to. Under all the properness, Miss Alston was just as curious about seeing Lady Hastings and Mr Curtis together as we were.

  But for now, the scene seemed to be over. Lady Hastings clicked back to th
e drawing room, and Mr Curtis muttered, ‘Whisky!’ and hurried back into the dining room.

  I couldn’t bear to stay squashed under that cupboard for another moment. I kicked and heaved my way out, bumping my head in the process, and then flopped forward onto the carpet, panting like a fish. Almost before I had time to blink, Daisy was next to me.

  ‘Did you hear?’ she hissed.

  ‘I don’t see how I could have missed it,’ I said, and spat out a ball of dust.

  ‘Exactly! Quick – into the library, before Alston comes back and sends us to bed! We must be ready for the rendezvous.’

  I paused. There was suddenly a little twinge in my stomach. Yes, I had heard everything that Daisy had – but I wondered if it had meant exactly the same thing to the two of us. Mr Curtis was up to no good . . . but I also knew that sometimes grown-ups went into quiet rooms together for very different reasons. What if this was one of those times? Was this a mystery the Detective Society ought to be investigating?

  ‘Daisy . . .’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Hazel,’ snapped Daisy. ‘Do you want to catch Mr Curtis being a criminal or not?’

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  10

  Across the hall we went, and into the library. As I opened the door, the warmth from the fire came up against my face like a blush. It was empty, and Daisy motioned towards the heavy curtain draped across the window alcove at the back. We crept in (hiding again, I thought sadly), and Daisy pulled the curtain to. Then we sat there, with our fronts warm and our backsides very cold, waiting to see what was going to happen. Daisy flicked the curtain back a little way so we could peep through, and bounced a bit with excitement, but I was nervous. I couldn’t stop worrying. What if I was right?

  We were not waiting long. The door opened and in came Mr Curtis, his face horribly smug and his hands jammed into his pockets. He looked cheerful, but all the same he started like anything when the door opened behind him.