Sweet Poison

by David Roberts

  Deposited on the doorstep of Lord Weaver’s mansion, even Edward was momentarily daunted by its air of not welcoming casual visitors. There were shutters on the windows and he noticed the servants had forgotten to water the geraniums in the window boxes. It almost seemed as though the house was in mourning, but that could not be true if Lord Weaver was working a normal day at the New Gazette. Telling himself not to be a fool, he rang the electric bell. A superior-looking manservant answered the door and Edward handed him his card. ‘Would you inquire if Miss Weaver can see me? She’s not expecting me, but as I was passing I thought I would see if she was at home.’

  Edward was a little annoyed with himself. He sounded as if he were apologizing. However, it was said.

  The servant read the card carefully and was obviously reassured. He unbent a little and directed at Edward a wintry smile. ‘My lord, I am afraid Miss Weaver is not at home. Would you wish me to see if Lady Weaver is engaged?’

  Edward was just about to say that he had no wish to disturb Lady Weaver when he heard her voice in the hall. ‘Who is it, Wilkins?’

  The butler stood back, opening the door wide. ‘It is Lord Edward Corinth, my lady.’

  ‘Lord Edward, is that really you? Please do come in. Were you looking for Hermione? I am afraid she is not here.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Lady Weaver. I apologize for disturbing you. I was just passing and I thought I would see if Hermione was here. We parted rather abruptly after . . . after I had taken her to the Savoy last week and I had no opportunity of . . .’

  ‘Do come in, Lord Edward. I wanted to talk to you in any case and if you have five minutes . . .’

  Seated in the drawing-room on an ornate but uncomfortable gilt sofa, Edward, who had refused an offer of refreshment, said, ‘I say, Lady Weaver . . .’

  Speaking at the same time, her voice high with nervous energy, Blanche said, ‘I’m so worried . . .’

  They apologized, laughed a little, and the atmosphere lightened. ‘Please go on, Lady Weaver.’

  ‘“Blanche”, please, Lord Edward. I need to talk to you about Hermione and I cannot do so with you calling me Lady Weaver.’

  ‘Blanche, then,’ said Edward smiling. He liked this woman. Underneath a rather fey, almost distrait manner he sensed a sensible, sensitive soul whom he would like to help if he could. How she had ended up with a child as tiresome as Hermione he really could not think.

  ‘You say, Lord Edward –’

  ‘Edward, please,’ he interjected, smiling.

  ‘You say, Edward, that you and Hermione parted abruptly last Tuesday. Can you tell me what happened, or would that be breaking confidences?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. We had dinner at the Savoy and then we went on, at your daughter’s request, to the Cocoanut Grove. Do you know it?’

  ‘I have never heard of it. It’s a night-club? Like the Four Hundred?’

  ‘Yes. Hermione said it was all the rage at the moment so that was where I took her. Anyway, we had hardly got there – I think we had had one dance – when she was agitating to go. I had not particularly wanted to come so that was all right by me. To tell the truth it was rather a gruesome place with a sort of jungle décor and the champagne was disgusting so I was quite ready to depart. However, at that moment the cabaret started and I must confess I was very taken with the girl who came on to sing. I believe she was called Amy Pageant.’ Edward tried to see if Lady Weaver had ever heard the name before but if she had she disguised it.

  ‘This girl sang Cole Porter and Gershwin better than . . . well, better than anyone I have heard – at least, this side of the Atlantic. I was bowled over, I have to admit, and I did not take my eyes off her until she had taken her bow. Then, when I looked round for Hermione, she had vanished. I went to find her of course and eventually the doorman gave me a pencilled note from her saying she was sorry but she had had to go. The doorman said she had left in a taxi with Charlie Lomax.’

  ‘I see,’ said Blanche thoughtfully. ‘That was very rude of her. I don’t know what has come over her recently. At Mersham Castle both I and Lord Weaver got the impression that she was . . . well, please forgive me for being frank . . . that she was very . . . she was all over you. I don’t suppose you even noticed. Joe and I were so pleased. You see – I know I can speak in complete confidence to you – she has got into rather a bad crowd. I mean, she is not a child any more. There’s nothing really I can do except – you know – keep an eye on her. This young man, Charles Lomax, I thought maybe he had thrown her over but . . .’

  Edward felt he was behaving shabbily, discussing Hermione behind her back, but he certainly did not consider her to be a friend and she had behaved badly to him. ‘Now you mention it, Lady Weaver, Blanche, I remember her in the club being a bit on edge. The manager chappie, Captain Gordon he called himself, came up to her while we were dancing and told her “a friend” was coming in later and wanted to see her. He meant Lomax but no name was mentioned. Hermione acted as though she didn’t want me to know who her “friend” was.

  ‘Shortly after, as I say, Hermione said she did not like the place after all and wanted to leave but just then the cabaret started and I told her I wanted to stay until it finished. I blame myself; perhaps if I had taken her away when she asked me to she might never have met Lomax. When I think back, I get the feeling that she half wanted to meet him and half didn’t. Do you think he has some sort of hold over her?’

  ‘You mean like drugs?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose I do,’ said Edward awkwardly.

  ‘I think he must have. Oh God, Edward, I’m so worried. I have been worried about her for a long time. She has never got on with her stepfather and she seemed to be drifting into a thoroughly bad set almost as if she wanted to annoy him. Then, when your brother invited us to Mersham, she insisted I ask the Duke to invite Mr Lomax. I suppose I should just have said no and not brought her with me but, to be honest, I wanted to keep her under my eye and I thought if she mingled with good people . . . I thought . . . oh, I don’t know what I thought. If I am being really truthful, when I heard you were coming, I thought she might . . . I thought you and she . . .’

  Edward coloured. ‘And I did not turn up until late.’

  ‘Yes, but you must have noticed how, when you did come, she was so pleased to see you. I was delighted.’

  ‘Why do you think she so wanted Lomax to be at the castle? Was she in love with him or was it that he had promised to bring her . . . you know – what she needed?’

  ‘I don’t know. She had been very nervous and irritable and I thought that was because Mr Lomax seemed to be avoiding her. Then . . . may I speak in complete confidence, Edward? I haven’t even told Joe this and I tell him everything.’

  ‘Of course, you have my word.’

  ‘Well, I went into her room at Mersham while she was dressing for dinner. She did not hear me come in and I . . . when she turned I saw . . . Oh, I can’t say it!’ Blanche buried her face in her hands.

  ‘She was injecting herself?’ said Edward gently.

  Blanche nodded, avoiding his eye.

  ‘When we were dancing at the night-club she put her head on my shoulder and I saw her arm and I could not help seeing . . . the marks. And you think she was counting on Lomax being unable to resist an invitation to Mersham Castle and if he came he would supply her with the dope she wanted?’

  ‘Yes. For some reason he must have been avoiding her, otherwise, I suppose, she would have met him at the night-club you mentioned – the Cocoanut Grove – or some other place like that. Oh God! What is there to do? When I caught her . . . when I saw her . . . she said such terrible things to me.’

  Edward put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Please, Blanche, don’t give way. She may not have gone too far. She seemed quite normal at Gerald’s dinner after all.’

  ‘Oh yes, but then she would if she had taken what she needed beforehand, but when we got back to London she . . . I ought to have talked to her about it but I was afraid .
. . I ought to . . . And then she wouldn’t stay here. She said it was too dead. She went back to her flat.’

  ‘Her flat?’ said Edward surprised. ‘I didn’t know she had a flat. On Tuesday I picked her up from here.’

  ‘Yes, she has a flat in Beauchamp Place. Joe bought it for her on her twenty-first. To begin with she didn’t live there very much but . . .’

  Edward could imagine that Weaver had tried everything to get Hermione out of his house and the flat was a carrot to get her to stand on her own feet.

  ‘So how is she now?’

  ‘That’s just why I am so anxious – I don’t know. She telephoned on Wednesday, the day after you saw her, to say she was going to stay at her flat. I was out when she called and she left a message with Wilkins. I tried to ring her several times but there was never any answer. So on Friday and then again on Saturday I went round to Beauchamp Place and rang the doorbell and knocked but there was no answer.’

  ‘She doesn’t have a servant?’

  ‘No. She said a maid would “queer her pitch”, whatever that means. I think she was afraid that if she had a servant she would be spied on and I would be told what she was up to.’

  ‘I see. Do you have a key to her flat?’

  ‘Well, yes, I do. Hermione doesn’t know I have one and she would kill me if she found out I had been prying on her.’

  ‘You didn’t use it then, when you went round on Saturday?’

  ‘I didn’t dare.’

  ‘Did you try ringing Mr Lomax?’

  ‘Yes. I got his number out of the telephone book but there was no answer. The operator said he had been cut off. I don’t know why.’

  ‘Look, Blanche, I think you have reason to be worried. Give me the key to Hermione’s flat and I will go and see if . . . if there is anything wrong.’

  ‘But if she finds you . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t say I have been talking to you. If she catches me I will just say I am a bit of an amateur burglar and she can be as rude to me as she likes, but in any case I won’t go in until I am sure she is not there.’

  ‘Bless you, Edward. I don’t know how to thank you. I just daren’t ask Joe. He would charge round like a bull in a china shop and she would probably never speak to either of us again.’

  Hermione’s flat in Beauchamp Place was on the top floor. Getting no reply to his knocking, Edward unlocked the door and went in. There was no one and no sign of anyone having been there lately. There was no food on the table or in the little larder. The windows were closed and the rooms – a bedroom and a living-room along with a tiny kitchen and bathroom – were stuffy and dirty-smelling – neglected. This was clearly not a place for which the owner had any affection. There was a telephone book beside the telephone and he looked up Lomax’s number. He dialled but there was only a buzzing tone. The book gave an address in Fulham and he decided he would not sleep easy until he had gone round and made sure Hermione was not . . . was not held prisoner there or something worse. He felt he owed it to Blanche to find Hermione whatever the trouble it caused him. If he had looked after her and taken her away from that awful night-club maybe she might not have run off. Now he hardly dared think what she might have run off to.

  When the cab dropped him at the house in Fulham the first thing he noticed was that the tiny garden in front of the house was little better than a rubbish tip. Here was another neglectful owner. Empty bottles, a broken dustbin, the twisted wheel of a bicycle cluttered the path up to the front door. Before opening the iron gate and going up to the door he stepped back across the street and gazed at the house. There was something desolate and even hostile about it. All the windows were blinded either by shabby-looking curtains or by what looked like blankets. It was a respectable street in an area convenient for Mr Lomax’s social life in Belgravia but the house itself looked as though it were hiding something nasty. As he stood there summoning up the energy to bang on the door, an elderly woman stepped out of the house at whose garden gate he was standing. In contrast to Mr Lomax’s residence, this little house was smart as two pins. The garden was ablaze with colour and the front door had been newly painted a startling electric blue.

  ‘You’ll not find anyone up there,’ she said, nodding towards the house opposite. ‘They go to bed goodness knows how late. I’m woken up in the night often enough with shouting and screaming and they never stir till three or four in the afternoon. It’s a disgrace to the neighbourhood, if you ask me. I’ve threatened to have the police on them but he just laughs.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Mr Lomax, his name is. A bad ’un if ever I saw one.’

  ‘He has parties?’

  ‘Parties!’ The elderly lady raised her voice in disgust. ‘Orgies, I would call them. You’re not one of them?’

  ‘No,’ said Edward, ‘I’m not one of them, but I rather think he may have one of my friends in there and I intend to get her out.’

  ‘Oh my! Are you a policeman?’

  ‘Not a policeman, Mrs . . .’

  ‘Mrs Watson.’

  ‘Mrs Watson, no, I am not a policeman.’ He raised his hat to her and without more ado crossed the narrow street, pushed open the gate, which resisted his efforts with much creaking and groaning, and hammered on the front door.

  There was no answer. He knocked again and there was still no answer. He was about to go away defeated when he thought he might as well walk round the back of the house. The knowledge that at least one pair of eyes was watching his every move from behind net curtains made the hairs on the back of his head prickle. If Mrs Watson decided to call the police then he had not much time. He was both highly reluctant to pursue his search for Hermione and at the same time eager to get it over with and find out what sordid little secrets this unpleasant-looking house might be guarding. The last thing he wanted was to be arrested for attempted burglary, but somehow he did not feel he could hold his head up if he went back to Lady Weaver with the tame news that he had knocked and there had been no answer so he had come away.

  If the front garden of the house was disfigured with garbage, which it was, it would have won a best-kept-lawn award when compared with the back. Here the litter was ankle deep. A drain had overflowed and a stream of green slime had coagulated on the stone path, turning it into a potentially lethal skating rink. There was a nauseating stink from a pile of rubbish in one corner of the pocket-sized space which could not truly be called a back garden. Holding his handkerchief to his nose, Edward approached it and put the toe of his shoe against it. He recoiled quickly as a family of rats lurched across his feet. They had been feeding on the corpse of what might once have been a cat.

  Turning to look at the back of the house, he noticed that though most of the windows were tightly closed and curtained one on the first floor was broken. He sighed. Here was a means of entry but it meant shinning up the drainpipe and that meant the trousers of his suit would certainly be ruined. Still, there was nothing to be done about it. He took off his hat and jacket and hung them carefully over the spout of a rusting watering-can. It was chilly and he shivered in his shirt-sleeves. He considered removing his tie but compromised by tucking the end of it between the buttons of his shirt as he had seen office workers do in New York. His shoes were strong walking shoes made for him at Lobb’s, not ideal for climbing up drainpipes but in this filth it was unthinkable that he should remove them.

  His ascent began well. The drainpipe was slippery but he got a grip quite easily on the clammy metal. Edward Corinth was one of those fortunate young men who, though never seeming to take much exercise, remain fit. It had been three months since he had returned from South Africa but he still had the muscles he had hardened climbing in the Drakensberg. His tailor had remarked on how he would have to allow for them as he measured him for this very suit, the trousers of which he was now ruining. When he reached the broken window he was triumphant, but pride almost came before a fall. In recent years no one had spent one penny on the upkeep of the structure and the drainp
ipe had only been pretending to be firmly fixed to the wall of the house. It now revealed that its suitability as a ladder was illusory as it began to come away from the wall as easily as Edward might have peeled a banana. He clutched at the broken window, cutting himself as he did so on some jagged glass. He succeeded in heaving himself up so that his head was just above the window ledge. It was too dark to see more than that it was a bedroom of sorts. Certainly there was a heap of what might be bedclothes in one corner. He made a further effort and, sweating profusely, found a purchase for his right foot in the damaged brickwork. He fumbled for the window catch and found it, only to discover that the window swung outwards, and as it did so he once again almost fell on to the stone paving below. He caught himself in time and rolled his body over the sill, ripping his trousers. Panting hard, he found his feet in a small dank room which smelled of drains, or worse. He assumed the house must be empty: he had made such a noise getting in that he would have disturbed anyone who was awake and woken all but the deepest sleeper.

  But he was wrong. The house was not empty. As he prepared to go out of the bedroom door to explore what lay beyond, the pile of bedclothes moved. A snorting sound like that made by a bulldog startled him. He wanted urgently to empty his bladder. He told himself to get a grip on his nerves and stop being a yellow-livered coward. He stepped over to the snuffling, moving blankets and pulled back the corner of the top one.