Serpent in the Garden (32 page)

A heavy silence hung between them. Joshua was taken aback. The matter of the earlier deaths was something he had considered briefly but dismissed, since there was little chance of learning more about them. “Do you have any grounds for your suspicions?”

“I know that a few moments ago you were testing me on my knowledge of plants. I presume you believe that Hoare was poisoned?”

Joshua nodded.

“Sabine has a wide knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants. Her father was a physician and taught her much; she has studied the subject and learned a great deal more. She makes no secret of the matter—indeed, I would say she revels in her expertise. The little I know of my mother’s death is also compatible with poisoning. To slip something in my mother’s food that made her fall ill was well within her capabilities. My father would have been easily duped. He would have thought Sabine was doing all she could to help.”

This statement was uttered in such a calm, unapologetic tone that Joshua was quite disturbed. There was no vestige of doubt in her voice. She might have been reading an account from a newspaper.

“That is a grave accusation. Do you really believe her capable of such a thing?”

“Without a shadow of doubt. Even the pineapples in which she takes such pride may be poisonous.”

Joshua smiled. “Come, come. A pineapple is an edible fruit, much lauded for its perfume and sweetness.”

“The ripe fruit is just as you say. But perhaps you are not aware of the harmful effects of the unripe fruit. Violet mentioned the subject once when we went on a tour of the pinery. And how would she know such a fact if not from her mother? Unripe fruits are a powerful purgative. I know this not only from Violet but from family acquaintances who lived on an estate where pineapples were grown. I heard that a sailor who returned to the village from a voyage to the Indies and found his wife expecting another man’s child stole an unripe fruit and forced her to eat it to cause a miscarriage.”

“But are unripe fruits fatal?”

“Not usually, but by all accounts Hoare vomited prior to death. That is a symptom of eating unripe pineapple.”

Joshua held his neutral expression, though he thought to himself that there were countless other concoctions that might have had the same effect. “Let us put the earlier deaths of your mother and Charles Mercier to one side, for how could we properly prove such a thing? Do you honestly believe Mrs. Mercier had a hand in killing Hoare?”

Caroline flushed uneasily, lowering her gaze. “Of course. If it was not Sabine, who else could it have been? As for why she did it, I didn’t comprehend the motive before, but now, having heard a little of the dispute surrounding it, I see it must be the necklace that she was so eager to preserve for herself. I will wager, moreover, he was poisoned by pineapple—have you thought of that, Mr. Pope?”

Joshua remembered that an unripe fruit had gone missing. He remembered too that Lizzie Manning had visited a nurseryman who, by her own admission, was an expert in pineapples.

“Did you mention this theory to your friend Miss Manning?”

“Yes.”

“One final question, Miss Bentnick. On the night Miss Manning came for dinner and met the Merciers for the first time—the day after the body had been found, if you recall … We were seated in the drawing room. I was playing cards with your brother and father. I saw Mrs. Mercier engage you in conversation. And all at once you seemed most powerfully affected: a complete change came over you. If I had to describe it I would say you looked frightened, nay, terrified. What did she say to cause such a reaction?”

It was as if he had pressed an invisible trigger and caused a wall to descend between them. Joshua’s perceptive eye took in the shift in Caroline’s entire demeanor. Her voice became wary; she blinked rapidly and twined her fingers together.

“Were my feelings so transparent?”

“I doubt anyone else noticed anything at all, Miss Bentnick. It is my business to look at faces.”

She raised her eyes to meet his. Her expression was half trusting, half wary, as if she was judging whether he was a savior or a snake. “Very well, I will tell you. In any case, you must have heard part of what she said. She asked me if I would care to wear her necklace at the ball.”

“Why did that distress you?”

“It did not to begin with. It merely struck me as strange that she should offer me something that I knew to be so precious to her.” She halted, and clenched her hands, which trembled as they had on the night they were discussing.

“I cannot help you, Miss Bentnick, if you do not tell me what it is that frightens you.”

“Well, then I remembered what Violet had said earlier concerning the superstitions associated with the necklace. And that made me wonder why she was offering me her necklace, when she knew I disliked her and regarded my mother’s death as being …”

“Suspicious,” Joshua hazarded.

“Quite so.” Caroline swallowed hard. “I realized that there was evidently more to the offer of the necklace than first appeared. You must remember, I was sitting on that settee, under her gaze. I could feel her looking at me and it seemed also that the emerald serpent around her neck was fixing me with its ruby eye. For some reason the wretched necklace seemed to draw me, as though it were magnetically charged. I could not tear my eyes from it. Nor could I stop thinking of the malevolent power it was supposed to have. I promise you it was a most frightening sensation.

“And all this while I was aware that she kept on at me. ‘What have you to say, Caroline? I take it you accept?’ Of course I did not want to accept. It seemed to me that the serpent embodied her murderous tendencies. I opened my mouth to say no, but just at that moment she interrupted. Her voice was no more than a whisper—no one else could have heard it, yet at the same time it was peculiarly penetrating.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that my silence was a great affront to her in view of the efforts she had made. I was naught but an ungrateful girl. And—this was what struck me most vividly—that the necklace had a potency of its own. I should remember that serpents have long been forceful symbols, and if I had any sense, I would treat her offer with greater respect.” Caroline searched his face for some sign he comprehended her meaning. The anguish in her eyes was plain. “So now you see why I said we are all better off without it.”

C
AROLINE BENTNICK’S revelations and the presence of Bridget Quick brought Joshua an unanticipated advantage. Caroline was so relieved to have voiced her suspicions to someone outside the family, and so taken with Bridget Quick, she insisted they borrow a chaise and two lively chestnuts from the stables for their tour. The moth-eaten piebald that Joshua had been obliged to ride the previous day was thus put out to graze. A vehicle that Joshua was proud to drive was delivered to his charge and Bridget’s traveling bag stowed in it. Though he knew he should find some excuse to rid himself of Bridget at the earliest opportunity, the prospect of an hour in her company was not entirely unwelcome. A quick tour of Richmond Park would do him good; the air might help clarify his thoughts.

Some few minutes after they had set out on their drive, they were on high ground and the road looked down over the expanse of the river. “Tell me, Mr. Pope,” Bridget said abruptly, “why is it that whenever the road closely skirts the river, you look in the opposite direction? Yet the river makes such a charming picture. Being an artist, I would have thought you might appreciate it …”

Joshua was dumbfounded. This phobia of his had never been remarked on by any other acquaintance. “If I do,” he stuttered, trying to muster a plausible answer, “it is involuntary.”

“Are you afraid of water?”

“I cannot swim.”

She raised an eyebrow and made a purse of her lips. “Few people swim, yet they do not cringe at the sight of a river.”

Joshua pondered in silence for something to say that would make her quit this painful subject. After a long pause, adopting an air of lofty composure, he declared, “This is a matter of the greatest delicacy, Miss Quick. Something I never discuss with anyone.”

He underestimated her persistence. The pause allowed her to glimpse the weakness in his carapace and the point of her sword was in.

“What exactly do you never discuss? Your fear of water, or the cause of it?”

He shook his head and gave her a rueful smile. “The water makes me desolate and lowers my spirits whenever I look at it. There, does that satisfy you?”

“No,” said Bridget, “for you still have not told me why.”

Suddenly he felt too tired to parry with her. He could deflect her with a half truth but she would no doubt return to the subject before long. Once he said what he had to say, the matter would be over. There would be no more discussion. And—this thought above all propelled him—she might leave him in peace.

“You know my wife died recently. She drowned on the river. Our child was with her. He perished too. They were swept away in a boat. It happened one year ago, almost exactly. That is why I took the commission and came away. I detest the sight of the river, or any stretch of water for that matter, because of the memories it awakens.”

The vehemence in his voice must have been obvious, and he expected her to look awkward or ashamed at having forced such a painful admission. Yet, to his amazement, she was forthright in her solicitude, revealing no hint of shame. Nor did she waste time with platitudes.

“I am sorry for your dreadful loss, but it is a mistake to spend so much time worrying about death that you never live. Water was the source of your tragedy, but it is also the source of life,” she said, and patted his arm.

Until this moment Joshua had always pointedly avoided the subject of Rachel and Benjamin’s deaths, expecting it to resurrect his feelings of loss. Moreover, he detested the idea that anyone might feel sorry for him. Successful, well established, highly esteemed, he had no need of anyone’s pity. Thus it surprised him to discover that after this conversation he felt curiously lightened, as if a breeze had blown a gap in a heavy cloud that had shadowed him for the past year. He was surprised too that Bridget showed no sign of pity. Nor did she wish to dwell on the matter. Her attention moved rapidly to other, more immediate subjects.

She had heard from Caroline how Mrs. Mercier had found the corpse of a man recently arrived from Bridgetown, Barbados, believed to be called John Cobb. Caroline had explained that the corpse was not Cobb’s but that of a man called Hoare, an attorney whose practice was in London, and that both men were acting for an anonymous claimant in a dispute over a necklace. She had witnessed Herbert’s threats about the necklace. But how did all this fit with what had happened to Joshua yesterday?

Under different circumstances Joshua might have been reticent to discuss matters that were none of her concern. But after the admission she had just elicited from him, he felt more mellow and more open than usual. He explained that he had gone in search of Cobb, and had been brutally assaulted, tied up, and left for dead. After managing to escape, he had discovered Cobb standing by his horse, just before Bridget came upon him.