Murder in Pug's Parlour (11 page)

‘
Was! Was ist das
?’ The Prince was startled out of his phlegm. ‘But why is this? He died in his room, this servant, yes?’

‘But we think the poison might have been in the brandy. And the brandy bottle was left unattended in the morning-room that morning until His Grace gave it to Greeves. It – er – puts us in a difficult position, Your – er – Highness,’ said Naseby, suddenly remembering to whom he was speaking. ‘Did you see it there, Your Highness?’

This was not as diplomatic as it might have been.

The Prince was a little offended. That was clear. ‘
Nein
, Inspector, I did not see a brandy bottle in the morning-room. Nor,’ his tone was mild, but cold, ‘if I had would I have poisoned it. In Germany it is not considered polite to poison one’s host. In your country I am a guest, as well as in
this house. I would remind you of that, Inspector.’

The inspector was profuse in a flurry of apologies and denials. The Prince had not understood, had misunderstood, it was only he might assist—

‘Might have noticed a few details,’ put in Bladon helpfully, but earning a glare from his superior. The Prince accepted the apologies graciously with a smile, but they were still aware of an undercurrent of displeasure. Nevertheless he consented to continue.

‘My movements that morning, Inspector? I go to the shoot at ten-fifteen, the first drive is at ten forty-five. You see, I have a good memory,
ja
? You can check with my loader, but I think I took twelve pheasants and two brace of partridge. This is not a bad score, gentlemen.’

There were hasty murmurs of approval.

‘The second drive was at eleven-twenty. After the drive I compare the score with my loader, and return with the others to the gunroom. In the gunroom I discuss one of the guns which does not shoot well. I return to the house. I remove my boots. I go to change. I attend luncheon.’

There seemed little more to be said.

François was not so precise or so informative. Particularly as the inspector saw no need to be particularly gentle with someone who was both French and a sort of servant.

‘
Non, Inspecteur
, I did not see the bottle of brandy.’ His voice was almost a whisper.

‘Did you know it was there, sir?’ Naseby was congratulating himself on his masterly control of the situation.

‘I – er – yes,
oui
, knew. I have been to the Towers before, and I was there for the New Year when the Duke invited Madame la Marquise to the ball—’ His voice tailed off.

Francois, unhappily wondering whether honesty were the
best policy, recounted his somewhat vague movements in returning from the shoot. He made such a confusion of it that Naseby saw a gleam of hope. The Stockbery case might soon be solved.

The trouble was, he could not, for the life of him, see why a French secretary should want to poison either the Duke or his steward.

The ladies were even less precise in recollection of their movements. Honoria and Laetitia smiled sweetly and vouchsafed that they were only conscious of its being time to dress for luncheon – their second outfit of the day, or third if they had accompanied the shoot. In fact that Monday none had. Her Grace had spent the time in the morning-room, and no, she informed Naseby frostily, she had not noticed a bottle of brandy. Mrs Hartham had been in her room, the Marquise in the library. Lady Jane was even more circumspect, a faint flush of annoyance on her cheeks. When pressed nervously by the inspector, she said shortly that she had been walking in the grounds – it was such a nice day. Had she met anybody? It transpired she had met Mr Marshall. Mr Marshall had left the shoot. She had been intending to go to watch the drive, but Mr Marshall had detained her. A certain grimness entered her voice.

By Monday evening only the Prince, Mrs Hartham, Lord Arthur, the Marquise and Francois and Walter Marshall remained. The Friday to Monday visitors had departed in a frou-frou of baggage and carriages for Hollingham Halt station, whence the train would bear them exhausted back to London for a few more days of energetic social life, before another quiet two days in the countryside. On this occasion they were torn between reluctance at leaving the
scene of such excitement and anticipation of the delightful tales they could tell in London. Left behind, the resident shooting party – requested to remain for the inquest thus removing their freedom of choice – settled down uneasily. An inquest, summoned for the Tuesday in order not to inconvenience the Duke’s guests longer than was essential, offered both diversion and uncertainty. The death had, at first, been the subject of superior banter but the intrusion of the investigation, however apologetically, to their side of the dividing door suggested an unwelcome note of reality.

As one batch of guests departed, another arrived, to enter by different doors. His Grace had given orders that Greeves’ relatives – it had been news to the staff that he had a family – should be shown every consideration. As the donkey carts brought their passengers up to the kitchen court entrance, the upper servants lined up with due ceremony and respect to greet them. In Mrs Hankey’s room a special tea was laid out. The guest rooms in the servants’ quarters were now to be filled with aliens who would be unaccustomed to the etiquette of the servants’ wing. The upper servants therefore waited uneasily. Auguste need not have been there, but he was curious to see evidence of Greeves’ other life. Few upper servants had one. Servants at their level were not expected to have sexual requirements, or if they did they should be sublimated in their job. Yet somehow, he was amazed to see, Greeves had managed to collect two cartloads of family mourners.

First to step down and sweep into the hall, handkerchief at her eyes, was a woman in her mid-forties with sharp black eyes and a firm fat figure that spoke of determination rather than pliability.

‘I want to know what’s been going on here,’ she stated without demur, disregarding the carefully rehearsed speeches of condolence.

Mrs Hankey attempted to regain the initiative. ‘And you are?’

The woman stared at her scornfully, eyeing her up and down. ‘Mrs Greeves. Mrs Archibald Greeves. Widow.’

Widow! There was a strangled screech from May Fawcett. Mrs Hankey paled. Auguste laughed. Edith Hankey heard him. With common silent assent, she and May Fawcett moved closer together. The ranks had closed.

‘Raise the coffin.’

Slowly, with infinite care and two pairs of eyes fixed in devotion, they placed their hands upon it. There was a small gasp from the scullery maid, her mind still on the murder, not on her work.

Auguste held his breath. Even now, after all this time, a simple thing like this had the power to move him. It was a work of art, in which he and his assistants had striven together to produce something that would disappear without trace within twenty-four hours, without a moment’s thought for the labour and the love its creation had entailed.

‘Now, Joseph.’

Slowly, nervously, Joseph Benson extracted the large earthenware jar that filled the coffin-crust, one of a long line of similar crusty products awaiting his attention on the scrubbed deal table. The pie could now be filled. Pork, partridge, pheasant – the stuffings had already been carefully prepared, seasoned with all the subtleties of an English herb garden.

The Duke, to the annoyance of his gamekeeper – and his kitchen staff – had decreed another shooting party, with a picnic lunch, in the interests of keeping his guests diverted. A simple picnic, attended, of course, by ten servants in full regalia, could be guaranteed to amuse the ladies also. Even the Marquise seemed disposed to attend. By such
divertissements, when Tuesday arrived, the inquest itself appeared merely another entertainment laid on for their benefit.

The private room of the Drivers Arms, the largest room that could be disposed, for inquests were few and far between in Hollingham, took on an unaccustomed sombreness for the occasion. The last inquest with a jury had been over the old bones found in Amos Pickering’s Three Hump Field and that had been an anticlimax when it was discovered they were a cow’s after all. This one boded more excitement for onlookers. Even the familiar sight of Bill Bunch, the landlord, torn between his desire to make the most of the additional trade and his curiosity in the proceedings failed to still the nervousness in the upper servants as they took their specified places ten minutes before the appointed hour of eleven.

The arrival of the Duke’s party partly dispelled the gloom. Gone were the severe dark walking suits donned by the ladies for accompanying their menfolk to the shoot. The ladies had decided this was a social occasion. Set off by furs, feathers and daring hats, silks and velvets replaced their tweeds and wafts of scent as alien to the Drivers Arms as mint to a Frenchman’s garden. Though their sense of occasion did not permit the gentry to smile, not a heart present but was not lightened by the sight of the ladies’ soft lovely faces. Impossible to imagine that any would sully those lily-white hands with murder.

The array of hats bobbing above the aristocratic faces further unnerved the coroner. A Maidstone solicitor, Jacob Pegrim was more used to Maidstone Gaol and petty town crimes than to the fairyland of Stockbery Towers and he covered up his awkwardness by an excess of sternness. He glared at the four disparate ranks of those facing him: the family, the servants, the relatives – and the merely curious.
To his left ten good men and true sat, stiff in their high white collars buttoning with difficulty round unaccustomed chins, and set beneath red faces conscious of the importance of their duty. The interesting task of viewing the body now over, they were waiting for the questioning to begin.

The sight of British justice in action fascinated Auguste. It was impressive. In this room at a public alehouse, presided over by a man he would not notice twice in the street, there was a sense of timelessness and inexorable seeking after truth that was more impressive than the florid impassioned pleas of the courts of Albi. Ethel sat nervously by his side, decorously clad in her Sunday best, shifting uneasily on the hard bench requisitioned from the local schoolroom. His hand crept down reassuringly to press her thigh where it was warm against his. A slight blush on her cheek registered the fact.

Coroner Pegrim seemed to have a fixation on food. Details of Greeves’ last meal were gone through time and time again, with Mrs Hankey, with Jackson, with Hobbs and – finally – with Auguste. All eyes, and notably the coroner’s, were fixed on this foreigner who cooked the food served to The Unfortunate, as the coroner referred to him. There was a marked atmosphere of mistrust. He was French, wasn’t he? No knowing what foreign rubbish he might be putting in the food. The jury therefore listened with great attention to his answering of questions about The Unfortunate’s last meal.

‘Are you aware, Mr – er – Didier, that this aconitia,’ pursued the coroner weightily, ‘is obtainable in wolfsbane, a common garden weed?’

‘Yes, monsieur.’

‘And is it true that you gathered some sorrel for this luncheon, some of which was given to the deceased?’

Ma foi
, not again! thought Auguste. He patiently explained that there was no way that wolfsbane could be
mistaken for sorrel, that there was no way in which aconitia could reach The Unfortunate’s plate alone, except by design. This last he perceived to have been a mistake, for he was led to confirm also that it was unusual for the maître to gather his own vegetables for a mere servants’ luncheon, and to explain that the sorrel, as were the herbs, was his own special domain. He was glad now he had not told the police about Edward having drunk from the poisoned bottle. It would have set the final seal on his doom.

Wearying at last of the details of food preparations, most of them alien to his jury, who dined on treacle pudding and good Kentish steak and kidney pie with a pint of ale made of the local hops, the coroner turned to The Unfortunate’s family.

‘Twenty-three years married, we was, sir,’ sniffed Mrs Greeves.

‘But you did not live together?’ questioned the coroner disapprovingly. It was a situation entirely alien to him and his faithful Dora.

He was rewarded this time not with a sniff but a glare. ‘Archibald was always concerned to give me a good home. He came to see me regular, Wednesday afternoons.’

Mrs Hankey’s eyes hardened, and she stole a glance at May Fawcett. Her lips were tightly pressed together.

‘And do you have progeny, Mrs Greeves?’ This question had to be reworded before Mrs Greeves could vouchsafe that the progeny consisted of one son, presently, it transpired, in gaol. Auguste smiled. He could not see the point of these questions. But it was amusing none the less to note the rapt attention given to the testimony by May Fawcett and Mrs Hankey, side by side for mutual support.

With the arrival of the police for questioning, Auguste sank back in relief. No more veiled accusations now about the purity of his sorrel purée. He listened complacently
while Bladon pontificated on poison discovered in a bottle of brandy, the poison now identified as aconitia.

The coroner’s summing up was brief, suggesting to his jury that a fatal dose of aconitia had arrived in Greeves’ mouth probably through the demon spirit brandy, and the jury retired to the landlord’s parlour for their deliberations. Not for long. They returned to ask a question.

‘Could the poison in this bottle have been added afterwards – to mislead like?’

Sergeant Bladon slowly took in its significance. ‘Could be,’ he said, turning his head to look at Auguste.

Full of self-importance the jury once again retreated, and when they reappeared it was to announce that they found the deceased met with his death by the hand of persons unknown.

Jacob Pegrim, thankful that it had passed off so uncontroversially and that in the excess of enthusiasm his jury had not indicted the Duke, began to repeat the verdict; but the foreman had something to add. ‘Furthermore,’ he added ponderously, ‘we the jury wish to say the cook should be more careful how he prepares his food.’

A definite smirk crossed Sergeant Bladon’s face at this unjury-like pronouncement. Auguste half rose from the seat. Did his ears betray him? By his side Ethel cried out, Auguste already dangling at the end of a rope in her vivid imagination. Her worse fears realised as she saw Sergeant Bladon making his way towards Auguste, she burst out crying, and flung her arms round her loved one. ‘You shan’t take him,’ she cried. ‘Don’t let them take you away, Mr Didier.’