Murder at Locke Abbey

by Winchester, Catherine

  “You don’t have to watch this, or attend dinner if you would rather not.”

  “I know. I want to be here,” he assured her. “I need the distraction.”

  Thea reached out and took his hand.

  Even though she wasn’t fond of the play, she did enjoy the abridged performance, and she had to admit that Michael Reynolds had a talent for acting, although the other performers left a lot to be desired.

  As it was nearing the end of the final act, Thea suddenly had that eureka moment that Cole had spoken about once.

  “Oh,” she gasped, then swiftly stood up. “OH!”

  The entire audience and makeshift acting company turned to her.

  “She meant ‘brav-O’,” Cole explained, emphasising the ‘oh’ sound.

  “No I didn’t,” she tried to whisper to him.

  “Yes, you did.” He emphasised.

  She didn’t understand it, but he was keen for her not to slight the players, no matter how unintentional that insult was. She turned to the stage and smiled.

  “Yes, I did. My apologies for interrupting.” She sat back down.

  Everything was falling into place now, but she sat quietly as she completed the puzzle.

  There were things she needed to check before she could prove her theory true, but she was willing to bet that if not completely accurate, she was on the right path.

  When they play ended, Thea clapped along with everyone else, then whispered to Cole.

  “Excuse me, I have to see Mr Black before dinner.” With a quick kiss to his cheek, she ran out of the room before the applause had died down.

  Mr Black was actually waiting in the corridor outside, ready to attend to the guests as they headed into the dining room. Thea pulled him aside and he proved very amenable, leaving the head footman to care for everyone while he went to do as she bid.

  He returned after the first course had been served and nodded at Thea, signalling that her requests were being taken care of.

  She smiled her thanks.

  “Is everything all right?” Cole asked, having noticed the interaction.

  “Everything is very good,” she assured him. “After dinner, I think we will have the answers we seek.”

  He smiled, feeling surprisingly indifferent. He knew, of course, that Selena had murdered his father, which was the only justice he could summon any great enthusiasm for.

  His appetite was small and he spent most of the meal looking around the table, wondering which of the people present had killed Mrs Garwood and Mary Potter. He didn’t like to believe any of them capable of murder but clearly at least one dinner guest (excluding Mrs Cole who wasn’t there) had killed someone.

  As dessert was served, Thea excused herself. She returned just as the plates were being cleared away.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, if we could all retire to the drawing room, I believe I can finally explain the unfortunate events that have been happening recently.”

  “Oh?” Mrs Dale asked. “That does sound exciting. I do hope Selena will be present, I know she is in shock but I’m certain she would like answers as much as the rest of us.”

  “Fear not, Mrs Dale, Mrs Cole is being escorted to the drawing room as we speak.”

  “Wonderful, I am so looking forward to seeing her, I do hope she is all right.”

  “If you will follow me.” Thea led them into the drawing room but this evening, there would be no singing, no music and no card games.

  Thea took an armchair near the door and Cole took the chair beside it, Lord Copley the chair beside him; all the chairs had been angled so that the different groupings were all facing the middle of the room.

  Reverend Wattle was already there, nursing a glass of port, and he got to his feet as everyone entered.

  Mrs Cole was also there, seated by the fire with both Ella and a manservant standing close by.

  Mrs Dale, Eliza and Emily made straight for her, crowding around and asking how she was faring.

  Once everyone was seated with a drink, Black called for silence and Thea began.

  “I will start with the murder of Mr Cole. It is with regret that I have to inform you that Mr Cole did not die of natural causes; he was poisoned.”

  “Poisoned!” Mrs Buchan exclaimed. “Surely not.”

  “I’m afraid so. The white lines on his fingernails made me suspect arsenic poisoning and using a test devised by James Marsh, the doctor and I were able to prove it.”

  “Wait, I heard something about this,” Lord Small said. “Wasn’t John Bodle found innocent because the test was inconclusive?”

  “He was indeed, which led to Mr Marsh developing a better test, one that left no room for doubt. As yet this method is untested in the English courts, which accounts for why it is not widely known, but it has been successfully used in France, to prosecute Marie LaFarge for murder.”

  “Who poisoned Beau?” Mrs Dale asked, and Cole wondered if she was as innocent as she seemed. She was his step-mother’s closest friend, so it wasn’t untoward to believe that she might have known about the scheme.

  “Mrs Cole.”

  Mrs Dale turned towards her friend and shrank away! “Selena?”

  “Lies,” Mrs Cole answered, stony-faced.

  “Unfortunately a search of your rooms by my father and the Reverend, found your poison, Mrs Cole.”

  Everyone looked from Lord Copley to the Reverend, with a few giving Cole pitying glances.

  Mrs Cole remained unmoved.

  “Next comes the vicious murder of the maid, Mary Potter. She was a young girl and still full of dreams. She wanted a better life for herself and I believe that when an opportunity presented itself, she took it.”

  “Isn’t that rather speculative?” Lord Small asked.

  “Not at all.” Thea nodded to Black, who opened the door to the entrance hall and let a youth into the room.

  “This is Mary’s brother, John Potter,” Thea introduced him. “Would you please tell everyone what you told me earlier?”

  He nodded. “On her day off, her last one before she died, Mary told us that she was going to America and she wanted me and George to go with her. She’d been talking about it for years so we all laughed, but she said she was going, insisted on it in fact, she even showed us the advertisement for the company she was going to book with. George and me told her we couldn’t afford it, the tickets were four pounds each and then what would we do for money once we were out there? Working’s all very well but what if we couldn’t get a job right away?”

  “This is all very interesting,” Mr Buchan interrupted, his tone implying that it was anything but interesting. “However I fail to see how this is of any relevance.”

  “Because Mary promised to buy their tickets,” Thea explained. “Steerage tickets to America are four pounds each and for a housemaid earning just 18 pounds a year, that is a huge amount of money.”

  “Aye,” George agreed, adding, “she promised us that she had a hundred pounds coming to her, more than enough to set us up out there while we sought work.”

  “Fantasy!” Mr Garwood scoffed. “You can hardly take the ramblings of a foolish child as proof.”

  “I would have agreed with you,” Thea assured him. “Except that Mary purchased three travelling trunks from a shop in the town, quite cheap ones compared to the standards we are used to, but a small fortune for a maid. That is quite an investment in a fantasy, wouldn’t you say?”

  John searched his pockets until he found the luggage receipt, which he held up.

  “I think there can be little doubt that Mary truly believed that she had one hundred pounds coming to her,” Thea concluded. “Thank you, Mr Potter. Someone will take you back to town.”

  Mr Potter nodded to the company and allowed Black to show him out of the room.

  “The next question we must ask ourselves,” Thea continued, “is where was that money coming from?”

  “Did she know that Mrs Cole was poisoning her husband?” Lord Grady asked.

&
nbsp; “It is impossible to say with certainty what she knew,” Thea answered, but Cole thought that she might be lying. She certainly wasn’t a good actress and he made a note to ask her about it later.

  “However,” Thea continued. “I believe we can say with some certainty that she was blackmailing someone in this house. The force with which the poker was wielded rules a woman out as the attacker, so even if she was blackmailing Mrs Cole, someone else murdered her.”

  “Who?”

  “For the answer to that, as well as why Mr Cole was killed, we must look to the third murder, that of Mrs Garwood.”

  “This is all just speculation!” Mr Garwood said, downing the content of his glass in one swallow and getting up to refill his glass.

  “What is not speculation, Mr Garwood, is that you and Mrs Cole were lovers.”

  “What? Her? That uncouth, money grubbing woman?”

  “Considering that you married your wife for her rather large dowry, I hardly think you are in a position to judge. In any case, we have proof that these love letters, found during the search of Mrs Cole’s room, are in your handwriting.” She held up one of the letters and beside it, a document taken from his room. “There is an uncanny likeness, no? Especially in the shape of the s, the tails are quite unique.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Your room was also searched earlier,” Thea explained. “We took this to compare to the writing on Mrs Cole’s love letters.”

  “Even if you are correct, you cannot prove when those letters were sent.” Mr Garwood gave her a smug smile.

  “How do you know that?” Thea asked.

  “Because the letters aren’t dated.”

  “Then my next question would be, how do you know that? You are seated at least ten feet away from me, you cannot possibly read the letter from there and even assuming that you could, I have carefully kept the top portion of the letter, where the date would usually be recorded, hidden.”

  “Oh, don’t be so ridiculous! Nobody puts a date on love letters!” he got to his feet and began to pace the room. “I can't believe you’re all listening to this child! I didn’t kill my wife, you all know I was with the rest of you when she was stabbed!”

  “Indeed you were with them, and you have an airtight alibi for her stabbing.”

  “Thank you,” he said rather gracelessly.

  “I didn’t say you didn’t kill her, Mr Garwood, I said that you had an alibi for the time of her stabbing.”

  “So what? You’re saying I hired a ghost to stab her, or something equally ridiculous?”

  Thea turned to Black. “Is the doctor here yet?”

  “He is, Ma’am.”

  “Could you show him in?”

  “Of course.” The door opened and Dr Kerridge entered.

  “Good evening.” The doctor bowed to the room. “I apologise for being late.”

  “Not at all, thank you for coming on such short notice, Doctor,” Thea said.

  Black fixed him a drink as he took a seat.

  “Doctor, can you tell me your conclusions on Mrs Garwood’s death?”

  “Of course. I brought my notes with me.” He took out a small notebook and flicked through the pages. “Here we go. She had a blood stain of six and a quarter inches in diameter and her wound was five inches deep. It did not appear to have severed any major vessels however, and I estimate the volume of blood lost was less than would be drawn during a bloodletting.”

  “And your cause of death?

  “The inquest returned an open verdict.”

  “So is it your opinion that the stab wound didn’t kill her?”

  “It contributed to her death but no, it was not a fatal wound.”

  “So what are you saying?” Mr Garwood demanded. “That the ghost strangled her first? Lord, give me strength.”

  “Actually, I believe the cause of her death was poisoning, or to be more accurate, an overdose of opium.”

  Mr Garwood began laughing but there was a rather hysterical edge to it. “Suicide! I should have known.” He took a large swig of his drink.

  “No, not suicide, her elixir was tampered with.”

  Mr Garwood choked on his drink, coughing and spluttering in a very ungentlemanly manner. When his spasms subsided, he wiped his lips with his handkerchief, muttering “What ludicrousness is this now?”

  “You probably got the idea from Mrs Cole and it seemed perfect; if you kill her with no visible signs of violence, the chances of it being deemed a murder are very slim. We found a bottle of Rousseau's Laudanum in your room, Mr Garwood, which is one of the strongest laudanum recipes on the market.

  “Your wife was taking Le Mort's Elixir for a summer cold and I smelled the contents of the bottle while in her room. I noticed that it was a lot more palatable then the Le Mort's Elixir I was given as a child, lacking the overpowering liquorice and aniseed scent I remember. Mr Black kindly provided me with another bottle, which is kept to treat various ailments, and it does have the pungent scent I remember from childhood. To be sure, I dabbed a touch of both onto different areas of my tongue, suffice to say, Mrs Garwood’s bottle was far more effective, so much so that I have not yet regained the sensation on that part of my tongue.”

  Mr Garwood wiped his top lip with a handkerchief. “Prove it.”

  “I’m sure we can test her bottle of Le Mort's Elixir before the trial but for this evening, I don’t need to prove it,” she asserted. “Mr Black?”

  He approached carrying a silver tray, a serviette covering the contents. Black removed the cover with a flourish, revealing a bottle of Le Mort's Elixir and Mrs Garwood’s measuring spoon.

  “This is your wife’s elixir. If you are certain that you did not add strong laudanum to it, I invite you to take the recommended dose, two teaspoons. Of course, if this is mostly Rousseau's Laudanum, then two teaspoons could be lethal, especially to someone of your wife’s slight build. You are larger however, so you might be lucky and it will only leave you unconscious for a few hours.”

  “I’ve had enough of your childish prattle!” Mr Garwood walked towards the door but Lord Copley moved to block him. Cole joined him. They were soon joined by Lord Small, Lord Reynolds and Lord Grady.

  “If she is wrong, Mr Garwood, then why not prove her wrong and take two teaspoons of your wife’s tincture.” Lord Grady asked.

  “How do I know she hasn’t tampered with it, added grains of opium or something?”

  “Good God, man, what would she have to gain by doing that?” Lord Small added.

  “No, I will not be a party to this foolishness any longer, let me through.” Garwood insisted.

  “Sit down, Sir,” Lord Grady ordered. “The local constables are here to arrest you and Mrs Cole.”

  “On whose authority?”

  “On my authority. I am a magistrate, Sir, and unlike Lord McAllister, I believe in justice rather than avoiding scandal. Now, be seated, or be taken into custody immediately.”

  “Fine!” he topped his glass up and slumped down into his chair.

  The gentlemen remained standing, although they separated a little, standing like sentries around the room. Cole came to stand behind Thea’s chair, worried that Mr Garwood might snap and lunge at her.

  “What I would like explained, is who stabbed her. Right now, this all sounds like some elaborate excuse because no one can explain who stabbed her.”

  “That’s easy to explain, Mr Garwood.” Thea said. “I realised what had happened while watching the play earlier.”

  “Then by all means, do enlighten us.” Garwood’s voice was dripping with sarcasm.

  “After taking her tincture, your wife continued writing a letter she had started to a friend of hers. She began to feel the effects of an opium overdose, namely symptoms such as drowsiness, weakness, cold, clammy skin, and shallow breathing, and she knew that something was wrong and surmised that you had killed her. She got a new sheet of paper to write your name but was unable to write properly, the drug was overcomi
ng her with frightening speed and she realised that if she succumbed to its effects before raising the alarm, people would not know what had happened.

  “Her eyes alighted on the paper cutter and she picked it up. Perhaps the drug was making her confused but I think more likely, she intended to try and stab herself. She headed towards the doorway but her equilibrium was off, she pulled the papers and inkwell off the desk, she knocked into the table, causing the vase to fall, then she fell to the ground, the weight of her fall forcing the paper cutter into her flesh. Thankfully, she was probably beyond feeling pain by then. You may have killed her, Mr Garwood, but her determination that you not get away with it means that she beat you, she found a way to let everyone know that her death was unnatural and now, you will hang for what you did.”

  “So the maid, the Potter girl, discovered what Garwood had done and was attempting to blackmail him?” Lord Small asked.

  “I don’t believe she knew about the murder, only a fool would blackmail a murderer, but she did know about the affair. With his wife so recently dead and Mr Cole so close to death, he decided that discretion was the better part of valour. He agreed to pay her but never actually intended to and on the night they were to rendezvous, he planned to kill her instead. I dare say he planned something far cleaner, probably strangulation but Mary had a lot of defensive wounds. She put up far more of a fight than you thought, didn’t she, Mr Garwood? It enraged you. Then you heard a scream from upstairs and realised that the house wasn’t as asleep as you thought. You panicked and grabbed the closest thing to hand, the poker, and proceeded to bludgeon her to death.”

  “So I kill her and just leave her body to be found?”

  “I’m sure you intended a clean death and to dispose of the body, but the sighting of the ghost entering the woods put paid to that idea. With the house waking up, then footsteps coming in this direction having heard Mary’s cry as you killed her, you had no choice but to leave her and run to wash and change, hoping you wouldn’t be missed.”

  “Pure speculation,” Garwood muttered.

  “Perhaps, but I believe we have enough to convict you, especially once the contents of your wife’s elixir are analysed.”

  “So what was the ghost that was seen in the grounds that night?” Lord Small asked.