Jack, Knave and Fool

by Alexander, Bruce

“Is it true what I heard, sir? That the good lady’s gone?”

  “I fear it is,” said he gently.

  She sobbed and wiped at her tears, yet then delivered this tribute: “She was a good mistress, sir, and I tell you that true, for none knew her better than me. Oh, she had her spells, maybe whole days when she was out of sorts, and course she’d speak rude to me now and again. But you know what, sir? She would then apologize to me. I’m sorry, Maggie,’ she would say, or, ‘Forgive me, Maggie.’ I worked in great houses before, and there ain’t one of your great ladies I ever heard of who would do that. Usually maids is just to wipe their feet on.”

  “Was she out of sorts this evening?”

  “Oh, she was, sir, something terrible. First thing she did when she came back from the lawyer’s office was to bring all us servants together and read to us what each of us was left by Lord Laningham. It was a year’s wages for one and all. Then, just as she was finishing that, all moved and teary she was, telling us she would take as many of us as she could to her new place, that we were a fine staff and none could want better—just as she was saying that, a knock comes upon the door, and in walks the new lord, and he declares, ‘I’m takin’ possession of this house.’ He’s followed not just by his family but by all manner of porters and such bearin’ their baggage. Well, our Lady Laningham, she didn’t say nothing, but I could tell she was just in a fury. So as long as the serving staff was together, he decides to give a speech as well. It was in the nature of a threat, it was. He said that all who hoped to stay on had better impress him well and proper in the next few days, for he would be looking like a judge upon us. ‘Many are called, but few are chosen,’ says he. Usin’ Scripture to his own ends in that way, I call right disgraceful.”

  “Indeed, Maggie, it does seem so,” said Sir John. “But through all this your mistress had nothing to say? She kept her silence to him?”

  “Oh, she gave him plenty, she did, though not a word in front of the servants. No, she waited, she did, until well into the afternoon, thought things through, then sent word by me that she would meet with him in the study, which is at the front of the house.”

  “And how did he take this summons?”

  “Oh, he was eager for it, he was. Just like a bantam cock ready for a fight, couldn’t get down there fast enough. Well, there was a row, there was. I couldn’t say who got the best of it. I can tell you, though, that she matched him, shout for shout and curse for curse. Really* Id no idea she knew such language.”

  “Precisely what was said?” he asked.

  “Well, I can’t say exact, for the door was shut, and I daren’t stand too near so that it might seem I was eavesdroppin’. And wouldn’t you know, no more than halfway through, this puffer-ball who now calls herself Lady Laningham comes down the stairs very suspicious of me and demands that I take her on a tour of the first and second floors. I’d no choice, of course, so off we went.” She hesitated, then offered: “I did hear your name.”

  “My name? Really? By whom?”

  “By Lady Laningham. Shouted it out, she did — ‘Sir John Fielding!’ Like it was a proper name to conjure with. Then was I forced to go off with the other one.”

  “Hmmm.” He mused for near a minute before offering another question. And when at last he did, she seemed well prepared for it. “You said she seemed out of sorts when you saw her next?”

  “Out of sorts, yes, for she’d been given a ‘terrible insult’—that was what she called it. ‘Maggie,’ said she, ‘I’ve been made a prisoner in my own house.’ And she went on to tell that he told her to keep to her chambers so long as she was in this house, and she was to take her meals there. ‘That,’ he said, ‘should give you a proper in-cen-ta-tive for moving out soon as possible. ‘As if she’d want to sit down at table with such as them!”

  Maggie paused then rather dramatically, and I believe Sir John was about to put to her another question, when she resumed in a great torrent: “But sir, she wasn’t beat, not by much she wasn’t. She had a plan, I know she did, for she said as much to me, and you were part of it, for she began then and there to decide when she would visit you next morning. She asked me, did I know when it was you held your court. Oh yes sir, you was part of her plan. And when she drank her tonic I brought her — “

  “Not quite yet,” said Sir John, interrupting. “Tell me first about her dinner. She ate early, I’m told.”

  “About six, which is early for her. If she’d waited a bit she might ve had more of an appetite. Left a good half on it untouched, she did. I returned the tray and came back to her. And it was not long before she sent me down for her tonic— p’rhaps seven, p’rhaps a bit after. She said tomorrow would be a big day for her, and she would need her sleep. Usually when she takes her tonic she’s asleep about an hour later, you see.”

  “The present Lord and Lady Laningham were in the kitchen during cook’s preparation of the potion, were they not? “

  “Yes sir, they came down right after me.”

  “Followed you, did they?”

  “In a manner of speaking, I suppose.”

  “But you did not remain in the kitchen, did you?”

  “Uh, no sir, I did not.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I went to my little room here belowstairs — right down the hall it is. I … well, if you must know, sir, I had a call of nature.”

  “Forgive the question. Let us say, then, that after an interval of time, you returned to the kitchen. Was the tonic ready for you then?”

  “Not quite, but the new master and his mistress was just leaving. Cook finished up with it. I took it up to my lady, and she had a sip of it, and she complained right off. ‘This tastes nasty,’ she said. Yet she continued to sip at it, which was her way, you see, as I helped her dress for bed. She might take upwards of an hour to drink it all.”

  “But not this evening,” put in Sir John.

  “No sir, once in her nightdress, she took a great gulp of it —then it wasn’t long till she began to talk of stomach cramps. Then, of a sudden, she made a rush for the water closet, me with her, where she did vomit her dinner. That was when she said to me, ‘I’ve been poisoned. Send for Sir John.’ I got her into bed, where she began once more to vomit all manner of ugly matter, blood and bile and who could tell what more. But there came a break in it, which didn’t last long, yet it gave me time enough to run to Mr. Poole and ask him to send for you. I was just returning when the new master shouts down from the first floor, ‘Get a doctor for my aunt!’ Mr. Poole says he will attend to it. Then, when I got back to her bedroom, I find them both there, looking over my lady there in bed. Her eyes were wide with fear. He says to me, ‘How dare you leave her unattended.’ I told him I was doing my lady’s bidding. And he said, ‘Now, you must do mine and clean up this foul-smelling mess.’ Then the doctor came, and I was still cleaning. When I got up all that could be got up, I was sent out of the room. I knew Lady Laningham would die. She was still retching when I left.”

  “You paint quite a picture, Maggie,” said Sir John. “I have but one more question for you. And it is this: What happened to the glass containing Lady Laningham’s tonic? She had not finished it, had she?”

  “Oh no sir, not near. Why, the truth of it is, I don’t rightly know what happened to it. When last I looked, the glass was on her dressing table, but it wasn’t there when I came back to the room and started cleaning up. I’m sure of that.”

  “Thank you, then. That will be all.” As Maggie rose from her chair to leave, Sir John called out to the butler: “Mr. Poole, have you someone else for me to talk to? I left that matter up to you.”

  The butler, who was nearer to Sir John than he realized, waited until the maid was on her way to her room, before he stepped forward and said, “Only myself, Sir John.”

  “Ah, so, then sit yourself down and let us discuss the matter. But, Jeremy?”

  I leaned over to him. “Yes, sir?”

  “While I talk with Mr. Poole, I wish you to
find your way back to that room which was the scene of this awful calamity and search it for that missing glass.”

  The butler gave me explicit directions, and I had no difficulty making my return. Entering, as we had before, through the sitting room, I heard the voices of the two medicos in the next room, raised not in argument but friendly agreement. Their voices ceased, however, when I closed the door — not loudly but audibly —behind me. I found the two men awaiting my entrance, apparently relieved to see me and not another.

  “Ah, Jeremy,” said Mr. Donnelly, “what brings you up here?”

  “A search,” said I, “for the glass of spirits which began this fatal episode.”

  “I hope yours proves more fruitful than ours,” said he. “Scrapings from her nightdress and a lump or two from the carpet were all that we came up with. They should not be of much use to the chemist, I fear.”

  “Yet we found common cause between us,” declared Dr. Diller. “And we are prepared to press our case, are we not, sir?”

  “Indeed,” said Mr. Donnelly. “Oh, indeed, sir.”

  And as each of the two physicians congratulated the other on his findings, I snatched up a candelabrum and did the work I was sent to do, searching every surface in both rooms and in the water closet, as well. I looked under the dressing table and under the bed. I expected to find nothing — not perhaps the best spirit in which to conduct a search —and nothing was what I found. By the time I had done, the two were packing their bags, making ready to go.

  “Shall we leave candles burning in here?” asked Mr. Donnelly.

  “I think not,” said his colleague. “The magistrate stipulated that the room be locked and sealed.”

  “In that case …”

  We went about blowing out the lights until I, holding the candelabrum, led the way out, leaving the room in darkness but for the embers in the fireplace.

  “Poor old girl,” said Dr. Diller, not without feeling. “I hope she rests peace-fully.”

  Then we descended the winding staircase. In the great entrance hall we found Sir John and the butler awaiting us. The rest of the servants had quite disappeared, gone no doubt below to discuss the unsettling events of that evening.

  “We are ready, then?” asked Sir John.

  “Completely,” said Mr. Donnelly.

  “Jeremy, as well?”

  “I am, Sir John. I found no glass, nothing at all that would be of help.”

  “Then, Mr. Poole,” said he, turning to the butler, “I thank you for your help and for your information. You will lock and seal her chambers, as I asked?”

  “Candle wax will do, will it not?”

  “That will do quite well.”

  Then out into the night. Dr. Diller left us on the walkway, suggesting we might easily find a hackney at the far end of the square, or certainly along Pall Mall; he himself dwelt in the other direction. He started off with an assurance to Sir John that he -would have a letter from him in the morning.

  Sir John waited until the medico was past hearing, then muttered to Mr. Donnelly: “Letter? What sort of letter does he mean?”

  “A letter to you supporting the need for an autopsy of Lady Laningham. That, together with my own to Mr. Trezavant, should give sufficient weight to the one you shall undoubtedly write in the morning requesting such an autopsy.”

  We set out in the direction of Pall Mall. I noted that Sir John, whose hand clasped my arm at the elbow, was shaking a bit. Surely not from the cold; he wore his warm cape, and in general stood against the wind and chill better than most men. Then did I realize that he was laughing silently, chuckling to himself as if at a great joke.

  The shaking ceased. “You’ve thought of everything, have you, Mr. Donnelly?” said he.

  “I’ve tried to,” said the medico. “Your request for an autopsy of the late Lord Laningham went for naught. Mine, had you solicited one such from me, would have carried little weight. However, another in this instance from so eminent a physician as Isaac Diller could hardly be ignored.”

  “Is he truly so eminent?”

  “The fellow has treated members of the Royal Family, though not the King himself. His fees are so high that none less than the nobility can afford them. He lives, if you will, but a few houses up from the Laningham residence in St. James Square in a place nearly as grand.”

  “Yet he believed the poor woman had died of acute indigestion.”

  “No longer. In a spirit of great collegiality we compared our observations of the deaths of the Laninghams, man and wife, remarkable similarities, et cetera. I urged him toward the proper conclusions, and he drew them. I then timidly suggested that only an autopsy would reveal the truth, and he was for it absolutely. No doubt at this moment he believes the idea was his own.”

  “And the letter?”

  “My idea completely. I said that you would hope for one but were too shy to ask.”

  “Shy? Hah! Thought him too great a blockhead —that would be closer to the mark. Acute indigestion indeed!”

  “That, Dr. Diller said, was urged upon him by the present Lord Laningham. He insists he had his doubts —‘only a preliminary finding,’ said he.” Mr. Donnelly hesitated, then gathering his courage, proceeded: “You know, Sir John, you are sometimes a bit too gruff with such fellows as Diller. Blockheads they may be — and I have yet to meet a doctor in London who knew as much as a seasoned Navy surgeon — but they can be useful. As my dear old mother used to say, you can catch more flics with honey than you can with vinegar.”

  Sir John snorted. “God help us—you Irish!’

  Next morning the letter to Mr. Trezavant was written. It was much the same as the last letter to him, yet Sir John did not neglect to quote Lady Laningham’s declaration —“I have been poisoned’ —or to say specifically that he had been summoned by her, only to find her dead upon his arrival. He explained Mr. Donnelly’s presence at the scene, but noted that at the time of her death, “that esteemed physician, Dr. Isaac Diller, was in attendance. From him and from Mr. Donnelly many interesting questions arose, questions that can only be answered by a full and proper autopsy of the corpus.”

  I put the letter before him, dipped the pen, and placed it in his hand in the

  proper spot upon the page. He put upon it his uniquely impressive scrawl.

  Jeremy,” said he, “I should like you to hasten to Mr. Donnelly’s

  surgery and get from him the promised letter. I trust we shall not have to wait too long on Dr. Diller s missive.

  Yet I lingered.

  “What is it. lad?” he asked.

  “Well, sir.” I asked a bit timidly, “if it would not be too forward to ask, I was wondering if I might know what it was the butler had to say to you.”

  “You may know, yes. but I shall impart it first with a caution. It is this: Wlien we enter upon an investigation of this sort, we must always do so with an open mind. We are. at this point, only gathering facts. When we reach our conclusions too early then we are inclined to seize upon those facts which support our conclusions, and ignore, or even reject, those which do not. And you can see. I’m sure, the dangerous fallacy in proceeding in such a way as that.”

  “Well, yes sir. I suppose I can.”

  “That said, I’ll tell you now that the butler had placed himself in the alcove near the door in such a way that he heard near all that was said between Lord Laningham and his aunt during that fierce quarrel in the library. He merely confirmed what I had guessed from the maid’s information that my name was shouted out by her mistress. To wit that after hearing that she was no longer to have the run of the house that had been her home for thirty years or more, she informed him that I — Sir John Fielding, as she shouted it out —suspected poisoning in the death of the late Lord Laningham, that I had urged her earlier to allow an autopsy upon his body, and that now she intended to give it. This was the threat she had whispered to me that evening before at the Crown and Anchor. Now, you have heard thus far, and that is the crux of it. What sa
y you to that?”

  “Why.” said I passionately, “that in so saying, she offered to him her death warrant, that so frightened was he of what an autopsy might reveal that he prevented her from giving permission to dig up her husband by poisoning her. He had the opportunity with that visit to the kitchen.”

  lat is what one might suppose, but let me offer some arguments against that conclusion. First of all, Mr. Poole admitted upon my questioning that Lord Laningham took her threat with equanimity, if not indifference. That may have been bravado on his part —or superior knowledge. It is doubtful that the body could have been exhumed without his permission when he passed from heir apparent and assumed the noble title —she had overestimated her strength in the matter. You speak readily of poisoning, Jeremy, yet so far it has not been proven. So tar it is merely my suspicion, my fancy. It’s true she said when taken ill, ‘I have been poisoned,’ but I put that thought in her mind, did I not? Of course I did, lor in her next breath she called for me. And finally, if poisoning it be in the case of the late Lord Laningham, as well, then how do you explain the fact —given separately from two sources — that Arthur Paltrow, while still the heir apparent, drank from the same bottle of wine as his uncle, and did so without ill effect? I should like to have an interview with him, but such would have to wait until poisoning be proven.”

  “And that,” said I, “cannot be done without an autopsy.”

  He nodded. “Thus we proceed one step at a time. Now off with you, Jeremy. We cannot take that next step until we have those letters in hand.”

  Needing no further urging, I took my leave of him and made my way swiftly to Mr. Donnelly s surgery in Drury Lane. It was still quite early in the day —so early, in fact, that when the good doctor answered my insistent knock upon his door, he had lather upon his face and his razor in his hand. There were as yet, needless to say. no patients assembled in his waiting room. He led the way back to his quarters in the rear. He resumed his place before mirror and washbasin and lathered anew.

  “The letter to Mr. Trezavant wants only a final paragraph and my signature,” said he. “You may read it if you like, Jeremy.”