A Pinch of Poison

by Alyssa Maxwell

  Phoebe hurried over to the window. What she saw forced a gasp from her lips. “The handyman is attacking Mr. Amstead. Quickly, we must help him.”

  With more speed than Phoebe would have given her credit for, Grams intercepted her before she reached the main hall. “You can’t go out there. You might be hurt.”

  “Then who will help the vicar? There is no one here but the staff and us.” With that, Phoebe pushed past Grams and in another moment reached the front steps. “Mr. Ivers! Elliot! Release the vicar at once. At once, I tell you!”

  But Elliot seemed not to hear her. He gripped the vicar’s wrist in one hand, and with his other hand swung a long-handled garden spade in a wide arc. The metal end connected with Mr. Amstead’s head with a resounding gong, and a shove sent the poor man tumbling over backward. Elliot stood over him then, holding the spade high in the air. Would he swing again?

  Grams cried out Phoebe’s name as she ran down to the driveway, only vaguely aware of the voices of the other ladies gathered on the steps. Grams shouted a “No!”, but Phoebe reached Elliot and gripped his raised arm in both hands.

  “Elliot, you must stop this. You’ve hurt the vicar.”

  He struggled against her while the spade swung in the air over her head. A sweep of black streaked past the edge of her vision, and she heard Grams’s voice. “You will cease this unruly behavior this instant, young man. Now, hand me that garden tool.”

  Elliot didn’t calmly hand over the spade, but his momentary distraction provided Phoebe an instant or two to realize what needed to be done. “Elliot, Miss Huntford would be frightfully displeased with you right now. Please, give me the spade. That would make Miss Huntford very happy.”

  “Miss Huntford?” Elliot glanced around as if Eva might appear from behind one of the nearby shade trees.

  “Yes, I should very much like to tell her how cooperative you’ve been today, as you were when you helped us load the packages onto the donation truck.”

  “I helped.”

  “Yes, you did. Now . . .” She trailed off as she applied pressure to his arm, gently coaxing it downward until she could remove the spade from his fist. The fight had drained from his limbs and his fingers opened easily. “There now, that’s better.”

  On the ground, Mr. Amstead groaned and reached up to rub the crown of his head. Phoebe realized it was the first sound he uttered since he’d fallen. He must have passed out. She turned to address the ladies huddled together on the steps. “Run and get Nurse Delacy. And call Dr. Reynolds.” A woman, one of the staff judging by her sensible day dress, hurried back inside.

  Grams knelt on the ground beside the vicar and fanned him with a gloved hand. “Mr. Amstead? Ward, can you hear me? Are you sensible?” She peered up at Phoebe. “I don’t see any blood.”

  Miss Sedgewick came running down the steps and sank onto the drive at the vicar’s other side. Phoebe turned her attention back to Elliot, standing docilely with his head bowed. Whatever had prompted the attack seemed to have spent itself, and she felt quite safe with him now. Even at the height of his aggression, she had not thought to be afraid he might turn his violence on her.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked him gently. His answer took her aback.

  “Fire.”

  Mystified, she shook her head. “There is no fire here.” But then she remembered. “Mr. Amstead came out to smoke his pipe.” Quickly, she surveyed the ground. At first she saw no trace of the piece, but upon further examination, she found it lodged in the box hedge beneath one of the windows. Not far from it lay an open box of matches, most of them scattered over the grass.

  “You saw the flame the vicar used to light his pipe,” she said, and he nodded.

  “Flames . . . took everything away. Took him.” He slammed his eyes tight and shuddered.

  A cold draught settled over Phoebe’s heart. “Who, Elliot?” she whispered. “Did someone die in the flames?”

  He gave a stubborn shake of his head. No.

  She didn’t believe him, and guessed his silent denial conveyed a deep-seated fear rather than the truth. Gripped by a certainty that something terrible had once happened to him—perhaps the very thing that had left him so childlike—she drew breath to prod again. Just then a vehicle turned from the main road onto the drive.

  Miles Brannock opened his door before he’d quite brought the motorcar to a stop, and in another instant he was out and striding toward her. His face was grim, his features stony. Apprehension spread through Phoebe and she looked to see if Elliot exhibited any signs of fear or an intent to run away. But he only watched the constable with a blank expression.

  “What happened? I was told on the telephone that he”—Constable Brannock gestured with his chin at Elliot—“went on a rampage and attacked Mr. Amstead.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it a rampage—” She stopped. In fact, that was exactly what Elliot’s attack had been. He’d flown into a rage, very nearly uncontrollable. And Phoebe wondered, if Elliot and Eva hadn’t forged a bond, what might have happened today? How would she have stopped the young man from further injuring or even killing the vicar?

  “Did he hurt anyone else?”

  At the constable’s question she shook her head. “No, all his ire seemed directed at Mr. Amstead. As soon as I mentioned Eva—Miss Huntford—he calmed down.”

  Grams and Miss Sedgewick helped the vicar to sit up. Constable Brannock addressed him. “Sir, do you know why you were attacked? Can you tell me what happened immediately before it happened?”

  “I don’t know . . . I came out to smoke my pipe. We were having a meeting, you see, and Miss Sedgewick was called away to the telephone.” He ran his fingers through his hair and then glanced at them, as if checking for blood. “I came outside and struck a match, and as soon as I held it to my pipe, this young fellow came barreling out from I know not where. He knocked the matches and pipe from my hands, and then . . . well, then he hit me . . . I think. Everything went black, and I woke up on the ground. Head hurts like the dickens.”

  “You’re going to be all right, Mr. Amstead.” Grams turned to Miss Sedgewick. “We need to bring him inside. Can you support him while we help him stand?”

  Nurse Delacy scurried out of the building and down the steps. “I’ll take this side, Lady Wroxly,” she said, and lifted the vicar’s arm around her shoulders. Together, she and Miss Sedgewick walked him inside.

  Two more motorcars came puttering up the drive, raising clouds of dust. Grams shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand. “Here is our chief inspector.”

  “Yes, and Dr. Reynolds.” A jangling drew Phoebe’s attention back to the constable as he clamped a pair of handcuffs on Elliot’s wrists. Elliot grimaced, but said nothing. “What are you doing?”

  “Arresting him for assault, my lady.” The constable took hold of Elliot’s arm.

  “But you can’t. He’s like a child. He didn’t mean to harm Mr. Amstead.”

  “Is that our perpetrator?” the chief inspector’s voice boomed out. He started toward them with a lumbering stride. He looked Elliot up and down as if sizing up a nag to be put out to pasture. “Well, Brannock, take him in.”

  “I’m sorry, my lady. I have no choice.” The constable nudged Elliot to begin walking.

  * * *

  Eva had just finished readying Lady Julia for her day when Lady Phoebe telephoned to tell her what happened at the school, and to let her know the constable required her assistance. Dismay gripped her as she settled her younger charges in the Petite Salon with a passage of Le Bossu de Notre-Dame to translate. Lady Phoebe was due home within the half hour and would continue the girls’ French lesson then.

  Miles Brannock’s motorcar awaited Eva just outside the service entrance gates. When he saw her, he quickly jumped out and hurried around to open her door for her. “Thank you for agreeing to come.”

  He maneuvered the car down the drive and onto the village road.

  “I’ll do anything I can to help Elliot. Sur
ely there must be a misunderstanding.”

  He shook his head. A rabbit darted across the road and he braked to avoid it. “Lady Phoebe intervened. Elliot attacked the man with a garden spade.”

  “This doesn’t sound at all like Elliot. He’s always been completely docile and accommodating.”

  “For you.”

  “Well, yes. That is my experience of him.” She frowned at the windscreen. The sunny morning dimmed, and the trees suddenly appeared gaunt and cheerless despite their spring buds. “I don’t suppose he said anything in his defense.”

  “Nothing. That’s why I—that is, we—need you. Lady Phoebe said it was when she mentioned your name to Elliot that he stopped his assault and gave up the spade.”

  “Was the vicar terribly hurt?”

  “It doesn’t appear so, though he might be suffering from a concussion. Dr. Reynolds saw him and he’s been taken to hospital in Cheltenham.”

  “My word. Poor Mr. Amstead. Poor Elliot.” A thought had her half turning in her seat to better regard the constable. “Could the vicar have said something to provoke Elliot? Even without meaning to? People can sometimes say the most awful things to servants with never a thought to how hurtful they’re being. They don’t always . . . well, understand that servants have the same sensibilities as everyone else.”

  Chagrined at having said too much, she looked away. The truth was, some aristocrats didn’t consider servants to be quite human, and Eva had more than once suffered the indignity of being talked about as if she didn’t exist. Never from the Renshaws, but from guests, or at the other great houses where she had traveled with her mistresses. It was part of her job to endure it, part of her life, something she had long ago accepted. She didn’t want or need anyone’s sympathies, and she certainly didn’t wish to see anything approaching pity in Constable Brannock’s eyes.

  He didn’t so much as look over at her, but one hand left the steering wheel to lightly graze her sleeve. “Yes.”

  That was all, except for another glimpse of that watch of his. As if he caught the downward line of her gaze, he gave a flick of his wrist that brought his sleeve down, and resumed his hold on the wheel.

  Why did he wear it, if he didn’t wish it to be seen?

  They arrived at Little Barlow’s tiny police station, no more than a storefront with a holding room in back. Chief Inspector Perkins used Little Barlow as his headquarters because he lived here, but he served several other villages in the district as well, each with their own constable, and reported to the main constabulary in Gloucester.

  Constable Brannock—she still stumbled over thinking of him as Miles, much less addressing him as such—led her through the front office and into a cramped hall that separated the office from the holding cell. Here she confronted a formidable wooden door with a small barred window set just above her eye level. She rose up on tiptoe and glimpsed a crown of nut-brown, disheveled hair. She needed no other distinguishing traits to recognize Elliot.

  “May I go in and speak to him? I can’t see persuading him to talk through a door.”

  In answer, the constable inserted a key into the lock. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”

  With his hands draping his knees, Elliot hunched at the edge of an inhospitable-looking bunk. The room contained little else. A narrow barred window placed high up admitted enough light to see by. She avoided looking at a battered metal chamber pot in the corner.

  He peered up warily through a shock of hair that had fallen over his brow. Their gazes locked, and he remained stock-still, as if to be sure she was real and not an apparition. Then he straightened and did something that twisted her heart. He smiled.

  “Miss Huntford.”

  “Hullo, Elliot. I thought you might care for some company.” Before she could go on, the door squeaked open wider and the constable placed a wooden chair in the room. She mouthed a thank you as he backed out, and dragged the chair closer to Elliot. She took her time settling onto it and arranging her skirts. “I understand there was a bit of unpleasantness at the school earlier. Would you like to tell me what happened?”

  He resumed contemplating the floor.

  “I’d like to help you, if I can. But I cannot do that if you won’t talk to me. I thought we were becoming friends, Elliot.”

  He nodded solemnly.

  “Then you can trust me.” She sat very still, her hands folded in her lap, her feet pressed flat on the floor. She wished to appear as unthreatening and composed as possible. “Earlier today, were you angry at the vicar?”

  A frown creased Elliot’s brow. His lips moved but no sound came out.

  Eva leaned slightly forward. “I only wish to understand. You were such a help with the donation packages. I wish to help you in return.”

  “There was fire,” he whispered so low, she had to strain to hear.

  On the way here, the constable had explained about the vicar and his pipe. “You mean when Mr. Amstead struck a match to light his pipe?”

  “No fire.” He shook his head, his forehead furrowing tighter still. He fingered the collar of his work shirt.

  “But fire can be helpful, sometimes. Why, just the other day you were adjusting the kitchen generator. The coal fire generates electricity.”

  He shrugged. “Some fires are good. Some are bad. The fire that . . .”

  “That what, Elliot?”

  “Took him away.”

  Now she was getting somewhere. “Who went away? Was it someone you cared about very much?”

  He nodded. “Father.”

  His eyes misted, and ache grew in her chest. “Did your father die in a fire?”

  He nodded again. His fingertips disappeared inside his collar, and she remembered the chain he wore. Though she couldn’t see it, when his fingers curled she knew he must be gripping it. It might very well have belonged to his father.

  She believed she was beginning to understand. A coal fire in the generator might not seem dangerous to him, but a fire literally held in someone’s hand might remind him of his father’s death. “When was this, Elliot?”

  He shrugged.

  “Can you tell me where, then?”

  “Mustn’t.”

  “Mustn’t what? Tell me about it?”

  “Mustn’t ever speak of it.” He blinked, clearing away the moisture that had gathered in his eyes. He glanced up at her, and a curtain seemed to fall across his features, effectively shutting her off from what lay behind.

  She sat back and tried not to let her frustration show. He almost seemed to be reciting his answers by rote, such as they were, as if . . . as if he’d been schooled in his responses. It occurred to her she had taken a too direct approach, that she had gone about this all wrong.

  “Tell me, Elliot, are you originally from the Cotswolds? From a village nearby?” When he cast her a puzzled look, she groped for a way to clarify, and hit upon one. “Did the town or village where you grew up look much like Little Barlow? Were the shops and houses built of the same sort of stone?”

  “Golden?”

  “Yes, exactly. The golden Cotswold stone.”

  He nodded.

  “And was your home surrounded by our rolling countryside?”

  Another nod.

  “I’ve traveled around a bit. Perhaps I’ve been there. What was the name?” She asked as if he had already told her but she had forgotten. Deceptive, yes, but she needed to break through his reticence.

  He hesitated so long, she despaired of him ever answering, until he murmured, “James.”

  It was her turn to form a puzzled frown. “James? Is that the name of a town?” She hardly thought so. “Your father, or perhaps a relative?”

  His lips flattened and he seemed to draw into himself, his shoulders angling sharply inward. He had closed up again, and this time she decided she had pressed him long enough and to no avail. She slowly came to her feet. “Elliot, is there anything I can bring for you?” Without waiting for his answer, she noted the thin blanket folded at the foo
t of his cot and the lack of a pillow. She didn’t know if Elliot could read, but even if he didn’t she thought perhaps some magazines might help him pass the time. There were some back issues of the Strand in the servants’ hall at home. She didn’t think they’d be missed.

  “I’ll come again soon,” she promised. When he once more cast his gaze to the floor, she crouched in front of him and covered his none-too-clean hand with her own. “You won’t be forgotten here, Elliot. Never fear.”

  Constable Brannock relocked the cell door and walked with her back into the main office.

  “I suppose you heard everything,” she said.

  “Most of it. It would appear his father’s death might have triggered what happened earlier.”

  “Will that help him? Poor dear, he might have believed he was helping the vicar, not hurting him.”

  “That all depends.” They stopped by the larger of two desks, and the constable deposited the cell door key into a drawer and then locked that with another key on a ring he’d taken from his coat pocket. “If it comes out that he has done something like this before, the court might decide he should be locked away.”

  “How frightful! We can’t let that happen. If only we could find out more about him. But it seems he doesn’t trust me any more than he does anyone else. If only—” She broke off with a gasp.

  “What is it?”

  “When I asked him where he grew up, he said James. It just occurred to me what he meant. My goodness, of course.”

  “Of course what, Eva?”

  “Where is the one place in any town or village where someone like Elliot might feel at home? Might feel welcome and safe? And thus be most familiar with?”

  “You’re speaking in riddles now.”

  “Miles, the parish. St. James could be the name of the church in the town where Elliot grew up.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “I’m going up to London to visit the Davenports and I’m taking Eva with me. There is nothing you can do about it, Phoebe.”

  Looking up from the map spread open on her escritoire, Phoebe regarded Julia standing in her bedroom doorway. She wore a skirt that narrowed stylishly a few inches above her ankles overlaid with a drop-waist tunic. A light coat would complete the travel outfit, but Julia hardly appeared the carefree traveler. She positively fumed. Her nostrils flared and her eyes sparked. Phoebe sighed and shrugged. “I doubt Grams will let you. Eva’s needed here to help with the girls.”