The Devil in Velvet

by John Dickson Carr

  While Nan Curtis watched with screwed-up eyes, Kitty broke four eggs on the edge of the bowl and flipped their contents into it. With crossed knife and fork in two hands, she began swiftly to whip the eggs.

  Footsteps descended inside the plaster-enclosed stair wall. Giles appeared at the foot, with new wrinkles of anxiety in his face, and hugging a large clock. Behind him was Lydia, who peered past his shoulder without fully descending.

  “Sir, sir,” groaned Giles, “I fear your lady wife hath too wheedling and coaxing a tongue. She did persuade me that, though you said not in the kitchen, this did not include the pair of stairs leading down.”

  Lydia, holding high the candelabrum of three branches, looked at Fenton in so ingenuous and wide-eyed a fashion that he relented.

  “Let be, then,” he said, though he hated having her there.

  “Oh, yes!” cried Lydia.

  Giles, while Lydia casually sat down on the next to the lowest step, went over and set down the clock on the shelf of the carry-all. Everybody could see it. It had a bold face and a slow-swinging pendulum, inside an elaborate wooden case carved by Grinling Gibbons.

  “Mr. Giles?” muttered Kitty, who had now whipped the eggs to a yellowish liquid.

  From a bunch of keys Giles unlocked a cabinet, where the china used upstairs was set in racks. Taking a china bowl holding a good deal more than a pint, he put it on the table. Then he hurried towards a door at the front, presumably leading somewhere towards a wine cellar.

  Nan Curtis fluttered her hands.

  “Milk!” she said.

  And, with unsteady hands, she took down from the carry-all a flattish earthenware jug, with a dish inverted on top to keep off flies or insects.

  “’Twas fresh-fetched from the dairy this morning, as I said,” Nan insisted. “Yet, if it be turned—” Before she realized what she was doing, she tipped up the jug and tasted the contents.

  “Good; this is sweet,” she quavered. On the flash realization came to her; she looked, horrified, at the jug; then at her hand as though, like George, she feared it would swell up and turn black before her eyes.

  “It can do you no harm,” Fenton assured her firmly. “You took but a small sip.”

  Yet a start went through the hot room. Though this kitchen might be heavy with malodour, it was heavier still with evil. And all the evil, Fenton sensed, was concentrated in the small body of Kitty Softcover.

  Carelessly Kitty poured the liquid eggs into the bright-painted china bowl with gilt legs. After this she poured the half-pint of milk, and stirred the mixture. Giles, having returned with a quart bottle of whitish-looking wine, opened it with a corkscrew—the corkscrew being far from a recent invention—and put the bottle on the table.

  From a wrinkled but bulging twist of paper, Kitty took out four small lumps of loaf sugar and threw them into the bowl. Measuring with her eye by holding up the bottle, she poured in exactly half a pint of sack.

  “The’ be th’ sake pusset,” she snapped. “Now drink of it!”

  And she backed away. The pendulum of the big clock ticked loudly, yet so slowly that time did not seem to move at all.

  Fenton’s next move was so unexpected that all shied back, and Lydia pressed her hands over her mouth. Fenton tossed the heavy cat-of-nine-tails to Giles, who caught it gingerly. Then with both hands Fenton picked up the bright-coloured china bowl, tilted it to his mouth, and took a good drink. Afterwards he set it back on the table.

  Taking from his breeches pocket the bloodstained handkerchief with which he had sprucified himself at the Devil, Fenton wiped his mouth.

  “I order no servant of mine,” he said, “to do what I would not do myself.”

  They stared at each other. Such a master merely bewildered them. Again, curiously enough, it was Big Tom who first understood.

  “Good!” he growled out. Hitching up his trousers, he reached for the bowl.

  “No!” Fenton said sharply “Stand back!” Big Tom, hairy and puzzled, obeyed. “No other person shall drink of it, save one.” He made so imperious a gesture that Kitty ran to the table.

  “Now, slut!” Fenton added. “Drink as I did.”

  Kitty hesitated. Her eyes, wide open, searched his face. Suddenly she lifted the bowl, took a good drink of it too, and set it down. Then, arms folded, she backed towards what might (roughly) be called the kitchen sink.

  “Then it’s not poisoned,” thought Fenton, “or is it?”

  Tick went the slow heavy pendulum; an interminable time until again tick.

  Fenton was across the table from Kitty, who had leaned her back against the sink. Giles, in his sober black, stood not far from her; the complexion of his face, against the upstanding light-red hair, seemed almost green. Fenton dared not look at Lydia.

  “I fear,” he said, “we must wait some fifteen minutes or more, should the symptoms of pain come on.” He laughed. “Come: have you all a palsy on your chops? It’s none so bad as that! Sure someone can tell a merry tale, and divert us by its relation? If—”

  Big Tom, his iron poker ever ready, made another whacking leap and killed a rat.

  Everyone gave a start; and Big Tom seemed surprised and hurt when they glared at him. Only Lydia gave him a smile of approval. There was a long scuttle and scurry of rats. Big Tom dropped the rat into the drainpipe behind Kitty, who did not even look round.

  Tick; a pause that stretched out like elastic; tick.

  If nobody wished to speak of the matter, Fenton decided, they had best remain silent. Once more he examined the evidence.

  In that bowl, he felt convinced, there was arsenic. Judith Pamphlin, whom he did not like but whom he trusted, had sworn she had overseen the preparation of that bowl each day; and each day had carried it to Lydia, without being stopped or distracted.

  Very well. Then it must be in one of the ingredients, since nobody had tampered with them today. Unless, of course, the poisoner had given up for a few days, as had also happened. …

  Fenton’s gaze strayed round the room. He looked at the clock on the carry-all, slowly beating against eternity. He looked at the dishes, and at long wooden spoons. At the back of his mind there obtruded some bump of wrongness in this preparation of the sack posset; something left undone or unnoticed.

  Tick; and now the elastic seemed to stretch out until …

  Fourteen minutes. A dozen times purely imaginary pains racked up through him. But once more he glanced at the clock as well as the other implements. Then, like the tallow-soaked spindle of a tinder-box scratching across his mind, it flashed up in a blaze.

  “That’s it!” he cried out. “That’s how!”

  Hurrying to the carry-all, he picked up one of the long spoons. At the table again, he thrust the spoon into the whitish-yellow-brown mixture of the china bowl. Round and round he stirred it. Then he looked at Kitty.

  “Come here!”

  Kitty approached as though hypnotized.

  “Now drink of it!” said Fenton.

  “Nay, do thou go first!”

  “Drink it, damn ye! To the very dregs!”

  “I’ll not!”

  Fenton’s right hand swept to his sword grip. For the first time Kitty’s face was pale, a glaring pallor against mahogany-coloured hair which had begun to loosen round her head.

  “I’ll drink,” she muttered.

  Fenton stood away. Kitty, fastening her hands round the bowl, slowly raised it to her lips. Whereupon, with a lightning half-turn, she darted four steps and overturned the bowl’s contents down the drain. The china bowl smashed. Kitty bent over still further, her back to them.

  “Giles, give her the lash!”

  The steel-tipped thongs hissed. Fenton felt no qualm as they struck Kitty’s body, which was flung forwards still further. Small spots and lengths of blood became visible against the back of Kitty’s blouse, until
her heavy hair tumbled down her back and hid them.

  Releasing her grip, she sank face downwards against the heap of refuse under the sink.

  “No more!” Fenton said quietly. “Until we determine what must be done.”

  Going over to the cabinet near where Kitty had stood, he took out what had so suddenly appeared in her hand: a wrinkled and bulging twist of paper. Fenton pulled it open. Out on the table rolled about fifteen small pieces of loaf sugar.

  “Herein lies the simple secret,” he said. “I were dolt and Jack-fool not to have surprised it! I have told you, I think, that arsenic is a white powder. It is without taste or odour. D’ye take my meaning, Giles?”

  “Truly, sir! But …”

  “Prepare a very thick solution of arsenic in not too much water,” Fenton continued with disgust. “Dip your sugar loaf into this, taking care it shall be there only shortly; then it shall not even lose its shape, much less dissolve. Your arsenic is absorbed into it. If a white coating remain, this is not to be distinguished from the colour of the sugar.”

  He could see the superstitious awe of poison in their eyes as they moved back.

  “You have all seen the girl Kitty do what was done,” he added. “When she stirred the bowl with a knife (d’ye recall?), she stirred only milk and eggs. She had not yet thrown in the poisoned sugar lumps. At the end, she did not stir the sack posset. Thus …”

  “Stay, I have it!” exclaimed Giles. “The sugar lumps sink to the bottom and do not discharge their poison at once. Now I remember, you and the wench did drink immediately ’twas prepared. You drank from the top, as she must have known; and had no scathe.” Fenton nodded.

  “Giles,” he added, wrapping the lumps in the paper again, “I put these in your care. Guard them well. A dozen, taken all together, might well cause death. Here.”

  “Sir, I …” began Giles, hesitantly taking the twist of paper.

  Giles ran his tongue round dry lips. For all the suggestions and insinuations he had made that morning, it appeared he had not really believed them.

  “Why, then,” he blurted out, “this means matter for a magistrate. Sir, this means Tyburn Tree!”

  Kitty, in pain but still undefeated, slowly struggled to her feet and turned round.

  “Cuffin-quire, eh?” she screamed out, meaning a magistrate. “What I could tell to a cuffin-quire …!”

  Giles made a movement of the lash, but Fenton’s hand stopped him. Kitty was not looking at Fenton, or Giles, or any person except Lydia, but she looked undisguised hatred.

  Lydia, a girl of her time and generation, had not been in the least disturbed by anything she saw or heard or even smelt. Lydia had been sitting on the stair, on the step second from the foot, her elbows on her knees and her rounded chin in her hands. The silver sconce of three candles threw clear light on her claret-coloured gown, with the white and gold.

  Now Lydia raised her head, cheeks a little flushed and eyelids lowered. She was not in the least commanding or dominating; she could never be this, and never wished to be. She felt no particular dislike of Kitty for the attempted poisoning; such things happened; what would you have? What showed under her eyelids was a shrinking abhorrence of another woman.

  “If you mean,” said Lydia coldly, “the diamond ring you stole from me …”

  “Stole?” cried Kitty. “Th’ husband—”

  “You lie, for I saw you steal it. And truly ’tis mine, since you will find my name graved inside. But pray keep the ring. I would not wish to wear it again. Even a ring may become … soiled.”

  At this, to Fenton’s astonishment, Lydia turned on him a look almost of adoration.

  “Dear heart,” she added, “I have spoken because I must. Now do with her what you will.”

  All the servants were looking at Kitty, not pleasantly. Giles’s fingers tightened on the handle of the lash. Big Tom slowly tapped the heavy poker against his hand, considering it. Kitty’s eyes flashed round to each of them.

  “Give her …” Fenton began. He paused, half-sick. How could he tell what had been the doings of Sir Nick? “Give … no, curse it! I—I can’t have a woman flogged. Let be!”

  “Sir,” said Giles, “not far from here, in Hartshorn Lane off the Strand, there is a stern and upright justice named—”

  “No!” said Fenton, “I want no noise of scandal. Worse, I want none of your filthy hangings. Law or no, none is dead. Give her … give her a couple of guineas, and turn her into the street within the hour. She has a ring; she may keep it, as my wife desired. But she must not return. I apprehend we have dogs?”

  “Four mastiffs, sir, trained for short tempers and sharp teeth. Whiteboy, the terrier, hath distemper and cannot chase rats this night.”

  “That will do. Should she attempt to return, set the dogs on her. That is all. I bid you good night.”

  Lifting the silver candelabrum, he lighted Lydia’s way as she went before him up the steps. All four in the kitchen were struck dumb.

  They went to the ground floor, then slowly up the other stairs. Fenton, the light in his right hand, his other round Lydia, was in torture of more than one kind.

  “I would have given all I have,” he said wretchedly, “if you had not seen what passed down there.”

  He felt against him, rather than saw, Lydia’s astonishment.

  “Nick! Why, there I,” her voice sank, “most admired you. In two quarters of the clock, you found and tore out this poison-­secret like a buried evil thing which none else could see. And—and no master in London would have been so gentle in punishment.”

  “Lydia, as concerns that ring. I …”

  “Hush! I have forgot it.”

  “But I durst not explain myself. It was not I, not myself …”

  “And am I insensible of that? I know you—” Lydia’s soft voice trailed away, as they went up the rest of the stairs and down towards her room, and Lydia puzzled her head. “But I don’t know. Strange! Yet the one I love to madness is one I met last night, and partly in morning, and all this night. You are … no, I can’t tell!”

  “There is no need to tell.”

  Lydia sent a covert glance up and down the passage, as though to seek a lurking Judith Pamphlin, as they stood at the door.

  “Nick,” she whispered, “sure I have no need of a maid, have I? This gown is most facile to unfix; and the rest—well!” Lydia’s cheeks grew flushed, but her eyes were very bright and her speech more rapid. “Nick, Nick, need we trouble our heads with having supper, this night?”

  “No! No! No!”

  The door closed after them.

  And, in that house, presently all the lights went out. Towards the east, the vast old smoky huddle of roofs along the river had long been dark; most of its inhabitants went to bed at dusk, so that they might be awake by sunrise.

  But Lydia, and certainly Fenton, could no longer be restrained. They passed the night in a kind of fury and violence. Once it occurred to Fenton, in a vague kind of way, that the Puritan girl knew more than most; briefly he cursed his other soul, before it was swept away by different considerations. Near dawn, when both half-dozed towards an exhausted sleep, Lydia clasped him tightly and fell into a fit of sobbing. He was wise enough not to speak, and presently she slept.

  In a few moments he was asleep too. Birds bickered in the vines outside. A grey sky mingled with ghostly white. And so, from that night, they passed into the days of happiness.

  CHAPTER XI

  —AND THE GREEN HANDS BEGIN TO MOVE

  IN THE FIRST FORTNIGHT, while leaves deepened their green with the flush of May, Fenton learned many things.

  He learned to eat the food, mainly meat with heavy rich sauces, which his young digestion enjoyed. Vegetables you could have in moderation, potatoes, eggs, fish, and good cheese. Nobody, he noted in high pleasure, ever pestered you to eat vegetables for you
r health. Except for potatoes, he discarded them.

  He learned to drink, for a beginning, a quart of the heaviest wine without a fuddled head or a noticeable slur of speech. George Harwell marvelled at his sobriety, and swore he was a cursed reformed fellow. Their pronunciation, too, slid more easily to his tongue; he could (almost) speak without thinking.

  Tobacco smoking was easier. Though no pipe bowl, save a china one, makes hotter smoking than a clay, the Virginia tobacco was far better than he had expected. It crept up the long stem, deeply soothing to the lungs, without scraping off the roof of his mouth.

  Big Tom constructed a toothbrush for him, and another for Lydia, after a design which Fenton drew on paper and carefully explained six times. It was instantly understood by an alert stableboy­ named Dick, who tried to teach Big Tom. As the latter would sit pondering over the design, Dick would rush at him with bursting words, only to be sent flying head over heels into a bush with one sweep of Tom’s hand, while Tom continued to ponder.

  On occasion Tom would put the design on the ground and merely walk round it and study it from above. Fenton wondered whether he would ever get that infernal toothbrush.

  But this came later. It is regrettable to state that almost his first official order to the household caused tumult and near-riot.

  The tumult occurred on May 13th, only one day after he had gone to see Sir John Gilead regarding a cellar half-full of sewage. George, who came to dinner on the previous night, explained the matter.

  “Why,” exclaimed George, “where in all this is the difficulty? A small thing of bribery; no more.”

  Fenton, more as a historian that a householder, tested certain matters he knew to be true.

  “I must bribe everybody, then?”

  “Not shops or tradespeople, scratch me! But if it becomes inside the matter of a favour, or a preferment, or some work in control of a Whitehall office, too low for higher name … why, then, plump your money on the table in a bag, and have done with it!”

  “An honest practical matter, then?”