The Dead Queen's Garden (17 page)

Charlotte leaped to her feet and made her excuses to her unwelcome companion. ‘I must go at once, do forgive me, Dr Chant.’

She hastened to her room to fetch her coat and employed the same explanation when she encountered Melicent Penbury on her way downstairs. Melicent, it appeared, had noticed Charlotte’s disappearance from the village and taken it as licence to follow suit. She had persuaded the coachman to convey her up to the manor since Lily was not ready to abandon the gathering.

‘We must have a comfortable, cosy little talk, my dear Mrs – er, Charlotte, must we not?’ That was Melicent’s opening gambit.
‘After all, we have scarcely had a chance to renew the friendship we embarked upon during our delightful stay in Bath.’

‘That would be most pleasant.’ Charlotte’s answer was mendacious. ‘We must certainly arrange to do so, but alas, I have to make an urgent visit to the barn. Hoxton?’ She turned to the butler who was again at hand. ‘Mrs Penbury is chilled, would you bring her something warming to drink, please?’ And to Melicent, ‘Do, pray, excuse me.’

Phew, Charlotte’s whistle was unladylike but heartfelt, while all thought of enquiring after Melicent’s increasingly painful-looking limp vanished uncharitably. There had certainly been no friendship between herself and the damply drooping former governess. Indeed, Charlotte had often scolded herself for her most
unchristian
dislike of the other woman. And to what portion of their time in Bath did Melicent allude to as ‘delightful’? Charlotte smiled and sighed as she slithered aside to allow one of the stable boys to pass her in the yard as he dragged a toboggan full of logs and kindling towards the house. Last summer’s visit to Bath had provided her with some unforgettable new friends indeed, but the over-riding impression she retained was of danger and death. Had Melicent conveniently erased those memories?

She satisfied herself that the dog, Prince Albert, was uninjured, although the racket he set up when she appeared was loud enough to denote fire and pillaging so, after petting him for a while, and taking a cautious peek at the new kittens, she wondered whether to make her way back down to Rowan Lodge to look for Lady Frampton’s knitting which had been left at home. As she hesitated, Charlotte heard a clattering and turned to see the baker’s horse and cart drive into the cobbled yard, drawing up at a peremptory exclamation from its passenger.

‘Miss Char, Miss Char, dearie!’ Bessie Railton leaned down to greet her former nursling. ‘I won’t hold you up a minute, my dear, and I’m off to Winchester myself so I can’t stay,’ she nodded briefly at the smith’s brother who touched his hat to Charlotte. ‘I just remembered something I meant to tell you.’

She wheezed and nodded but refused to alight and rest for a moment. ‘There, I’m all of a dither, but it was preying on my mind,
and I felt I had to come and tell you. Now what was I, oh yes…. That matter we were discussing, dear. I recalled where I saw the plump, fussy lady before. T’was a few days ago and I’d gone into the Cathedral to take the weight off my feet. It’s quiet in there and out of the rain and cold. Anyway, there I was, not quite dozing, when in came the two young ladies; the one that died and her sister.’

Charlotte listened with interest but did not interrupt the flow, recollecting how easily in her childhood she had been frustrated when Bessie lost the thread of a story.

‘Yes, indeed, and they took a stroll round the aisles, the younger one talking quite unsuitable for such a place and the other one telling her off. They were talking about the christening – that’d be here, of course, and saying that they meant to go.’ She whisked a handkerchief from her capacious muff and mopped her brow. ‘Nothing to remark upon there,’ she said sagely, ‘but I wasn’t the only one listening that day. When I heard the door open and the ladies come in, I sat up, and set about tidying myself, ready to carry on with my errands, and I looked across and spotted that plump lady I told you of. A fierce scowl there was on her face as she watched those two young ladies make their way out of the place.’

‘You must be talking about Miss Cole,’ said Charlotte, almost to herself. ‘She fits the description you gave me of the scene when the old pony was upset and she could well have been taking a rest in the Cathedral. I know she has a friend in Winchester whom she visits now and then. She was scowling at the young ladies you say?’

‘Indeed she was,’ Bessie was emphatic. ‘I watched her, as I said. At first she was just nosy, like me, eavesdropping on a
chance-heard
conversation, but then she perked up when one of them mentioned a christening at Finchbourne Manor.’ Bessie opened her eyes wide at Charlotte’s gasp of astonishment. ‘She did, Miss Char, true as I’m here with you. That was when she turned and took a proper look at the two of them and my word, she was taken aback. I could tell that from where I was sitting. Quite white, she went, and out came some smelling salts and her handkerchief and she set to fluttering away. No, Miss Char, dearie. I’ve no idea what it was that struck her so about those two ladies, but struck she was, and
not in a happy way. If looks could kill, they’d have dropped like stones, the pair of them, poor young things.’

Charlotte’s urgent further questioning brought no conclusion. Bessie was adamant that she had seen Miss Cole react in shock to the advent of Verena Chant and Sibella. She also insisted that she had witnessed either Miss Cole or Dr Chant do something – on this point she admitted to being unclear – to upset the pony outside the church gate. And no, it had not been possible to observe whether Miss Cole’s venomous glance in the cathedral had been aimed at both sisters or at one in particular. ‘It did seem to me that she recognised one or both of them,’ was all she would say as she took her leave.

It was likely, Charlotte thought, that Miss Cole’s distaste was reserved for Sibella. The woman must have known about the errant Armstrong brother’s betrayal and would probably extend her disapproval to the sister closer to his age.

After a brief visit to take some carrots and sugar lumps as a gift to the Rowan Lodge pony in his temporary lodging at the manor stables, Charlotte, her brows knitted in a thoughtful frown, trudged back to the house, remembering that the butler’s immense dignity made him take a dim view of the family lowering themselves in his eyes by using the back door. Accordingly, she took the long way round to the front of the manor, noting absently that while a snow-blanched landscape might be picturesque to behold, it was less delightful when you had to slip and slide on an icy path or find yourself drenched by a fall of snow from an overhanging branch. As she struggled to gain a foothold in some places, or reached out a hand to support herself by holding on to a branch, she tried to arrange her thoughts.

I wonder if Kit Knightley is correct, she sighed. Am I allowing silly fancies to run away with me? But Kit knows I am not prone to such flights and he also knows I’ve encountered a real mystery or two that could not possibly have been attributed to an over-active imagination. She shook her head in dismay and marshalled her anxieties.

Lady Granville had been adamant that someone had attempted to harm her son, firstly by pushing the throng of churchgoers so
that Oz should have been the logical person to fall into the open grave, had he not been young and spry enough to slip out of the way. But why should anyone attempt such a thing? And what was it meant to achieve, in any case? Even if Oz had tumbled into the gaping hole, it was only six feet deep and the likelihood was that a young, healthy boy would have found it great sport to be covered in mud.

After that had come the incident with a mince pie. According to his mother, Oz had just reached out a hand for a pie when Captain Penbury barged in and snatched it up. Shortly following this act of greed, the captain had collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain; pain that was later put down to indigestion.

The spaniel was well enough, though dejected after his impromptu bath, so Charlotte brought him back to the house and shooed him into the drawing-room where Gran was drowsing by the fire.

Safely in her room, she shed her outer garments, tidied her hair and sat down to warm her toes at the bedroom fire. There had been no indication that Captain Penbury was suffering from anything but indigestion, so what had Lady Granville feared? Charlotte bit her lip. The only conclusion she could draw from the lady’s anxious whispers was that someone intended harm to her son. Did that mean she suspected poison?

‘That’s ridiculous.’ Charlotte leaped up from the low slipper chair and paced round the room, trying to make sense of it all. It
was
indigestion, Dr Perry said so. She paused to consider. Yes, he did, and I would, most emphatically, trust Dr Perry with my life.

Once the ridiculous notion had planted itself into her brain however, it refused to take itself off. She argued with herself, citing the nonsensical nature of such an idea, but was dismayed to realize that the fear remained. But if Lady Granville thought there might be poison in the mince pie, who could have put it there? She scowled at her reflection in the looking glass as she came up to it. And what about … the suspicion struck her with the force of a blow. The wassail cup! Lady Granville had been most strongly exercised over the theft, for such she had designated it, of the glass of hot punch she had marked out for her son.

Charlotte tried to picture the scene at the table in the manor dining-room. The boy had been there, of course, as had his mother. Was Lord Granville there too? In the background, perhaps. She went on with her exercise of enumerating those present. Dr Chant was in attendance and frowning at his wife about something and Miss Cole was certainly there, hovering alongside her employer, to that lady’s evident irritation. Who else? Charlotte had a sudden half-buried recollection of a little scene that had been played out, of Verena Chant laughing gaily and saying to her sister, something like, ‘Well, I certainly have no objection to the taste of cinnamon, my dear Sibella, in fact I am rather partial to it….’

Charlotte shivered in spite of the cosy warmth of her bedroom and she stared at the wall, her thoughts squirrelling round in her head as she suddenly had a clear picture of her stepfather telling one of his stories.

Will Glover, sitting on a barrel that served as a stool, table, and sometimes even a makeshift altar in that far away, long ago little township on the edge of the Bush; Will causing the ladies present to shiver deliciously as his voice sank to a whisper….

‘It was when I was serving as secretary to the Bishop of – oh, well,’
there had been a gurgle of laughter in his voice,
‘Perhaps you’d be better off not knowing which bishop it was.’
That was said with a suspicion of a wink that thrilled his audience into a hushed silence.
‘Where was I? Oh yes; well, I had been at his lordship’s palace for a week or so and I started to wonder how it came about that there were so many dead cats around the place? I spotted one in the drawing-room, poor creature, while another was stretched out dead as a doornail in the Library, and a third that had breathed its last in the morning-room. When a fourth cat turned up in the Bishop’s bedroom, though luckily his lordship had not yet retired so was unaware of the tragedy, I set about investigating.’

Charlotte paused in her anxious pacing round the room. Will’s voice rang so clearly in her ears that it seemed unthinkable,
unbearable
, that she should never see him again. She banished that thought; no time for tears she reminded herself. Will had squeezed his wife’s hand and caught his stepdaughter’s eye across the bevy of breathless townswomen who were hanging on his every word and with the smile that won all hearts – and, she reminded herself
– emptied the contents of all pockets into his own, he had explained.
‘It transpired,’
he said,
‘that the new cook was a fanatical free-thinker and had determined to rid the world of all clerics, one by one, beginning with my bishop. However, he apparently had small faith in his ability as a poisoner, so he set about practising on the resident cats. Hence the pitiful corpses that littered the premises.’

The old memory made her wonder. Was it possible that Lady Granville was correct in her suspicions? Could someone have poisoned a glass of hot punch, intending it for the Granville boy, only to see his or her intention thwarted by Verena Chant’s partiality to the taste of cinnamon?

But they said, didn’t they … that poison was a woman’s weapon? Charlotte found herself staring blindly out at the snowy garden while she thought furiously. Bessie Railton’s testimony pointed to Miss Cole as the culprit, but culpable of what, precisely? Frightening an old pony? Trying to poison a child?

It was all too ridiculous, but a frown creased her brow. Miss Cole had appeared so opportunely on the scene where Lady Granville’s maid lay so inexplicably dead. Inexplicably, that is, if Oz were correct in his insistence that he had heard no sound of a scuffle, seen no sight of a killer running off. Could there be a connection with that crime and with the death of a visitor to the manor?

Charlotte was almost thankful to hear the bell summoning the household to a cold collation in the dining-room, to stay the pangs of hunger until the tea party they were to attend in honour of Oz’s birthday later that afternoon.

As she went slowly down the main staircase, with its fearsome array of weaponry and festoons of evergreens, holly and ivy, a great bunch of mistletoe hanging from the chandelier, Charlotte was unable to dismiss the memory of the Finchbourne wassail cup. She pictured Barnard proudly brandishing an ornate silver ladle and Lily beside him, beaming with pride at her houseful of important guests. There was the wassail brew itself, a concoction of heated wine and sugar, flavoured with a variety of spices and with fruit floating on the top.

Did that mean that the wassail punch had been tampered with?
She frowned again, fiercely, and tried to dismiss the only conclusion that made any sense. If indeed
anything
made sense, she added as a silent rider.

It was possible. She would only admit to a possibility, nothing more, that some person unknown had managed to slip a dose of poison into the glass of punch intended for Oz Granville. And if that were true – if there were any possibility, however slight, that it could be true – then Charlotte Richmond would be very, very angry.