The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 3 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  He seemed to be at an impasse. Someone had given Zack poison, and the most likely person to have done it was a member of the household. Temple couldn’t imagine anyone in the family doing such a thing, and certainly the slaves had no reason to kill an abolitionist. He could see Tobias Coutts wanting to do away with Zack, perhaps even one of the slave traders. But would they have gone to the trouble of sneaking into the house and administering poison? Perhaps, if they wished the death to seem natural. Some time during the night, someone had slipped the stuff into that teapot. He’d asked who had brought it, but no one remembered. Zack’s sudden illness had confused everyone. Aunt Matilda said most likely it was one of the housemaids. She’d seen the tray resting on the table beside the bedroom door the evening before Zack died, and early the next morning it had been in the room. In between, someone had brought it in to Zack.

  Temple realized that lots of people had gone in and out of Zack’s room, so anyone might have slipped the poison into the pot. Come to think of it, he supposed an outsider could have come up the outside stairs, walked along the veranda and slipped through the open window in Zack’s room. If he’d waited until everyone was asleep, he could have slipped the mixture into the teapot in darkness. He might even have awoken his victim and fed the stuff to him, pretending to be Dr Benson or Henley, or one of the brothers.

  “Mighty unlikely,” Temple said to himself. He could see Tobias Coutts taking a bullwhip to Zack, but not sneaking around with poison. But how could he know for sure? Those slave traders had been furious enough to try to beat Zack to death, so maybe one of them decided to get rid his tormentor for good. There was no help for it. He would have to visit Coutts and the traders and see if he could weasel out of them where they were when Zack got sick. He didn’t hold much hope of success, because even the dimmest of them would have enough sense to claim that he was home in bed. Temple was getting to his feet when Clemency came out of the house and marched over to him.

  “Have you finished prying into everyone’s affairs?” she asked. Her normally pale skin looked paper white against the black bombazine of her mourning gown.

  “Now, Cousin Clem. Your pa asked me to look into things.”

  “It’s absurd! No one killed Zachariah. It was the head wound that did him in.”

  “I don’t think –”

  “Indeed,” Clem snapped. “You don’t think. If you continue to root around and ask offensive questions, you’ll cause talk. I’m sure the servants have already gossiped about your suspicions to the neighbours’ help.” Clemency’s voice rose. “Haven’t I suffered enough what with Zack causing a scandal and then dying? Now I’m stuck in black for months and months, and I won’t be able to have a season in Washington like Mama promised.”

  She stopped, having run out of breath, and glared at Temple.

  “Hellfire, Clem. I never realized what a selfish little ninny you are.”

  Clemency narrowed her eyes and poked him with a forefinger. “It’s all right for you to talk, Temple Forbes. You have a place in the world. If I don’t get a husband, I have no place. There’s no choice for me. You hear? You had a choice.” Clem sneered at him. “Let me see. Shall I be a planter, a lawyer, a merchant? No, I think I’ll be a rancher. Good for you. But how many choices do I have? One – to get married. And nothing is going to stop me from doing it!”

  Whirling around in a cloud of black skirts, Clem stalked back to the house. His mouth open, Temple watched her leave. His cousin seemed possessed, as fanatical about getting herself married as Zack had been about abolition. Not having a beau must be driving her crazy.

  “How crazy?” he muttered. Glancing around, Temple found that the sun had almost set. Time to get ready for dinner.

  Early the next morning Temple rode west of town several miles until he came to the Coutts farm. The big house was a ramshackle clapboard affair with a front porch, a poor relation to the grand, classically inspired plantation houses of more fortunate Virginians. Temple knocked on the front door, but there was no answer. He glanced around at the well and the sparse lawn. To his left lay a fenced chicken house, but no chickens pecked in the dirt outside. In fact, the whole place was eerily silent.

  Leaving his horse tethered in front, he strode around back to the barn. The doors were closed, but not barred. Temple shoved one aside and entered into darkness. There were no animals inside; the cows must have been let out to graze.

  “Hello?”

  Silence reigned, and nothing moved. There was hay in the loft, and wooden storage boxes. Beams of sunlight shone through a high window. Temple walked to the ladder up to the loft and paused to see if he could hear anything, but there was nothing to hear. He’d never heard such silence on a farm. It was beginning to make him edgy. No chickens, cows, horses, not even a dog. He was about to return to the house when he heard a faint squeak. Turning sharply, Temple searched the darkness beyond the ladder. He wished now he’d brought his gun, but there was no help for it. He edged into the shadows and stopped to give his eyes a chance to adjust. There it was again, a faint but unmistakable squeak. Then he saw it. The body hung from a rope thrown over the rafters and was swinging gently.

  “Damnation!” Temple rushed to it and tried to lift it to relieve the weight on the neck, but he quickly realized that it was too late.

  He struck a match and stepped back. The unsteady light revealed the swollen features of Tobias Coutts, his neck snapped. The beam from which he’d leaped rested far above Temple’s head. A quick inspection of the area around the body revealed no traces of anyone but Coutts, and it seemed obvious that the man had done away with himself. Yet there was no note from him. Temple left the barn and shut its doors, then went back to the house. This time he tried the door, but it wouldn’t open. He looked inside through a window and saw a cold hearth, rough wooden chairs and a table. There was no sign that Coutts had left a note.

  It took him several hours to report to the authorities and make a statement to their satisfaction. By the time he finished it was well after closing time at the slave markets, and he was starving. Temple went back to the Jessop house, scrounged something to eat from Cook and then joined the family for lemonade in the garden. He took Henley aside and told him about Tobias Coutts.

  “Dear God. The bastard killed my Zachariah and then himself.” Henley sank to a chair beside a bed of roses. “Dear God.”

  “Now, Uncle Henley, I’m not sure that’s what happened.”

  “Of course that’s what happened. He hated my son and killed him. Then he was overcome with guilt and did away with himself.” Henley kept shaking his head over and over.

  “It looked like he was selling everything he had,” Temple said. “Maybe he just couldn’t face ruination.”

  “And he wanted to take Zack with him.”

  “Maybe.”

  The two of them contemplated the idea while they watched the family. Laurietta, Clemency and Odette were cutting flowers. Ensconced on a quilt beneath an oak tree, Hezekiah read aloud to his wife and Oram from the Richmond newspapers. Temple could hear a scathing condemnation of Abraham Lincoln. Old Hez never read pro-Republican articles. Beyond the oak tree and a border of oleanders the gardener was trimming bushes. Smoke rose from the kitchen where dinner was being prepared.

  “Joshua Pendleton and Langdon Shaw came by this afternoon to pay a condolence call,” Henley said. “Of course, they weren’t really sorry Zachariah was dead.”

  “I’m going to talk to them tomorrow.”

  Henley left his chair and went over to the group on the quilt. Temple seated himself in the vacant chair as his uncle told the family about Tobias Coutts. Soon the ladies left their flower cutting and joined them. Temple was deep in thought, wondering if the farmer’s death was connected to Zack’s. A shadow fell over him, and he looked up to see Clemency standing before him with a basket of roses and azaleas. The perfume of the blossoms was heavy in the warm air.

  “Well, Temple. Looks like all your interfering was useless. Tobias Coutt
s killed my brother.” Clem’s pale eyebrows were arched, and she pressed her thin lips together.

  “I’m not so sure,” Temple said as he rose and offered his cousin the chair. The scent from her basket grew stronger, and his gaze fixed on it.

  Shaking her head, Clemency went on. “You’re just mad because you don’t get to snoop around any more. Hez said you’d probably be leaving soon. Why don’t you go tomorrow?”

  “Now, Clem, that’s not nice, trying to push a fella out of the house he was invited to stay in.” Temple took her basket and toyed with a rose. “Besides, I’m not done inquiring into things yet.”

  Odette and Hezekiah joined them in time to hear Temple.

  “Not done?” Odette said. “If you don’t quit prying, the whole town will discover what happened to Cousin Zachariah.”

  Hezekiah stuck his hands in his pockets and frowned. “She’s right, Temple. Justice has been done, after a fashion. There’s no sense in exposing the family to ugly gossip.”

  “If the truth gets out, my future is doomed, and I shall die of shame!” Clemency fled, leaving everyone embarrassed at her outburst.

  The rest of the family was heading his way, so Temple excused himself quickly and retreated to his room, carrying the basket with him. He set it on the bed and lifted first one rose and then another, smelling each blossom. Once all the roses were out of the basket, he sniffed again. This time he picked up a few crushed leaves that had fallen beneath the azalea branches that remained in the basket. Holding the leaves to his nose, he inhaled, swore and dropped them. Then he began to pace. He had to think. Who would have thought about azaleas? Pretty, pink, innocent, they were all over the south. They’d been right in front of him the whole time, only he had been looking for a plant, not a bush.

  “Azalea leaves, damn it to hell.”

  Now that he knew the source of the poison, Temple spent the remaining time before dinner trying to sort out what else he knew about Zack’s death. It wasn’t much, and he was afraid whoever killed his cousin was going to get away with it. The thought sent him into a black, foul mood that lifted only when Aunt Laurietta sent a maid up with a dinner tray and a note. It said that she thought he would better enjoy his meal away from her anxious and contentious family. Silently thanking his aunt, he ate his meal in peace.

  Although he was spared the ordeal of facing his cousins’ ire, Temple remained sleepless far into the night. He went over and over the events of the last few days – hauling Zack away from the slave market, suddenly finding his cousin deathly ill, the family rushing in and out of the sickroom. The only people who hadn’t gone near Zack were Odette and Hez’s wife. The parents were hardly under suspicion, but Temple wasn’t so sure about Oram or Hezekiah. Like his wife, Oram was extremely fond of social acceptance and had a morbid fear of appearing unusual. Clemency was even worse with her extreme fear of spinsterhood. Hezekiah had always been jealous of Zack, and his antipathy toward his younger brother had increased the more Henley tried to rescue his youngest son from his follies. The fact that his father had done everything he could for Zack in spite of his scandalous conduct had only fed Hez’s anger. Could he believe that Hez or Clem would kill Zack? Then there were the outsiders, Coutts, Pendleton and Shaw. Temple still thought it unlikely that any of them would have done away with his cousin.

  Temple finally fell asleep contemplating his next course of action. He would go over the house and garden looking for traces of the azalea preparation. Then he’d go and talk to the slave traders, but he didn’t think that would do much good. The answer to this miserable puzzle was somewhere close by. Temple suspected he’d missed something important in spite of his discovery of the azalea poison. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t think what that might be.

  He dreamed that Zack was standing at the foot of the bed preaching at him. Then Uncle Henley and Aunt Laurietta appeared, pleading, scolding, begging him to do something. Unable to bear the torment, he rose from the bed and floated out the window, hiding behind an oleander bush while everyone tried to find him. The slaves joined in the hunt, and suddenly Augustus turned and pointed at the oleander.

  “There he be, Mister Hez!”

  Possessed with a strange and unreasoning fear, Temple watched the family and slaves alike come running for him. Suddenly he knew he had to get away. He’d hide in the kitchen! Temple woke abruptly to find that he’d somehow jumped out of bed. He stumbled and dropped back onto the bed, gasping for air. He was perspiring, and his hands were shaking. Why? He sat still, recalling the images that had forced him from sleep.

  “Oh. Oh, Lord Almighty.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand as he finally realized what his mind had been chewing on for days. “Oh, no.”

  A few minutes later Temple had washed and dressed and was moving quietly through the dark house. He descended the stairs and paused as he noticed that a stiff wind was blowing through the open windows in the drawing room. The white, frothy curtains billowed and danced. The whole house had cooled down, a welcome relief from the constant heat. Closing his eyes for a moment, Temple turned his face to the breeze and heard a faint sound. Turning quickly, he searched the black shadows. He decided the noise had come from the warming kitchen.

  He was grateful for the carpet that ran down the long hall toward the back of the house. It enabled him to slip quietly up to the door to the warming kitchen. He listened for a moment, then opened the door a crack. The place was empty. Temple went in and glanced around, noting that here the windows had been left open too. He was going to leave when he spotted the door to Laurietta’s medicine cabinet. It was hanging ajar. Drawing closer, Temple could see in the dim moonlight that the lock had been forced. He looked inside, one of the bottles was missing, but it was too dark to see which one.

  A creaking sound drew him across the warming kitchen and through a side door. A short passage led to a bedroom, and the door there wasn’t shut and was swinging in the breeze. Temple shook his head, dreading what he would find beyond that door. He gave it a push and stepped into the room.

  “What did you take?” he asked

  “Belladonna and some other things.”

  Temple glanced down at the floor and saw a medicine bottle.

  “I’ll get the doc –”

  “Too late. No use.”

  Drawing closer, he felt his heart nearly break. Aunt Matilda was fully dressed and laying atop her narrow bed, hands folded across her chest. She was watching him calmly by the light of a candle beside her bed. He sat on a stool next to her.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked quietly.

  “You was goin’ ta figure it out soon. I knew the Lord would send someone to make a reckoning. I just didn’t know it would be you, child. How you find out it was me?”

  “This evening I smelled the azalea cuttings in Miss Clemency’s basket and realized they were the source of the poison. But that got me no closer to figuring out who killed Zack. Until I finally realized there were plenty of more efficient poisons than azalea for the killer to use. Unless the killer didn’t have access to them. The only people who couldn’t get hold of something from an apothecary would be a slave. It’s illegal for slaves to have poisons. I wasn’t sure it was you until I came downstairs and found . . .”

  “You a smart boy, Mister Temple.”

  “But why, Aunt Matilda?”

  “That Zachariah was gonna get my boys to run away. Can’t have my boys run off and get caught by the patrollers, maybe get kilt. Patrollers chasin’ my babies, and them dogs tearing at ’em. What happens when they’s caught? Whipped to the bone. Whipped to the bone. And Master Zachariah wouldn’t listen to me when I tole him to stop giving my boys money so’s they could sneak off.” Matilda’s words were beginning to slur. “Keep my fam’ly together. Fought my whole life to keep ’em with me. Not like when I got sold away. Jus’ a little girl. Sold away from my mamma and papa. Cried ’til there weren’t no more tears.” Matilda’s eyes closed.

  “Oh, Aunt Matilda, y
ou should have gone to Mr Jessop.”

  “He never did no good when it came to Master Zack. Only way to be sure. Keep my boys safe ’til freedom come. Ain’t long now. The Lord will see us free. He gonna forgive this sinner. Ain’t he?”

  “Yes, he will,” Temple said. Aunt Matilda smiled and took a deep sighing breath. It had been no more than a few minutes, but Temple was sure she was now in a deep sleep from which she would never awaken.

  He was never sure how long he sat beside Matilda before he discovered she was no longer breathing, but eventually he left the room and closed the door. He went back to his own room and undressed. He lay on the bed, eyes open, staring at the ceiling.

  In the morning someone would discover Aunt Matilda, and there would be shock and confusion again. He hoped no one would connect her death with Zack’s. Knowing the Jessops, Temple doubted if they would inquire too closely into the matter. If he told the truth, he would only make things harder for the other slaves by sowing distrust between them and the Jessops. Henley might panic and sell them. The Jessop slaves had lived in Virginia all their lives. It was their home.

  What a horror. To have to choose between murder and losing one’s children. Sinful, that a good woman like Matilda should be placed in a position like that. Slavery did that. It corrupted and destroyed.

  “I’m going back to the ranch,” he muttered. If he pushed it, he could be home in a little over two weeks.

  Running away wouldn’t do much good, though. The election was coming up, and with it a showdown between north and south. And then slavery would do its work again – corrupt and destroy – only this time it would be a nation.

  Poisoned with Politeness

  Gillian Linscott

  Gillian Linscott is the author of the much applauded series featuring suffragette and amateur sleuth, Nell Bray, which began with Sister Beneath the Sheet (1991). The eighth book in that series, Absent Friends (1999), won both the Ellis Peters Award and the Herodotus as that year’s best historical mystery novel. But Gillian, a former journalist and BBC Parliamentary reporter, did start another historical series which, for pressure of other commitments, she did not continue and completed only two stories. It featured the journalist Thomas Ludlow and his less than reputable horse trader Harry Leather. The first of the series was “Wingless Pegasus” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 1996). Here’s the second.