A Death by Any Other Name

by Tessa Arlen

  “I’m sorry, m’lady, I was woolgathering,” she explained and then lifted her skirt clear of her boots to climb onto the first board of the stile. “What was the last poison on the list, m’lady, can you remember?”

  Lady Montfort started to reach into her pocket for the list she carried with her wherever they went. “No, m’lady, before you look at it, would you try to remember?”

  “Tobacco? No, it was … monkshood.”

  “I think it was written as aconitum, m’lady, and … what number was it?”

  “Were there seven plants on the list?”

  Mrs. Jackson turned to answer and then stood quite still, her eyes wide, her hand halfway up to her mouth. She saw the list with its even copperplate handwriting quite clearly in her mind. “Yes, there were seven items on the list.” And then she was struck with another image, one that made her next question overloud in the still afternoon air. “Do you remember Frauline Bertholde, m’lady?”

  Her ladyship frowned. Of course she thinks I have gone stark-staring mad, Mrs. Jackson thought as her heartbeat picked up. She felt almost breathless with excitement. Frauline Berthold had been employed as governess to both Lady Verity and Lady Althea to teach them German and French. She had been a pleasant enough woman, continually at war with the Talbot nanny who believed in fresh air, whereas the frauline suffered terribly from drafts and the cold. A good instructor though, because she had taught the Talbot girls well; they were fluent in both languages.

  “Frauline Berthold? Jackson, what can you be talking about?”

  “The frauline loved to make up lists, m’lady. She put them up on the servants’ hall notice board all the time.” Mrs. Jackson remembered seeing the board and on it a neat strip of paper with a list of instructions about the menu for the children’s supper: one meal for each day of the week to be served promptly at six o’clock in the nursery.

  “The number seven, m’lady. On the Continent they write ‘seven’ with a little horizontal bar on the stem of the seven to distinguish it from one,’ Mr. Hollyoak told me. “Because when they write the number one, they give it that little peak at the top of the stroke like a cap.”

  “Do they really? How odd of them. I am sorry, Jackson, I simply don’t understand…”

  “The list of poisons, m’lady. I am quite sure that the last and seventh plant on the list was written in the Continental style, the way the frauline did it and the way Mrs. Bartholomew would do it.”

  “Well for heaven’s sake. How on earth did that just pop into your head? We must have read that list dozens of times.”

  “Yes, m’lady, but we were always more interested in the plants listed. Not the numbering of them. Until now I couldn’t even remember how many were on the list until I started trying to put them in order. Let’s take a look at the way the number seven is written on that list, m’lady.” Lady Montfort pulled it from her pocket:

  1. Digitalis

  2. Laburnum

  3. Oleander

  4. Castor bean

  5. Belladonna

  6. Aconitum

  7. Tobacco

  Twenty minutes later they were still on either side of the fence, her ladyship seated on the top board of the stile with her feet on the middle board, too consumed with the excitement of their discovery to continue with their walk.

  Lady Montfort was recounting how often they had gone over the list. Even shared it with Mr. Stafford, and he had not noticed the way that the number seven had been written.

  “It just goes to show you, m’lady,” Mrs. Jackson said, “that sometimes the simplest thing is sitting in front of you trying to make itself known and is stubbornly ignored.” She was of course speaking of her own neglectful observations.

  “Mrs. Bartholomew must have spent a long time planning how to poison her husband so that she would not be here when it happened. She must have worked on that list of poisonous plants quite diligently and selected the poison that ended up in his digestive powders for a very good reason. No doubt hoping that if someone discovered her husband had died from poison, then blame would be cast on either Mr. Urquhart, with his fascination with herb lore and cure-alls and his desperate determination to breed the better rose, or Mr. Wickham and Mr. Haldane, who as jealous husbands would want to get rid of Mr. Bartholomew. And of course every single poison on the list was available either in the conservatory or in the grounds, except of course for tobacco.”

  “There were two things she could count on when she went away on her planting trips,” said Mrs. Jackson. “One that he ate too much and the other that he—”

  “—indulged in the other deadly sin, Jackson, lust thereby provoking the men in this house.”

  Mrs. Jackson looked away; sometimes her ladyship was perhaps a little too outright. “So she poisoned his digestive powders, knowing that he would use them at the breakfast table when he had overindulged at dinner the night before.”

  “And then she went off to China with her brother and whilst she was away he poisoned himself.” Lady Montfort stared at the list in her hands.

  “And when she came back, m’lady, the only thing she had to worry about was where was the bottle of poison that she had sent him? It had not been found on his person or among the personal effects that were sent to her when she came home to mourn his passing.” Mrs. Jackson, standing among golden buttercups in her dark blue dress, was looking positively radiant.

  “So she comes to the house to see if she can locate the bottle in the orangery where he had died. Perhaps she believed, as we do, that he would try to dose himself with the powders to alleviate the pain he was in from the poison.

  “And when she gets here she discovers that Mr. Haldane has had the orangery locked up ever since her husband’s death. How frustrating for her that must have been. And then the other night she discovered that it was open. Oh my goodness, Jackson, I was the one who told her. Or at least Mrs. Wickham did. It was when Mrs. Wickham came in from the garden and reported to me that you and Mr. Stafford were walking in the orangery garden. She was reporting on what she thought was your … your … meeting Mr. Stafford in the garden without a chaperone.” Mrs. Jackson’s face looked so shocked that Clementine laughed. “I know, Jackson, sinners always point fingers at others for the sins they commit themselves, as the Reverend Bottomley-Jones is fond of saying. Mrs. Bartholomew was standing in the hall when Mrs. Wickham made her moral objection to your visit to the orangery alone with a gentleman. Effectively announcing that the orangery was now open. After dinner Mrs. Bartholomew says that she will retire for the night. She pretends she is asleep when the maid brings her hot drink, and then gets up and, under cover of darkness, runs to the orangery to search for the bottle.”

  Mrs. Jackson was nodding in a vague sort of way, but her eyes were fixed on the floor as she listened to Lady Montfort sum up the sequence of events.

  “But how did she get the poison to him, m’lady? How did she get the poison to him from China at a time when she could be sure that he had run out of his digestive powders and that he would dose himself from the poisoned bottle before she came back to England?”

  “Well, she must have known how long it took for him to get through a full bottle of the powders. Oh for heaven’s sake, it can’t be another simple little fact waving away at us from the sidelines as we imagine all sorts of complicated arrangements, can it? Did she post it to him, Jackson?” And as her housekeeper’s head came up from contemplating the flowers around her feet her face broke into a smile. “Yes, she did. Of course she did, she posted it from China, from Shanghai, the port city of China, when she arrived.”

  “Surely someone at Hyde Castle would remember him receiving a parcel, m’lady. Surely someone will remember? If they do, then perhaps that is all the proof we need.”

  But her ladyship was shaking her head and looking doleful. “No, Jackson, it is not enough. Where is the paper, where is the string, where is the canceled postage, where is the proof? Who saw him open the package and heard him
say: ‘Here are the digestive powders that my wife forgot to give me before she left. Now, where’s that dish of kedgeree?’”

  “How on earth will we discover that, m’lady, without announcing that we have only come here to prove that Mrs. Bartholomew poisoned her husband five months ago?” A large drop of rain fell on Mrs. Jackson’s hand and another on her cheek.

  “Oh my goodness, Jackson, we have to run for it, otherwise we will be soaked. What possessed us not to check the barometer before we left the house?”

  Lady Montfort swung her legs over the top board of the stile and jumped down onto the path and they broke into a run. As they came up the lawn at a fast pelt the sky darkened and the wind picked up. They had just reached the terrace when the sky opened up and the rain came down in a heavy deluge.

  “Dear leddies, dear leddies, come in. Oh my goodness, are ye soaking wet? You poor things, come in here and take off your wet shoes. You are just in time, we were about to send out Charles with an umbrella for you both. I am sure your beautiful dress is quite ruined, Leddy Montfort.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “There is absolutely no need to make a fuss, Finley; they are a little damp, that is all.” Mrs. Lovell came forward. “My goodness me, what athletes you are, the pair of you. We watched you racing up the lawn; we were quite sure you would be caught in the downpour.”

  “I told Charles to come out to you with the umbrella,” cried Mrs. Haldane, and on cue there was Charles coming into the room with a large black umbrella.

  “No need, Charles.” Mr. Urquhart waved him away. “What these poor leddies need is their tea.” Mr. Urquhart was quite ready to take over this part of their recovery. “I do hope you can toast them some tea cakes. And tell the cook to make sure that the butter is tempered for their scones.”

  How could we possibly have imagined that this little elflike man doctored his friend’s bottle of digestive powders, knowing that he would die in agony? thought Clementine, feeling guilty. But he has this way of looking at you as if he knows exactly what you are thinking that is most perturbing. That afternoon in the conservatory when he had lectured them on plant poisons had almost convinced her that he might have been their villain.

  And almost immediately she felt regret that it would not be Mr. Haldane who would be arrested. I suppose it is too much to hope for that someone as brutal and uncouth to his wife as that man could be taken away for murder. Mrs. Haldane would then be free to live here for the rest of her life in the company of her kind friend Mrs. Lovell, dabbling in watercolors and dreaming of inventing a beautiful tea rose and calling it the White Dove of Peace. If only the poor creature had half as much pluck as Mrs. Bartholomew.

  She looked around the room and her gaze fastened upon fussy Mr. Wickham, who might find the courage to poison someone but was far more content to correct and chide his wife for her silliness with men who did not merit any decent woman’s interest.

  Mrs. Haldane, Mrs. Wickham, and Mrs. Bartholomew. All three unhappily married women had dealt with their loveless lives in such different ways. Do most women feel they have no choice in their ill-fated marriages? Do they suffer in silence, accept their loveless state, and seek distractions, or do they resort to empty love affairs—or, in desperation, turn to poison? She realized in that moment how supremely lucky she was in her marriage. Her husband not only offered her respect but he accepted her for precisely who she was. She felt a momentary pang of longing for the quiet of Iyntwood and her garden in the company of her husband. How much of their quiet pleasant life would change if their country went to war? She resolutely pushed the thought away. There was much to be done in the next few hours.

  She glanced around the room. The meeting to correct Mrs. Bartholomew’s attempt to appropriate her husband’s rose had brought the members of the Hyde Rose Society together, united in their determination to protect the deceased Mr. Bartholomew. Whatever his faults, they were all loyal to their fellow rosarian, she realized. Perhaps they sensed that his wife hated him. Her gaze rested finally upon Mrs. Bartholomew as she coolly announced to the group that she had secured a place on a boat leaving the Port of Dover for Calais tomorrow afternoon and would say goodbye to them all after breakfast tomorrow.

  Oh good heavens! Clementine nearly sprang to her feet in agitation. We don’t have much time left. We have to get this all sewn up. Her suppressed alarm had communicated itself to Mrs. Jackson, who was looking at her across the salon: her eyes were gleaming with intention, her face was flushed from her run, and her hair was standing out in pretty little curls and spirals around her face. How beautiful she is when she makes discoveries, Clementine thought. She beckoned Charles over to her.

  “Charles, please deliver this note to Mr. Stafford immediately; if he is not in the garden, take it to him in the village,” she said as she handed the note she had just written.

  “Meet you in the orangery at six o’clock. Eureka.”

  * * *

  It was a breathless and still slightly damp Clementine and Mrs. Jackson who met a puzzled Mr. Stafford.

  “No, Jackson, never mind about interrupting, you just go ahead and tell it all. Such a clear, well-organized brain,” Clementine said to Mr. Stafford.

  And Mrs. Jackson recounted. She recounted everything briskly, without repeating herself, without stopping for breath, and in her admirably succinct way. She recounted everything from A to Z and from 1 to 7.

  “There now,” Clementine said when Mrs. Jackson had finished and had then patiently answered a question or two from Stafford. “What do you think about that?”

  “It is quite astonishing—quite astonishingly clever. But how will you prove it, Lady Montfort?”

  “I have a plan for that which I will share with you in a minute. Mrs. Bartholomew is off to France tomorrow and with the way things are in Europe might disappear without a trace from France to China or anywhere in the world. So we have to be quick. Will you, Mr. Stafford, now that you have the entire story, please drive over to Market Wingley to Colonel Valentine, the chief constable there? His address is written down on this paper. Please present my compliments and tell him what we have discovered. Then ask him to drive over to Hyde Hall after dinner. Say at about ten o’clock? Tell him I think I can guarantee that Mrs. Bartholomew will be quite ready to confess to the murder of her husband.”

  Mr. Stafford said he would, but then he became uneasy. “What are you planning to do? he asked her. “Do you have a plan?”

  She saw him look at Mrs. Jackson. I am sure he thinks she is more levelheaded than I am, Clementine thought, and then she realized from his look that this was far from what he was thinking. No doubt Mr. Stafford’s unease was for their safety in “flushing out” Mrs. Bartholomew, a poisoner with everything to lose. But his greatest concern, Clementine realized, was evidently for Mrs. Jackson, standing in front of him with her gray eyes shining with the zeal of a woman on a mission and her lovely russet hair still damp from their walk in the rain to the orangery.

  Oh it can’t possibly be true, can it? Clementine thought as she saw his look of pride and … yes, it was delight on his face. He was staring at Mrs. Jackson as if she were the Holy Grail.

  Of course he is entranced by this remarkable woman, she thought as she realized that she was probably going to lose her housekeeper, and her friend and companion. Ah well, so be it. If Jackson has the same regard for Mr. Stafford as he evidently does for her, then it will be a perfect match. Perfect. But this must all wait until later.

  “Mrs. Jackson and I must go back to the house now. After dinner I am going to persuade Mr. Urquhart to help me play a game. I am quite sure he will do everything he can to help me. And then we will see exactly how Mrs. Bartholomew conducts herself. With a bit of luck you will be waiting in the wings with Colonel Valentine to hear her confession. I would suggest that you bring Colonel Valentine into the conservatory by the terrace door, so he will be able to hear everything that takes place in the salon when I set my trap for Mrs. Bartholomew. It is vi
tal that no one knows you are there. Please make sure that Colonel Valentine has everything he needs to make an arrest.”

  And as the two of them left the orangery, the last thing they could hear over the rain as it started to hammer down on the glass roof was Mr. Stafford calling out to them to be very, very careful because people and animals are most dangerous when they feel cornered.

  * * *

  “What is it exactly that you have in mind, m’lady?” Mrs. Jackson asked as she helped Lady Montfort change for dinner. She had become very adept at the complicated business of dressing her ladyship, closing the many hooks and eyes and buttons on her lovely dresses and then sweeping her hair into a glossy fold at the nape of her neck. She searched for evening gloves and then snapped the catch of her ladyship’s diamond necklace about her neck.

  “A little dressing-up tonight, Jackson, just for the occasion. I don’t want to overdo things, but I am in the mood to celebrate. How long have we been here now?”

  “Four nights I think it is, m’lady. There now, that’s very nice.” She smoothed down the neckline of Lady Montfort’s elegant garnet-red gown and stepped back to admire her. Of all the women she had ever seen dressed for dinner, no one looked more elegant and lovely than her ladyship. Her clothes were beautiful without being ornate, she never wore too much jewelry, and she moved with such unhurried grace that she made everything she wore look marvelous.

  “I will just go and change my dress, and I should be ready in a moment, m’lady,” she said.

  “Put that list somewhere very safe, Jackson, we must be very careful not to lose it.”

  * * *

  There was no sign of Mr. Haldane when they went down to dinner. So though the numbers were uneven at the table, at least dinner was a comparatively civilized affair. Clementine didn’t bother to wait and see if they were attempting an order of precedence, she merely went and sat herself down next to Mr. Urquhart, who clearly appreciated the effort she had taken to dress so splendidly.