Murder Most Historical: A Collection of Short Mysteries

by Ashley Gardner

  “Poor thing,” I said. “Do you think Copley somehow added the poison to the meal? To clear Sir Lionel out of the way so he might help himself to the goods?” I contemplated this a moment, rinsing plates under the taps. “Perhaps he only pretended to be too drunk to serve that night, so the food wouldn’t be connected with him.”

  Daniel shook his head. “I think Copley is more an opportunist than a schemer. Though he might have seen an opportunity to administer the poison and took it.”

  “I still don’t see how. Copley is limber and thin, but I can’t imagine him crouching in the dumbwaiter shaft with a bottle of poison.”

  Daniel gave me his warm laugh. “Nor can I. Ready yourself, and we’ll go.”

  James finished the washing up so I could change. I put on my second-best dress, the one I kept clean for visiting agencies or my acquaintances on my day out, or my occasional jaunt to the theatre. For church and visiting my daughter, I always wore my best dress.

  This gown was a modest dark brown, with black piping on cuffs, bodice, and neckline. I flattered myself that it went with my glossy brown hair and dark blue eyes. The hat that matched it—coffee-brown straw with a subdued collection of feathers and a black ribbon—set it off to perfection.

  Daniel gave me a glance of approval when I emerged, which warmed me. Ridiculous. I was behaving like a smitten girl.

  But then, he’d never seen me in anything but my gray work dress and apron. James grinned at me, told me I was lovely, and offered me his arm. Sweet boy.

  Mrs. Fuller lived on Wilton Crescent, near Belgrave Square. A fine address, and the mansion that went with it took my breath away. Daniel and I were let in by a side door, though James remained outside with the hired coach.

  The ceilings of the house above stairs were enormously high, the back and front parlors divided by pointed arches. Plants were everywhere—we had stepped into a tropical rainforest it seemed. Rubber trees, elephant’s ears, potted palms, and other exotic species I couldn’t identify filled the rooms. The furniture surrounding these plants was elegantly carved, heavy, and upholstered in velvet.

  The butler led us through the front and back parlors and into a bedchamber that looked out to the gardens in back of the house.

  This room was as elegant as the others, the ceiling crisscrossed with beams carved like those in an Indian mogul’s palace. Mosaics covered blank spaces in the ceiling, and outside in the garden, a fountain containing tiles with more mosaics burbled.

  Mrs. Fuller lay on a thick mattress in an enormous mahogany bedstead with curved sides. Mrs. Fuller was indeed stout, about twice my girth, and I am not a thin woman. Her face, however, was pretty in a girlish way, the hair under her cap brown without a touch of gray.

  I curtsied when the butler announced us, and Daniel made a polite bow. “I apologize for disturbing you, madam,” Daniel began. “The police inspector thought Mrs. Holloway might be of assistance, as he discussed with you.”

  “Yes, indeed.” Mrs. Fuller lifted a damp handkerchief from the bedcovers and wiped her red-rimmed eyes. “I am anxious to find out what happened. Forgive me, my dear, if I am not myself. It is still incredible to me that my dear husband is gone, and yet, here I am. You are the cook?”

  “Indeed.” I gave her another polite curtsy. “My condolences, ma’am. Yes, I cooked the meal, but I promise you, I never would have dreamed of tainting it in any way.”

  Mrs. Fuller dabbed her eyes again. “They told me you were innocent of the crime. I suppose you are suffering from this in your own way as well. Your reputation … you are an excellent cook, my dear. If it is any consolation, I so enjoyed the meal.” Her smile was weary, that of a woman trying to make sense of a bizarre circumstance.

  Daniel broke in, his voice quiet. “I’ve asked Mrs. Holloway about what she served and how she prepared it. It would help if you described the meal in your own words, Mrs. Fuller, and tell us if any dishes tasted odd.”

  Mrs. Fuller looked thoughtful. I pitied her, ill and abruptly widowed. She could have doctored the food herself to kill her rich husband, of course, but her husband dying did not mean she inherited all the money. That would go to her oldest son, if she had sons, or to nephews or other male kin if she did not. She’d receive only what was apportioned to her in the will or in the marriage agreement, though the heir could be generous and give her an allowance and place to live. However, the heir did not have to, not legally.

  One reason not to marry in haste was that a widowed woman might find herself destitute. Careful planning was best, as were contracts signed by solicitors, as I’d learned to my regret.

  “Let me see,” Mrs. Fuller began. She then listed all the dishes I had prepared, forgetting about the mushrooms at first, but she said, “oh, yes,” and came back to them. No, all tasted as they should, Mrs. Fuller thought, and she heaped more praise on my cooking.

  “The custard at the end was very nice,” she finished, sounding tired. “With the berries, all sweetened with sugar.”

  She had described what I did. Nothing added or missing. She and Sir Lionel had taken coffee, while her husband had been served tea, so if the poison had been in the coffee, she would have still have been ill but her husband alive.

  Daniel seemed neither disappointed nor enlightened at the end of this interview. He thanked Mrs. Fuller, who looked tired, and we began to take our leave.

  As her maid ushered us out of the bedchamber, a thought struck me. “A moment,” I said, turning back to Mrs. Fuller. “You said the custard and berries were sweet with sugar. I put a burnt sugar sauce on the custard, yes, but did not sprinkle more sugar on top. Is that what you meant?”

  Mrs. Fuller frowned. “I meant that there was sugar in a caster that came with the tarts on the tray. We all made use of it.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  Mrs. Fuller drooped against her pillows, the handkerchief coming up to her eyes again. The maid gave us a severe look, protective of her mistress, and Daniel led me firmly from the room.

  I tried to walk decorously out of the house, but I moved faster and faster until I was nearly running as we reached the carriage.

  “What the devil is it, Kat?” Daniel asked as he helped me in and climbed up beside me. “What did she say that’s got you agitated?”

  “The caster.” I beamed as James slammed the door. “There is your incongruity.”

  Daniel only peered at me. “Why?”

  “Because, my dear Daniel, I never sprinkle extra sugar on my custards, especially with the berries. Ruins the contrast—the custard is plenty sweet with the burnt sugar sauce, and the slight tartness of the berries sets it off perfectly. Extra sugar only drowns the flavor. I would never have sent up a caster full of it on a tray to ruin my dessert. I didn’t, in fact. That means the poison must have been in the sugar.”

  Daniel’s eyes lit, a wonderful sight in a handsome man. “I see. The murk begins to clear.”

  “Does it?” I deflated a bit. “Now all we need to know is where the caster came from, who put the poison into it, and how it got on the table that night.”

  Daniel gave me a wise nod. “I’m sure you’ll discover that soon enough.”

  “Don’t tease. I am not a policeman, Mr. McAdam.”

  “I know, but perhaps you ought to be.” His amusement evaporated. “I must ask the inspector how he and his men missed a container full of poison when they searched the house.”

  He had a point. “The poisoner obviously took it away before the police arrived,” I said.

  “Oh, yes, of course. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  The wretch. My gaze dropped to his smiling mouth, and the memory of his brief kiss stole over me. If Daniel noticed my sudden flush, he said nothing, and we arrived at Sir Lionel’s house again.

  Nothing for it, but we began to search the place, top to bottom, for the sugar caster. I had to first explain to James what one was.

  “A small carved silver jug-like shape, with a top,” I said. “Like a salt shaker, but wid
er and fatter.”

  James nodded, understanding, but try as we might, we could not find it. We searched through the dining room, opening all the doors in the sideboard and the breakfront, then I led them downstairs to the butler’s pantry.

  The walls were lined with shelves that housed much of Sir Lionel’s collection of silver, some of it handed down for generations through the Leigh-Bradbury family. Silver kept its value where coins, stocks, banknotes, and even paintings might become worthless. Heavy silver could at least be sold for its metal content if nothing else. Sir Lionel’s plate had the hallmark of a silversmith from two centuries ago and was probably worth a fortune.

  I discovered that at least a third of this valuable silver was missing.

  “Copley,” I said, hands on hips.

  Daniel, next to me, agreed. “Meanwhile—no sugar caster?”

  “If it’s in this house, it wasn’t put back into its usual place. Did Copley rush out of here with it in his bag of stolen silver?”

  “Very possibly,” Daniel said. “I will question the inspector who arrested him.”

  I became lost in thought. How likely was it that the poisoner had tamely returned the caster to the butler’s pantry, ready for Copley to steal it? Unless Copley had poisoned Sir Lionel for the express purpose of making off with the silver. Why, then, had Copley waited until Sir Lionel had been found? Why not put the things into a bag and be far away when I’d stumbled across the body? The answer was that Copley most likely hadn’t known that Sir Lionel would be killed. He was an opportunist, as Daniel said.

  Daniel’s shoulder next to mine was warm. I did not know what to make of him. Would I ever know who he truly was?

  Well, I would not let him kiss me again and then disappear, leaving me in the dark. I was a grown woman, no longer the young fool I was to let a handsome man turn my head.

  I voiced the thought that we should look for the caster in unusual places, and we went back to the dining room. After a long search, I spotted the sugar caster tucked into a pot containing a rubber tree plant.

  The plant and its large pot stood just outside the dining room door, a nuisance I’d thought it, with its fat leaves slapping me across the back if I didn’t enter the doorway straight on. As I impatiently pushed the leaves aside, I spied a glint of silver among the black earth.

  I called to Daniel, and put a hand in to fish it out. He forestalled me, shook out a handkerchief, and carefully lifted it.

  He carried the caster into the dining room, both of us breathless, as though the thing would explode. James fetched a napkin from the sideboard, and Daniel set the caster into the middle of it. With the handkerchief, he delicately unscrewed the top, then dumped the contents of the caster onto another napkin.

  It looked like sugar—fine white sugar used to put a final taste on pastries, berries, cakes.

  James put out a finger to touch the crystals, but Daniel snapped, “No!”

  James curled his finger back, unoffended. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Who knows?” Daniel said. “Arsenic, perhaps? Or some other foul chemical. I’m not a scientist or doctor.”

  “Or chemist,” I said. “They sell poisons.”

  “True.” Daniel wrapped the caster’s contents in one napkin, the caster in the other, and put them all into the bag he carried.

  “What will you do with those?” I asked.

  “Take them to a chemist I know. Very clever, Mrs. Holloway.”

  “Common sense, I would have thought.”

  The teasing glint entered Daniel’s eyes again. “Well, I have a distinct lack of common sense when I’m near you, Kat.”

  James rolled his eyes, and I frowned at Daniel—I refused to let him beguile me. “Be off with you, Mr. McAdam. I must put my things in order and find a place to stay. Another night in this house would not be good for my health, I think.”

  “I agree.” Daniel gave me an unreadable look. “Where will you go?”

  I had no idea. “I suppose I’ll look for a boardinghouse that will take a cook whose master died after eating one of her meals. I’m certain I’ll be welcomed with open arms.”

  Daniel didn’t smile. “Go nowhere without sending me word, agreed?”

  “Send word to where?” I looked him straight in the eye. “Your address, sir?”

  Daniel returned my look, unblinking. “Leave a note here. I’ll find it.”

  We continued our duel with gazes until finally Daniel gave me the ghost of a smile and turned away.

  When James started to follow Daniel downstairs, I stopped him. “Where does he live, James?” I asked in a low voice.

  James stuck his hands in his pockets. “Tell ya the truth, missus, I don’t know. He finds me. He always seems to know where I am.”

  “And your mum?”

  James shrugged, hands still in his pockets. “Never knew her. I was raised by a lady who chars for houses until he found me. But I’ve never stayed with him. I board with some people—respectable. He pays for it.”

  I was more mystified than ever. James behaved as though this were the normal course of things, though I saw a tiny flicker of hurt in his eyes that his father didn’t want him rooming with him for whatever his reasons.

  Daniel had banged out the front door. James rushed to catch up with him, and I closed and bolted the door behind them.

  The house became eerier once they’d gone. I hastened down to my rooms, packed my things in my box, then left the box and went out again in hat and coat. I dutifully left a note for Daniel about where I was going on the kitchen table, which I’d cleaned and scrubbed after this morning’s meal.

  The first person I looked up was Mrs. Watkins, the housekeeper. She might have heard of a house looking for a cook, or might know where I could rest my head tonight.

  Mrs. Watkins’s sister lived in Pimlico. I found out exactly where by letting myself into the housekeeper’s room and going through her small writing desk. Mrs. Watkins would have left all the paperwork and keys for the house for the next housekeeper, even if she’d gone in haste. I discovered everything neatly organized, as I’d thought I would.

  I took an omnibus to Pimlico and found the house, a respectable address in an area of middle-class Londoners. Mrs. Watkins’s sister, it turned out, ran a boardinghouse herself—for genteel, unmarried women, and Mrs. Watkins had just taken the last room.

  “Mrs. Holloway!” Mrs. Watkins exclaimed in surprise when she entered the parlor to find me there. I’d asked the maid to send up word that Mrs. Watkins had a visitor, but I had not given my name.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Watkins,” I said.

  “I heard ... I thought ...” She opened and closed her mouth, at a loss for words.

  “Yes, I was taken before a magistrate, but then released.” I made a dismissive gesture, as though I survived ordeals like being locked in Newgate every day.

  Mrs. Watkins remained standing with hands clenched as she adjusted to this turn of events. “Well, I have to say I never thought you could have done such a thing. You have a temper on you, Mrs. Holloway, but plunging a knife into a man takes a cruelty I don’t think you possess.”

  “The knife didn’t kill him,” I said. “He was poisoned. As were the others at the table. Now then, Mrs. Watkins, why did you set a sugar caster on the table when I didn’t send it up with the meal?”

  Mrs. Watkins gave me a perplexed frown. “What sugar caster?”

  “The one Sir Lionel and his guests used to liberally sprinkle sugar all over my tart. Which they should not have—the flavor was just fine. If they’d known anything about food, those two men would be alive today.”

  Mrs. Watkins continued to blink at me. “You are making no sense. There was no sugar caster on the table.”

  “Then why did Mrs. Fuller say there was?”

  “Gracious, I have no idea.”

  We eyed each other, two respectable-looking women standing in the middle of a carpet in a sitting room, the carved furniture and draped tables hemming us i
n. A lamp, already lit against gathering gloom, hissed as its wick drew up more kerosene.

  The two of us were dressed similarly, our bodices tightly buttoned to our chins. I wore a jacket of dark gray wool, while Mrs. Watkins was dressed in a simple ensemble for an evening indoors. She was tall and bony, I plump and shorter of stature.

  No one could have mistaken us for anything but two ladies who’d had to grub for our living, except that we had a bit more responsibility and wisdom, and had left behind the lower levels of the serving class.

  And yet, was that all we were—respectable women in the upper echelon of the servant class? Who really knew anything about us? I had a daughter but no sign of a husband. Mrs. Watkins—what had she been in life? Behind the layers we showed the world, what secrets did we keep?

  “Are you certain there was no sugar caster?” I asked after a silence.

  “Positive.”

  There it was. Either Mrs. Watkins lied, or Mrs. Fuller did. Was the liar the poisoner? Or did each of them lie for some reason I could not comprehend?

  I needed an independent party to tip the balance. John the footman, Sally, or even Copley. John certainly would have seen what had happened at the table that night. He wasn’t the brightest of lads, but he was worth speaking to—unless he’d done the poisoning, of course. And then there was Sally. She’d discovered Sir Lionel. Her fright and shock had seemed real enough, but I had been too stunned myself to pay much attention.

  I thanked Mrs. Watkins, wished her the best, and left the house, pondering over what she’d told me. If she lied about not placing or seeing the caster on the table, why had she? I had no idea. What a muddle.

  John proved to be elusive. According to Mrs. Watkins’s notes, which I read back at Sir Lionel’s house, he’d been a cousin of Sir Lionel’s coachman, but that coachman had been dismissed before I’d been employed there. The coachman now drove for a banker with a house in Dorset. John had no other relation, it seemed, and I had no idea how to go about looking for him. John might even now be in Dorset in search of a new position. Sally had a family in Southwark, the notes said, and I wondered if she’d retreated there.