A Death by Any Other Name

by Tessa Arlen

  “I find it very strange that there might be someone sitting at the dining table who does not flinch from dropping poison into good, honest food, m’lady,” Mrs. Jackson said to her ladyship as they joined the throng who swept into the dining room in a great herd, and sat down wherever they found themselves—leaving Mrs. Jackson and Clementine standing uncertainly at the top of the table.

  If this is the way we go about conducting ourselves when war threatens, then civilized manners will certainly take a beating if we actually go to war. Momentarily stunned by the company’s complete disregard for the order of precedence, Clementine remembered that she was to quiz Mr. Urquhart on Mr. Bartholomew’s digestive powders and whipped down the length of the table as if she were competing in a game of musical chairs, and plonked herself down between Mrs. Haldane and Mr. Urquhart. She noticed Mr. Haldane was seated at the far end of the table, deep in conversation with Mr. Wickham and cheerfully ignoring his wife’s other guests, which caused Clementine a silent harrumph about the mannerless people she found herself among. Then she became aware of a soft Edinburgh accent complaining gently in her ear and turned her attention to the elderly man on her right.

  “I simply cannot abide listening to another evening of aggressive bluster from our host,” Mr. Urquhart said, sipping a glass of water. “It is all quite unsettling. I do not imagine for one moment that I will be able to eat anything at all.” He flapped his hand at the torchon of foie gras being offered by the footman and shook his head. “No, Charles, I cannot possibly eat that fatty liver, please take it away. Just bring me a nice floury potato, that is all I can possibly manage.”

  “I am not sure I have an appetite for my dinner either.” Clementine exhibited a delicate little shiver of distaste. “I feel quite … put off.”

  “Oh dear me, Leddy Montfort, there is no need to suffer.” He took a little pillbox from his pocket and placed it next to her plate. “Of all the nostrums that I have come across to keep my poor frail body tottering forward, I count on this one more than any other. It never lets me down; a simple compound of dandelion, artichoke, and fennel. Place it under your tongue and let it dissolve; there is only the merest bitterness to its flavor, and I can assure you, your appetite will return immediately. Of course it is too late for me to rely on such a simple remedy. My system has been in an uproar ever since Dorothy was attacked in the garden last night.” He closed his eyes and lifted a hand to his brow at the horror of it.

  Clementine reached for the enameled pillbox and as she did so happened to catch the eye of her housekeeper sitting across the table. To her consternation, Mrs. Jackson stared intently at her and gave the briefest but the most emphatic shake of her head.

  Clementine withdrew her hand as if there had been a scorpion sitting on the white damask tablecloth. What am I thinking? All this talk of war had made her heedless. Take whatever is in that pretty enamel box and I might be thrashing in agony on the dining-room floor in minutes, with this gentle old man administering all sorts of terrifying poisons in the guise of helping to “balance my delicate system.” She took a steadying sip of wine.

  Her mind settled and she decided that she might take the pill, palm it, and then drop it under the table. She smiled at her housekeeper and nodded to reassure that she understood her concern and opened the lid of the pillbox.

  Inside were several small tablets the color of mud. She tipped one out into her palm and, taking her glass of water in her right hand, pretended to swallow the tablet and took a sip of water. She dropped her left hand onto her lap and carefully tipped her palm to empty the tablet into her napkin. “Thank you, Mr. Urquhart, how kind of you.”

  “Do not mention it, my dear Leddy Montfort, you will feel as right as ninepence momentarily.”

  The footman served Mr. Urquhart his potato and he carefully speared a morsel with his fork in evident distaste.

  “Have you heard if the seeds of the vanilla pod are efficacious for digestion?” Clementine’s tone was casual, disinterested even; just a polite inquiry. But she was alert for a reaction.

  “Vanilla?” He looked up at her as if she were joking with him. “Hmm, vanilla you say; whoever told you that, I wonder? It was used in ancient times to restore a more stable mood in hysterical women.” His laugh was indulgent. “But not as a digestive aid, to my scant knowledge. It is primarily used as a pleasant flavor in cakes and biscuits. But I promise you that if you take the appropriate herbal remedies before you eat any meal, you will extend your life well into your nineties. Look at me, still going strong at seventy-five, and my doctor gave up on me years ago and said I would never make old bones.” His kindly eyes were so benign behind his spectacles that Clementine didn’t for one moment think she might be sitting next to a poisoner.

  “Do you make up your own prescriptions?” she asked.

  “Good heavens no, but Fisk & Able have been making wonderful compounds to aid digestion for decades now, and they are most efficacious. Poor Rupert was always an excessive overeater and suffered tremendously from indigestion as he went into his middle years, but not since I put him onto the powders from Fisk & Able.”

  Powders from Fisk & Able! Mr. Urquhart had recommended that Mr. Bartholomew take powders from Fisk & Able! She felt a momentary gallop of excitement and laid down her fork so that he could not see her hand trembling in excitement.

  “Powders?” Clementine’s heart rate had picked up considerably. “Why not tablets?”

  Mr. Urquhart laughed. “Because he was quite unable to take any medicine in tablet form, no matter how many glasses of water he chased it down with, he took herbal powders dissolved in warm water. Mr. Able made them especially for him.”

  “I should get something similar for Lord Montfort.” She did not feel the slightest remorse at assigning chronic indigestion to her husband, who never took medicine of any kind.

  “Slippery elm, ginger, and a little peppermint is what I recommended for Rupert; simple enough to soothe the system of the heartiest overindulger.” He smiled at her and took another tiny bite of potato. “And how is your appetite now, Leddy Montfort?”

  “Quite restored,” Clementine said as she turned to take a slice of succulent lamb offered by the butler, and wondered if the brown tablet on her lap contained one of the poisons on the list they had found in the plant toxicology and might, as Mr. Stafford had suggested, wipe out an entire village.

  * * *

  After dinner Mrs. Haldane and her guests left the dining room to Mr. Haldane and settled themselves in the Salon Vert for the rest of the evening.

  “Would you play for us, dear Maud?” asked Finley, and the good-natured Mrs. Haldane took her seat at the pianoforte and beckoned Mrs. Wickham to her side to sing. Clementine noticed that Mrs. Wickham moved a little less stiffly. She obediently rose and made her way to the piano and Mr. Evans took up his position in waiting by the salon door. She seems a good deal more recovered; the resilience of the young! Clementine had been conscious of the butler all evening, as he had waited on them at dinner, and twice she had looked to see if she could detect any perceivable interaction between Mrs. Wickham and Mr. Evans. But the butler was quite punctilious in his duties and Mrs. Wickham ate her food in docile silence, every so often turning to Mr. Haldane on her left to be lectured on munitions.

  Clementine had never particularly enjoyed listening to young women sing; amateur singers rarely had a voice worth listening to, being often off-key, nasal in their intonation, or worst of all shrill and shrieking. But as Mrs. Haldane played the simple melodies of old English folk songs, she was quite pleased to listen to Mrs. Wickham. The young woman had a naturally pleasant voice and the sentimental love songs were a delightful change from the Schubert’s lieder she so often had to endure from the daughters of her friends. The butler evidently enjoyed them too, for the expression on his face softened a little and she noticed that his left foot gently tapped in time to the songs.

  Mrs. Lovell was sitting on the sofa next to Mrs. Bartholomew, reading a list
of names that she had come up with for Mr. Bartholomew’s unnamed tea rose. His wife’s face bore all the hallmarks of a woman who had been pushed well beyond her limits by the Hyde Rose Society over the naming of his white rose. Every so often she would nod politely, but her large, dark eyes were somber and she was clearly off in a world of her own.

  Mr. Wickham, seated in a corner, was reading through the evening newspapers, each sporting bold headlines declaring the imminent invasion by the German army assembling along the Belgium border. GERMANY DECLARES WAR ON RUSSIA AND PREPARES TO INVADE FRANCE, blared one headline. THE SWORD IS FORCED INTO OUR HAND, says the Kaiser, and DECLARES WAR ON RUSSIA AND FRANCE, proclaimed another. Every so often, to everyone’s annoyance, but most of all his wife’s, Mr. Wickham would read out a report, cutting across her pretty voice with his petulant exclamations: “… crowds are beginning to gather outside Buckingham Palace—fat lot of good that will do them, why can’t people stay quietly in their homes?” he announced with distaste. “And it says here that despite being on the brink of war, holidaymakers celebrated Bank Holiday Monday in all the south-coast towns … extraordinary behavior. I think perhaps we should say our goodbyes to you tomorrow, Maud; thank goodness we are not planning on going anywhere by train…” With every pronouncement, Mrs. Bartholomew exhibited more anxiety about her return to France.

  “Je dois partir demain,” she said, and Clementine noticed that her hands were holding on to each other so tightly that her knuckles were quite white.

  “Perhaps you should make a telephone call to the stationmaster at Waterloo and reserve a place on the boat-train, Mrs. Bartholomew,” she suggested, and the lady nodded her head in agreement.

  As Mrs. Wickham’s last song, “Early One Morning,” came to an end, she turned from the piano and groped for her handkerchief, and Maud said in her gentle voice, “Now now, Dorothy, it is just a song, dear.”

  “It is such a sad one though; deception is the cruelest of betrayals,” Mrs. Wickham said and subsided on the sofa next to Finley to help him search through his embroidery silks for violet blue.

  Clementine got to her feet. “I have been admiring your orchids, Mrs. Haldane, you must have been collecting for years.” She stopped briefly in the middle of the room by Mrs. Haldane, who, having left the piano, was now seated before her painted composition of Mr. Bartholomew’s white rose, which was standing before her on a little table, its petals glowing a pure pearl white against a swathe of blue silk. Mrs. Haldane smiled her tired smile.

  “Thank you, Lady Montfort, my orchids are the work of the past fifteen years. But it is my head gardener who is responsible for their vigorous health.”

  Seeking an excuse to explore the room where her housekeeper had found the plant toxicology and the list, Clementine said she would take Mrs. Jackson for a turn or two around the conservatory to show her the orchids. The two of them slowly walked the considerable length of the conservatory’s humid interior, stopping to admire different varieties of palm and enjoying the fragile beauty of the orchids grouped throughout.

  “What a collection,” Clementine said rather enviously. “Look at that glorious thing; it looks as if it has a cat’s face—do you see, Jackson, like little whiskers? I expect this is an incredibly rare collection.”

  “Isn’t this a castor plant?” Mrs. Jackson stopped in front of a large, heavy-leafed specimen in a green glazed pot towering up into the glass ceiling.

  “Castor bean … Wait a moment, what does our toxicology have to say? Perhaps it will help us identify it.” Mrs. Jackson pulled the slim leather-bound volume from her pocket, and Clementine consulted its index and turned to the right page. “Ah yes … ‘Latin name Ricinus communis: leaves and stems are a dark reddish purple or bronze.’ And look, do you see the fruit in the illustration?” She tilted the book for Mrs. Jackson to see the glossy color plate of Ricinus communis, with a detailed inset illustration of the flowers and their fruit. They both looked up at the small tree.

  “This one isn’t flowering, but it describes the fruit as ‘spiny, greenish (to reddish purple) containing large, oval, shiny, beanlike, highly poisonous seeds with variable brownish mottling.’” Around the base of the tree some round conkerlike pods had dried and Mrs. Jackson bent down and picked one up. “Ah yes, m’lady, here are the beans.” She split the dry pod and emptied the beans out into her mistress’s hand.

  “Aren’t they pretty, Jackson? Yes, this is definitely a castor-bean plant.” She turned to her housekeeper, her face lit with the pleasure she evidently felt that they had made a discovery. “Oh my dear Leddy Montfort and Edith, please do not play with the seeds, however pretty they are.” Mr. Urquhart was regarding them from the doorway of the salon. His round, plum-velvet pillbox hat had slipped a little to one side, giving him a monkeylike appearance, and his eyes glistened with interest behind his spectacles. My goodness, thought Clementine, all he needs is a barrel organ.

  “Such a lovely specimen of the castor-bean plant,” Clementine exclaimed, dropping her hand with the book closed to her side.

  “And such deadly fruit,” twinkled Mr. Urquhart. “One of those beans in your hand could do quite serious damage.”

  “Good heavens,” cried Clementine and hastily dropped the beans onto the floor, making the old man laugh and reassure her that they must be dried and ground to powder before they were truly harmful. “Do you see how much he knows, Jackson?” Clementine whispered under her breath.

  “But it is not as dangerous as the deadly Cicuta maculata, which causes death within fifteen minutes. Oh, no need to worry, there is none in this pretty conservatory and the plant thrives only in North America.”

  “How much you know, Mr. Urquhart.” Clementine’s laugh was more than just a little shaky.

  “But if we are looking for the queen of poison, in my opinion this beautiful white Nerium reigns supreme.” He walked over to the far corner of the conservatory where there was a superb specimen, standing easily twelve to fourteen feet, with slender, elongated silvery-green leaves and clusters of pristine white flowers. “The oleander, a delicious plant with that soft powdery aroma of mmm…” He wrinkled his nose and inhaled the fragrance from a cluster of white flowers closest to him.

  “Vanilla,” whispered Mrs. Jackson almost reverently as she bent her head to a panicle of flowers and inhaled. “How … how … lovely!”

  “But do not touch it, my dear Edith. Not even a petal or a leaf. Every part of this lovely shrub is poisonous—deadly poisonous. And if you were to break off a branch, the sap might irritate your skin quite unpleasantly. And please refrain from inhaling its scent too deeply, even that is sometimes an irritant. I am afraid it is true that many beautiful trees and flowers from other parts of the world are most toxic.”

  “Yes,” said Clementine, gathering her wits. “But aren’t both belladonna and the lovely aconite poisonous too, and both of them grow in our gardens and country hedgerows.”

  “Just as you say, Leddy Montfort. Atropa belladonna, or deadly nightshade as it is commonly known—‘beautiful leddy’ of course is the translation of ‘belladonna’—is quite deadly. The juice of the berry was used by leddies a hundred years ago. A little drop was placed in the eye to dilate the pupils, an effect considered to be both attractive and seductive.”

  “Oh really? I had no idea, how fascinating.” Clementine marveled at the extent of his knowledge, feeling as she did so quite unnerved. If only he would come out from under the shade of the oleander, as the half-light made him look quite menacing.

  “Oh yes, belladonna has many uses, the poison was used in ancient times on the tips of arrows. And then, conversely, it was used in medicine to cure stomach ulcers, a fascinating plant indeed and extremely poisonous. Most plant toxins have both an efficacious and a dangerous side to them, Leddy Montfort. Digitalis is a perfect example. The delightful foxglove flowering on the edges of our woodland can be used to treat a weak-heart condition, as well as to stop the heart completely, depending on the amount that is ad
ministered and of course for what reason.”

  Standing in the shadow of the towering trees and shrubs, there was something almost malevolent about the round-shouldered old man, frail though he appeared to be. His cashmere shawl had slipped off his shoulders and the embroidery on his buff waistcoat looked like an illustration of the very plants he was talking about: embroidered vines twined around clusters of dark red berries, and star-shaped flowers with yellow centers drooped their delicate pale-blue heads. The electric light hanging overhead in the roof of the conservatory shone down on him through the branches of the oleander shrub and caught the polished lenses of his spectacles. They gleamed like mirrors, making him look like a large insect standing under the tree.

  “So much edifying folklore surrounds the lovely belladonna and aconite,” the old man continued, every word precise and clear. “In the past, witches were believed to use a mixture of belladonna, opium poppy, aconite, and hemlock in an ointment, which they applied to help them fly to gatherings with other witches. I often wondered if they physically flew, or merely joined with their sisters in a flight of the mind. Some of these wonderful old plants can produce vivid hallucinations, d’ye understand? But perhaps we are far more enchanted with the image of these outcast women, astride their brooms—or maybe seated on the backs of toads, flitting through the night sky.”

  Clementine’s laugh was forced and she felt a tremendous desire to fly away herself, as far as she could get from this strange little man with his shining insectlike spectacles and his sinister knowledge of poisonous plants. “I think we should go and help Mrs. Lovell and Mrs. Bartholomew choose names for Mr. Bartholomew’s rose,” she said to stop this unnerving conversation. “Are you feeling creative, Mr. Urquhart? I think Mrs. Bartholomew is anxious to name her husband’s rose before she returns to France.”