Enough to Kill a Horse (10 page)

‘Quiet,’ Basil said. ‘We don’t actually know that it was the lobster. But even if it was, we’re quite sure it wasn’t your fault.’ He turned back to Dr McLean. ‘Aren’t we?’

‘Yes, yes,’ the doctor said uneasily. ‘In any case, it’s very puzzling, if, as you say, the taste was so markedly unpleasant. It’s possible, of course, that Sir Peter’s sense of taste was defective. That can happen. In fact, it sounds the most probable explanation of the circumstances. I wish, all the same, that you had some of the scraps left over. And the glass that he drank out of, I’d have liked to have that. But that got washed up too, I suppose.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Basil said.

‘It’s a pity. It might have simplified things later.’

‘Yes.’ Basil’s hand had shifted from Fanny’s shoulder to her head, and was gently smoothing her ruffled grey hair, which seemed to have a soothing effect upon her, but his eyes had not left the doctor’s. ‘McLean, just what are you so scared of?’

Dr McLean started slightly. ‘Scared?’ he said. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s the word for it. Yes, I’m very scared. But I don’t think I ought to say any more about it until I know more. That’s why I wanted to talk to you quite privately. I’d hoped you might be able to tell me something … But you can’t, so that doesn’t help.’

‘In other words,’ Basil said, ‘what’s on your mind is something quite different from ordinary food poisoning. You don’t believe there was anything wrong with the lobster itself.’

‘Of course there wasn’t,’ Fanny cried, suddenly jerking her head away from Basil’s hand. ‘I’ve told you, it was something I put into it, or spilled over it. It was my doing, it was my fault.’

Dr McLean shook his head. It was a gesture of weariness and helplessness rather than of negation.

‘At any rate, would you do something for me, my dear?’ he said. ‘Don’t go around saying that – not yet. And don’t – don’t tell anyone that I’ve been asking you these questions. I only came to ask them because I thought that – well, if we run into difficulties, it might have been helpful to know certain things.’

‘I think you’re trying to tell us that you hoped you might be able to keep us out of trouble,’ Basil said. ‘We’re very grateful.’

The doctor shrugged. ‘I may be all wrong, remember. It’s been a pretty bad night and I may be worrying unduly. But just tell me one thing – that bad taste, you’re sure it was bitter?’

‘Yes,’ Basil said.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Dr McLean said with a sigh as he got up to go. ‘I can’t think why it should have been bitter.’

As he went out, Spike jumped up at him exuberantly, in ill-timed delight at seeing an old friend. The doctor tugged absently at the dog’s ears, then, out in the garden, turned once more to Basil, who was following him to the gate.

‘Really,’ he said, ‘don’t let her go around saying it was her fault. You know how rumours can start.’

Basil nodded. ‘I just wanted to thank you,’ he said. ‘Fanny’s too upset to think of it. And I wanted to ask you, how long it will be before you know?’

‘A few days.’

‘And if you’re right?’

Dr McLean gave the same headshake, the same tired, defeated gesture as he had given a few minutes before.

‘Then it’s out of my hands, you know. At the very least, it’ll mean a good deal of unpleasantness.’ He made an attempt to summon his usual cheerfulness. ‘There’s no point in your worrying before it happens, anyway. It isn’t as if I can make any sense of the situation. Bitter. It really shouldn’t have been bitter. That doesn’t make sense.’

Looking a little brighter, he walked off quickly to his car.

Basil waited a moment, looking after him, then went slowly back into the house.

He found Fanny still sitting in the little office, her elbows on the desk in front of her and her head in her hands. Her eyes were still swimming and her breathing sounded as if she had a bad cold.

‘Come along,’ Basil said, ‘let’s have some breakfast.’

She nodded but did not stand up.

‘Basil, what
is
he specially afraid of?’ she asked.

He hesitated, then answered in a low voice, ‘Arsenic, I think.’

‘
Arsenic?’
she nearly screamed. ‘He thinks I gave that poor old man
arsenic?’

‘No,’ Basil said. ‘But he’s horribly afraid somebody did. Now let’s go and get the breakfast.’

She was frowning. ‘But arsenic isn’t bitter. I thought it was tasteless.’

‘That’s what’s worrying him.’

‘The awfully bitter thing is strychnine, isn’t it?’

‘Yes – strychnine’s bitter.’

‘But the symptoms would be quite different.’

‘Very different.’

‘And we’ve no arsenic in the house – or strychnine.’

‘I sincerely hope not.’

Still frowning, she got slowly to her feet. She took a step towards the door, then suddenly reached out a hand to Basil and clasped one of his.

‘I think I’m rather frightened,’ she said.

With a sigh he said, ‘These things shouldn’t happen to one before one’s had breakfast, should they?’

‘I know, I know – I’m coming,’ she said. ‘Though I couldn’t eat anything myself.’

‘And remember,’ he said, ‘when the others come down, don’t tell them all you killed Sir Peter with arsenic. Don’t tell them anything except that he’s dead.’

‘I’ll try …’ She gave a shiver. ‘But I’m not very good at hiding things, am I? And I
am
frightened. I’m getting more and more frightened every moment.’

She went out to the kitchen, and with an occasional tear still running down her cheeks, put the kettle to boil and switched on the hot plates.

She had just made the tea, a few pieces of toast and boiled an egg for Basil, when Laura came down. It was almost shocking to Fanny to see Laura’s cheerful face. It was a reminder that Laura, Clare and Kit would all have to be told of Sir Peter’s death, a fact which Fanny, immersed in her own distress and mounting terror, had been forgetting.

Laura showed no signs this morning of having suffered from a bad headache. She looked fresh and lovely. She was wearing a simple dress of pale green jersey and flat-heeled country shoes, and with only a very little make-up on her face, looked younger and brighter than she had the day before. Seeing Fanny’s blotched and tear-streaked face, she at once showed startled concern.

‘Why, what’s the matter?’ she said, her voice warm and kind. ‘Whatever’s happened?’

Fanny told her that Sir Peter was dead.

Laura gave a little gasp and said that she was terribly sorry to hear it.

Fanny genuinely had intended to tell her no more than that simple fact, but at that point a new thought struck her and she exclaimed, ‘And how lucky you were to have that headache yesterday, because if you hadn’t … But of course you wouldn’t have eaten the stuff like he did, so you’d have been all right. No one else ate it, and why he should have when it tasted so horrible … But I suppose we’ll never understand that now. How is the headache, by the way?’

‘Quite gone, thank you,’ Laura answered. ‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I was about it yesterday. It isn’t often I get such bad ones as that, but when I do I’m quite helpless. But I am awfully sorry. To have it happen the very first time we met … What did you mean, though, about its being lucky? I don’t think I understood.’

‘Lucky you didn’t try to eat the lobster that killed the Poulter man,’ Fanny said, beginning to cry again. ‘But it’s all right, it wouldn’t have harmed you, because you wouldn’t have gone on eating it like he did. Everyone else left theirs, thank God! I’m not a mass murderer. But if only I knew what I’d done!’

Laura looked at her thoughtfully. She decided apparently that Fanny, in her present condition, was not likely to be able to tell a coherent story about Sir Peter’s death, so giving a little murmur of sympathy, Laura merely waited.

After a moment, Fanny went on, ‘And I made the lobster things on purpose for you, and now I don’t suppose I’ll ever make them again.’

‘Then there was something wrong with the lobster, was there?’ Laura asked. ‘He died of food poisoning?’

‘Yes,’ Fanny said quickly. ‘Food poisoning.’

‘How really terrible for you,’ Laura said. ‘Or rather, for whoever sold you the lobster, because that’s the person who’s really to blame. It’s often terribly difficult to guess that shellfish isn’t fresh, and some people ought never to eat it anyway, however much they like it. I expect Sir Peter was really one of those. I’m sure you shouldn’t blame yourself at all.’

Fanny gave her a grateful glance. ‘It’s nice of you to say that. But I feel awful –
awful
! I never knew one could feel as awful as I feel.’

‘Of course you feel awful. Anyone would. But still I’m certain you aren’t to blame,’ Laura said firmly.

Fanny started to say something but a fresh gush of tears stopped her. These tears were caused, not by the thought of Sir Peter’s death, but by a sudden sense of intense gratitude to fate for having found Kit such a really nice, good, kind wife. It felt wonderfully soothing to let these tears pour for a moment. Then Fanny came round the kitchen table and embraced Laura.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That’s made me feel better. Lots better. Now tell me what you’d like for breakfast.’

‘I’m ravenous,’ Laura said simply.

Fanny, again all gratitude, felt that in the circumstances this was the kindest and most tactful answer possible.

A little while later she told the whole story again to Kit and then to Clare. With Kit Fanny spoke only briefly, for as soon as he had grasped the central fact that Sir Peter Poulter had died in the night, probably as a result of having eaten the lobster that Fanny had cooked, he went to Basil for the details of the story. But Clare questioned Fanny closely and lengthily. She discarded at once Fanny’s faltering statement that presumably the lobster had not been fresh and asked her what it was that she really feared.

This Clare did partly because of the rather curious thing that she had found Fanny doing when she came into the kitchen.

Fanny, standing with her back to the door and unaware that she was being watched, had been taking down tins and bottles from a shelf, opening each in turn, jabbing a finger into its contents, then licking the finger. Clare stood and watched her for a moment, seeing Fanny shake her head several times and once hearing her mutter, ‘No, that
isn’t
bitter.’

‘So you’re conducting a post-mortem on the lobster, are you?’ Clare said when she heard that.

Fanny turned with an exclamation.

‘Post-mortem!’ she cried. ‘Post-mortem! Lord, why did you have to say just that, of all things? That’s what they’ve got to do.’

After that Clare got the rest of the story easily.

Its effect on her appeared to be slight, except that her face became a little paler and more rigid than usual. Her quick, probing questions hastened the telling of the story. But when Fanny in her turn asked a question, Clare merely gave her a severe glance, turned on her heel and walked out of the kitchen.

Fanny’s question had been: ‘Why
were
you so keen on getting to know him, Clare?’

Her refusal to answer did not much disturb Fanny. She knew Clare far too well to imagine that she could make her say anything that she did not want to say, and since Clare had already refused to answer this question, Fanny had hardly expected to obtain any information now. Turning back to the cupboard, she went on taking out tins of spices, packets of cake mixture and blancmanges and dried herbs, opening them, thrusting a fingertip inside, tasting. Anything which had been within her reach the day before and which, in a truly exaggerated fit of absentmindedness, she might have put into the sauce in which she had cooked the lobster, she tasted. But nothing in the cupboard tasted other than how it should have tasted. Nothing tasted unduly bitter.

Clare and Laura returned to London in the afternoon. Clare had a rooted objection to driving in the dark, and in spite of the persuasions of Fanny and Basil, she insisted on leaving them soon after lunch. She always allowed herself far longer than she needed for any journey, still feeling in her heart, after many years of driving, that she was not really capable of inducing her car to arrive at her destination.

But the persuasions that day had not been very pressing. Even Kit, who suggested to Laura that she should stay the night and let Basil drive her back to London early the next morning, seemed almost relieved when she shook her head and said that she would travel with Miss Forwood.

Kit and Laura had been out for a walk together during the morning. It was a fine morning, with the sky a little hazy, suggesting that the sun would shine brightly later and with the soft, exciting sense of spring in the air. Yet when Kit and Laura returned they were both quiet and subdued. Whether this was a gesture of deference on their part to death and to Fanny’s brooding misery, or whether it was simply the house and the presence of other people that affected them in this way, Clare did not know, but she noticed a half-smothered irritability develop in Kit, an air of feeling deeply though confusedly resentful at the way that life was treating him.

Laura took an affectionate farewell of Fanny, who responded vaguely. She seemed to be hardly aware of the girl, or of Clare or Kit. Though she clung to Basil, as if he were the only person who could help her to face her own thoughts, she spent a good deal of time in a frowning silence, with the look of someone who was struggling with some problem that was quite beyond her mental capacity.

In the car on the way back to London, Laura remarked, ‘Fanny is a wonderful person, isn’t she? But isn’t it curious how different people are from what one expects? Kit had given me a completely wrong idea of her, yet I suppose he thought he was telling me the truth.’

‘In what way was it wrong?’ Clare asked.

‘Well, I never thought she’d be such a – such a simple sort of person,’ Laura said.

‘She isn’t simple at all,’ Clare replied.

‘Oh, I think she is – a really good-hearted, simple person. I liked her even more than I thought I was going to.’

‘She
is
good-hearted,’ Clare said.

‘It’s a tremendous load off my mind,’ Laura went on, ‘that we got on so well, even in those terrible circumstances, because, you know, until we met, I was just a little afraid that … well, that I should have to have a fight with her. And that would have been a pity.’