Sweet Poison (13 page)

Edward had seen Frank so rarely during his childhood it was a year before he could take in that he would never see him again and that he wasn’t just away somewhere, to return unexpectedly and ruffle his hair and present him with a puppy or a Hornby train-set before disappearing again. By this time death was a familiar visitor in the families of all his school companions and his loss was no longer special except to him. His brother was a name to be read out by the headmaster on Sundays along with the other fallen heroes – young men who had been educated to die for king and emperor and had dutifully done so. Now, twenty years later, he could hardly remember what his brother had looked like. There was no portrait of him as there was of their father, and the photographs, however hard Edward looked at them, conveyed nothing; they showed a good-looking young man, virtually featureless, with whom he could hardly associate the dashing, hero figure of his childhood, let alone the reality behind that image. It was a puzzle. Edward liked puzzles but not of this kind with no clues and no witnesses prepared to talk. Neither his mother nor his brother would do more than echo the conventional tributes and it would have been cruel, Edward knew, to have pressed them further. Those dead young men were beyond comment or criticism. They were saints to be prayed for. The Old Duke had considered publishing a book of remembrance, as had the parents of other young officers who had died on the field of battle, but he never got round to it. Maybe there was nothing speakable to say.

Frank had seemed very grown up to Edward when he went off to war but in fact, he could now appreciate, his brother had been little more than a boy, ignorant of life and of the world, and there was the tragedy. It was a burden that fell very heavily on those left behind. Edward turned from the portrait and hopped slowly down the stairs. His father had died in 1920, a shadow of the man Sargent had painted, his mind and body twisted by two strokes, a dribbling incontinent wreck. Gerald was now Duke of Mersham and gathered round his dinner-table men whom his father would have abominated had he ever deigned to notice them: stockbrokers, newspaper editors, politicians and worse. The new Duke saw it as his mission to help prevent another European war and if that meant mixing with men like Lord Weaver, Larmore and Baron von Friedberg then he would do it. What did any of that matter if they could be used to keep the peace? But now, Edward thought grimly, death had entered even into the Duke’s own castle and sat at his table and eaten his food and drunk his wine.

As Edward entered the dining-room the Duke, who was munching toast and honey and reading
The Times
, looked up at him in surprise. ‘Ned, my boy – are you up? Connie said Dr Best had told you to stay in bed for at least forty-eight hours.’

‘Oh well, Gerald,’ said Edward, helping himself to scrambled egg and sausages from the silver chafing dishes on the sideboard, ‘I got bored. My knee is feeling better so I thought I would come down. Is there anything in the paper?’

He did not need to say what he meant by ‘anything’.

‘There is a long obituary of General Craig. Wonderful how fast these blighters work, eh?’

‘How do you mean, Gerald?’

‘Well, Colonel Philips thought it best to put out a brief statement to the
Morning Post
and
The Times
about the General having died rather than let rumours get out about . . . well, about how he died, and here is a long screed about his career and what not. It takes me a day to write a letter and God knows how long it would take me to write something like this, if indeed I could,’ he added meditatively.

‘Ah well, you see, obituaries of distinguished men past their first flush of youth are written in advance of their death so that they can be printed as soon as news of their demise is received.’

The Duke digested this and seemed to find it shocking. ‘You mean, people write things about other people
assuming
they are going to die?’

‘We all have to die, Gerald.’

An awful thought occurred to the Duke. ‘They haven’t written stuff about me, have they, Ned?’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ said his brother soothingly, ‘after all, what have you done?’

The Duke did not know quite how to take this but then saw that his brother was joking and guffawed. ‘Really, Ned,’ he said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Throw me over the
Morning Post
if you are not reading it, will you, Gerald,’ said Edward, digging into his eggs.

General Craig’s obituary in the
Morning Post
was very full and for the most part flattering. Educated at Wellington College, he had made something of a reputation as a young subaltern on Kitchener’s staff in the Sudan in 1896 and had distinguished himself at the battle of Omdurman. It was there he won his Victoria Cross, one of the first to be awarded. Kitchener was passing a pile of ‘dead’ dervishes after the battle when one of them sprang up and charged with his spear, ignoring pistol shots from Kitchener’s entourage. He was about to strike when Craig, throwing himself between the dervish and Kitchener, took the spear in his shoulder and still managed to kill the dervish. However, there was the suggestion of a stain on Craig’s record in the Sudan. The anonymous obituarist alluded in a couple of lines to accusations that Craig had killed wounded prisoners on Kitchener’s orders, an allegation, the obituarist added, which was denied by Kitchener and Craig and never substantiated.

Craig had been wounded again in 1900 at Spion Kop in South Africa during the Boer War, and at the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 was Major-General Sir Alistair Craig VC. He was on Sir John French’s staff and along with a hundred thousand professional soldiers – the British Expeditionary Force – he fought at Mons, on the Marne and at the first battle of Ypres. There was no question, Edward saw with admiration and envy, but that Craig had been a man of exceptional physical courage and an experienced and successful soldier. However, for some reason the General had not ended the war with all the honours and titles one might have expected. He became a full general but not a field marshal and most surprisingly of all he was never given a peerage. What, Edward wondered, had gone wrong for him? The obituarist did not speculate.

Edward folded the newspaper and was about to toss it aside and ask to see
The Times
’s obituary when his eye caught a headline on page three. It read: ‘General Sir Alistair Craig’s death caused by poison: allegation in the
Daily Worker
.’ There followed a summary of a report in the latter journal, a newspaper whose existence the
Morning Post
normally refused to acknowledge, which gave an accurate account of the General’s death from cyanide poisoning at Mersham Castle. Edward went white and bit his lip. His brother would be horrified that any newspaper, let alone the organ of the Communist Party, should be describing in such detail how one of his guests at dinner died. The gutter press would leap on the story. The Duke’s peace-making dinner-parties would be made mock of or there would be suggestions of backroom conspiracies. It didn’t bear thinking about but of course that was just what needed to be done.

He was about to say something to his brother when the Duke gave a howl of anger. He thrust his copy of
The Times
at Edward, stabbing his finger at a story half-way down page two. He was unable to utter, such was his anguish. With a heavy heart Edward took the paper and looked at the offending item. It, too, was an account of the General’s demise quoting the
Daily Worker
. Edward might have expected
The Times
to have added words of disbelief; after all, Times readers did not normally expect accurate reporting from employees of the
Daily Worker
. The fact that they did not express doubts about the accuracy of the story suggested that they had already checked that it was true.

At last the Duke was able to speak. ‘Who has done this? One of the servants, the police? I asked everyone for discretion.’

‘I am afraid, Gerald, that it is more likely to be one of your guests.’

‘What? You mean one of the women?’ The Duke spoke with absolute scorn of that lesser breed of mortals. ‘Hermione Weaver, I suppose? Why did Connie insist on having that awful girl in our house? Connie!’ he shouted, getting up and going to the door. The Duchess was an early riser and was already in the garden doing something to the hollyhocks with Andrew, the head gardener.

‘Yes, dear, what is it?’ Edward heard Connie calling. She was used to the Duke’s rages. They were unpleasant when they occurred but usually quickly over. On this occasion, however, Edward was inclined to believe that the Duke would not be easily mollified. He valued privacy above almost everything and the idea that he and important guests of his should be held up to public scrutiny was unbearable. Of course, the Duke was aware that at the inquest some account of the General’s death would be reported but he had been confident that he could use his influence to keep it to a minimum. But here was a list of guests given with the implication that one or all of them had poisoned General Craig. It was outrageous, it was . . .

Edward was tortured by another thought. The Duke had forgotten it but there had been a journalist present when the General had died, and she had not been a guest proper so may well have considered she had no duty of silence, in fact just the opposite. Edward could quite see that with ‘a scoop’ handed to her – almost literally on a plate, along with cold ham and salad – she would be mad to do anything but use it. Verity, for of course it was of her he was thinking, had left very early Sunday morning without saying goodbye. It all fitted. The only thing that puzzled him was why she had gone to the
Daily Worker
.
Country Life
would not have been suitable, he realized, but why not the
News Chronicle
or the
Daily Express
? She would have avoided the
New Gazette
as this was owned by Lord Weaver but that still left her lots of choice. She hardly looked like a foot soldier in the class war but that meant nothing. Nowadays it was quite impossible to predict the political views of anyone, even someone one knew well, and he did not know Verity at all except as a black-bereted, tousle-haired young flibbertigibbet completely lacking a sense of direction.

Oh God, he thought, he was in for the high jump. He had inadvertently introduced a spy into the heart of his brother’s castle – a spy who had already done incalculable damage. How could his brother invite other important men into his house now? How could any visitor be confident his conversation would not appear in next day’s newspapers? No one would dare to accept his invitations except the vulgarly curious and the sensation seekers.

Connie came into the house, her arms full of roses. ‘What is it, Gerald? You look as if you are about to have a heart attack. Do sit down.’

As the Duke seemed incapable of speech, Edward quickly told her what was the matter and added sheepishly that he feared the author of all their troubles was the girl he had invited into the castle, Verity Browne.

‘Oh no!’ exclaimed the Duchess. ‘She seemed such a nice girl – one of us. Surely,
Country Life
is quite respectable?’

‘Oh, it is,’ Edward agreed, ‘but we have only her word that she was working for
Country Life
. When she rang you, Connie, to make an appointment to see the castle, did you ask for any references?’

‘Of course not! What an idea! She wasn’t asking for a job.’

‘I’m not blaming you, Connie. I am just saying we don’t know she was speaking the truth.’

‘I should jolly well hope you are not blaming me, Ned,’ she said heatedly. ‘If people tell me something I believe them.’

The Duke had now regained enough composure to talk. ‘I shall ring up Colonel Philips straight away and have the girl – what do you say her name was? Browne? – arrested.’

‘Oh, don’t be absurd, Gerald. How can one have anyone arrested? She has done nothing illegal – assuming it is her and not Hermione Weaver or Inspector Pride himself. You have just got to keep quiet and appear to be what you are: the host at a dinner-party where one of the guests has had a terrible accident. It is not your fault and no one will dare say it is.’

Connie’s good sense calmed her husband and relieved Edward. Connie was right, he thought: it was annoying, but news of the way the General had died was bound to have got out. There were too many people involved. Still, he felt he ought to do something. ‘Look, Gerald,’ he said, ‘I am frightfully sorry about all this. It is my fault that girl stayed the night here and I apologize but I had no idea –’

The Duke waved his hand. ‘I know, Ned,’ he said. ‘It isn’t your fault. It is just damn bad luck. Why did that poor man have to choose my dining-table at which to end his life?’

The Duke’s question was rhetorical but Edward thought it was worth asking. He decided he could not stay at the castle a day longer. He would go up to London and see if he could get a line on Verity Browne. He was angry and disappointed with her. She had seemed so frank and open, it was unpleasant to find she had been lying to him. What good it would do talking to Verity, even if he could find her, he did not know but at least it was something to do.

‘Connie,’ he said, ‘I’m just going to run up to town. The inquest won’t be until after the weekend and I will be back by then.’

‘But are you well enough? Your leg . . . ?’

‘I’ll go in the train. Fenton is back from his seaside jaunt today and he can look after me.’

In other circumstances Connie would have fiercely opposed his going before his knee was back to normal but she now was too concerned with her husband to worry about her brother-in-law. Gerald was looking a very bad colour. She rang the bell for Bates. When the butler appeared she asked him to telephone Dr Best. ‘Bates, the Duke has had rather a shock and I want to be sure he is not . . . his blood pressure . . .’

For a moment she looked close to tears and Edward got up with the help of his stick and limped over to put an arm round her. ‘There, there, Connie,’ he said. ‘Everything will be all right.’