by Robin Blake
Chapter Nine
FIDELIS WENT BACK inside the rabbit run and lifted the dead rodent by the tail. Surprised into silence by what we had seen, I watched as he collected the jar containing the remains of the food and closed it with the lid. Rat and jar were deposited in a sack he had brought with him.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The performance is finished. Let us go to my room and talk this over.’
As we passed back through the flower garden, we came upon a young lady sitting in one of the bowers. This, I took it, was Miss Lysistrata Plumb. She was pale as paper but I had to agree with my friend that she was extraordinarily pretty.
‘Good morning, Doctor,’ she said in a voice that sounded husky and confiding. As Fidelis gave her a bow I noticed his face flushing to a rosy pink.
‘Ah, Miss Plumb. Yes. I…’
For a moment he was at a loss for words – a rare event in itself.
‘May I … may I introduce my colleague?’ he said at last. ‘That is, I should have said, my friend, er, may I introduce Mr Titus Cragg?’
She inclined her head graciously in my direction.
‘How do you do, Mr Cragg?’
I also bowed, said I was well, and gave her the question back.
Instead of answering it she said, ‘I heard your voices down at the end and wondered what you were doing.’
‘An experiment,’ said Fidelis, raising the sack in his hand.
‘Oh? An experiment, how thrilling. What do you have in that sack?’
‘Well, er, I don’t know if I should say, it’s…’
‘It is material connected to the experiment,’ I put in, to cover his embarrassment.
‘Yes, in fact, a dead animal,’ Fidelis blurted out, with immoderate suddenness as if he wasn’t shaping his remarks very far in advance of opening his mouth. ‘To be precise, I should say, to be precise, a dead rat, which I—’
He did not finish the sentence as now Miss Plumb stood up, her hand across her midriff.
‘Oh! I do not feel well.’
Before either of us could react she had raised herself up, stumbled sideways and bent almost double, preventing herself from falling only because her hand had found the trunk of a shrub. Most unladylike sounds of retching and spewing followed, so that I hastened to avert my eyes from her. Fidelis, on the other hand, shed his nervousness in the instant and became the consummate professional. He handed me the canvas sack, and went to the lady’s side. As the sickness abated he ushered her calmly back to the seat, whipped out the handkerchief that was tucked into her sleeve, wiped her mouth and chin and put the handkerchief into her hand. He then turned and looked carefully at the ground where the vomit lay. Finally he turned back to me.
‘Titus, I must attend to Miss Plumb. Will you take that up to my rooms and wait? I will join you as soon as I can.’
Once again a conference between Fidelis and myself had been disturbed by a bout of violent sickness, I thought, as I mounted the stairs to his top-floor rooms. And though I carried the sack containing the corpse of Athene, and I had seen its connection, through the food, with the expiration of John Allcroft, the dread of contagion now returned to me. Perhaps Allcroft’s death and Miss Plumb’s sickness presaged an epidemic. Perhaps all Preston was now under threat.
To distract myself from these disagreeable thoughts I looked through the titles in Fidelis’s library cabinet. It was a poor selection of not more than thirty volumes, almost all of them scientific and medical. I took out one by Dr John Arbuthnot – his Essay on the Nature of Aliments – because I remembered the author had been a great friend of two of my favourite authors, Addison and Pope, and had himself invented the satirical character of John Bull. I found little evidence of Arbuthnot’s wit in this essay, which was disturbing rather than entertaining. His discourse on coffee has little to say of the delights of the drink but only stresses its ‘acrimony’ and has a list of its ill effects: ‘palsies, leanness, watchfulness and destroying masculine vigour’. I thought of consulting Elizabeth as to whether I should moderate my coffee consumption.
Crossing to the window, with its southern view of the river and the country beyond, I picked out the roof of the Ferry Inn half buried in trees and with a thread of smoke rising from its chimneys. The sickness and death of John Allcroft, and the spectre of contagion that it raised, had put the Egan case out of my mind, but now I thought of it again, and with new complication. There was no chance of reopening the Egan inquest: the evidence on which I could act was too flimsy. But the fact that both men appeared on Destercore’s list raised uncomfortable new possibilities, which I was pondering when Fidelis came in.
‘Mrs Lorris and I have put her to bed and she is a little more comfortable,’ he announced at the door, in the reverent tone of a courtier come from a royal sickbed. ‘She is feeling ashamed now, as much as ill.’
‘She must not have liked that we saw her vomit.’
Fidelis made for a chair and sat down. He leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment, as if infinitely weary.
‘Vomit? It pains me to hear that word used about Miss Plumb. A dog vomits, Titus, not a lady.’
‘Certainly, a dog vomits,’ I agreed, ‘and a man spews. What, then, can we say of a lady?’
Fidelis suddenly looked more animated.
‘A good question, Titus. Most expressions that cover the matter are too colloquial. I would say she disengorges. Miss Plumb is unhappy that we witnessed her disengorging.’
I had to suppress my laughter. The word ‘disengorge’ was (to me) no less repulsive than ‘vomit’, but Fidelis had adopted it in all seriousness. He normally enjoyed satire, yet he never, I had noticed, made sport of pretty young ladies.
‘I hope,’ I said, to move the conversation on, ‘that she is not sick in the way John Allcroft was. If there were contagion in this town—’
Fidelis cut me off. In spite of the success of the Athene experiment, he sounded out of temper.
‘Allcroft did not die of contagion. He died of the food on his plate.’
‘Which you know because of what happened to the rat?’
‘Of course. When food kills a man or makes him ill it is either because it has gone bad of itself, or because something bad has been added to it. In Allcroft’s case I am certain it was the latter. That is what our rat’s death has told us.’
‘I see. So in your opinion Allcroft did not die by accident.’
Fidelis shrugged.
‘He might have done – for example, if something poisonous was tipped into his stew by mistake. But it is equally likely that he was murdered. I may learn more when I have made a minute examination of the remains of the meal.’
‘But suppose the food itself was rotten, would not that kill the rat as well as a poison?’
Fidelis threw back his head in impatience.
‘No, Titus. Rats eat rotten meat every day. They thrive naturally on what would sicken you or me, or even kill us. On the other hand, what we use on purpose to poison rats will certainly also poison us.’
I sank into the chair opposite Fidelis, a sense of dread slowly possessing me. I have always hated cases of poisoning, but this looked far more troubling than the usual family tragedy. Fidelis’s logic was impeccable, but its implications were appalling. I could only hope he was wrong.
* * *
As soon as I had left the house I made my way straight back to the Gamecock Inn. Going directly up to Allcroft’s room I found no trace of the dead man or his belongings. The odour of sickness still lingered, but the cause of it was gone. Allcroft’s family must have come with speed, to remove his body and his traps back to his home.
I went down to the kitchen. The cook at the Gamecock had been in the job only a few months, since the death of Fitzpatrick. He was called Joe Primrose, a fellow with a bulbous nose who was always laughing. I found him at the great table, rolling out a quantity of pastry big enough, almost, to blanket a bed. I asked if we could talk where it was quiet and, with his usual geniality, he put dow
n the yard-long rolling pin and led me past the range where soups and stews bubbled in copper pots, and meats sizzled in the broiling oven. We emerged into the enclosed yard, which was being crossed back and forth by men rolling barrels of wine off a dray. Stables and storerooms were ranged to right and left. Primrose crossed to the door of one of these and unlatched it.
‘Hold onto your wig, Mr Cragg,’ he sang out as he ducked inside.
The room was hung so thickly with hams, sides of bacon, pheasants and geese, muslin-wrapped cheeses, and sacks bulging with root vegetables, that we needed to stoop to avoid knocking against them.
‘It’s about last night’s death,’ I said, when we had disposed ourselves as best we could among the dangling stores. ‘You know what happened?’
At the mention of death Primrose suppressed the cheerfulness that had been plastered across his face.
‘Oh, yes. Guest fell sick and pegged out. But that’s about all I know, Mr Cragg.’
‘He’d been eating one of your hotpots.’
A passing frown troubled Primrose’s brow for a moment, until his wide guileless smile returned.
‘There’s nowt wrong with that dish, you know, Mr Cragg. Very much called for, is that.’
‘Did you make it the same way yesterday as you always do?’
‘Yesterday? Yes, it were same as always, tasty and satisfying. There were a dozen or more that were served it. Tasty and satisfying, those are the two words we use for our hotpot.’
‘I have reason to believe that last night there was a third apposite word. Tasty and satisfying, I do not doubt. But also deadly, Mr Primrose – that I think was the case when Mr Allcroft ate it.’
This time the concern darkened his face for a little longer. But it was not the black cloud of umbrage, such as most proud cooks would have taken at my imputation, only a flickering shadow of good-natured bewilderment.
‘No, no, it can’t have been the hotpot killed the poor gentleman. Like I said, a dozen or more had it.’
‘And none of the others were poorly after?’
‘Not that I’ve heard of.’
‘Was there anything special about Mr Allcroft’s portion?’
‘No, it was straight out of the common pot.’
‘Could anything have been accidentally spilled into it?’
‘Get away! The serving girl brought a dish to me on a tray, I ladled out the stew, and she took it up to the room. Nothing could have happened to it without my knowledge.’
‘Do you have anything about the place that would do a man harm if it were spilled into his stew?’
‘But I just said, nothing was!’
‘I know. But let’s imagine the opposite case.’
Primrose chuckled like a man who enjoyed a bit of verbal stick fighting.
‘I don’t know what sort of thing you mean.’
‘Any poisons, for instance?’
He cast his eyes down and to one side to give the matter thought.
‘Not that I know of,’ he said at last.
‘What about powders or compounds you might use for killing pests? Rats, say.’
Primrose’s expression brightened at the mention of rats.
‘Oh, aye, rats,’ he beamed. ‘We don’t like them here. They live under the brewery across the lane. We try to kill as many as we can.’
‘Do you lay out poison?’
‘I don’t. We send for Isaac Satterthwaite. He knows what to do. If anything needs killing, whether it’s a mad dog or a viper, he’ll do it with pleasure, but especially rats. He does love murdering rats. But I doubt he’s been murdering a man.’
‘I’m not saying that. I was merely concerned in case there had been an unfortunate accident. How exactly does he lay the poison?’
‘You can ask him in person. I gave him a slice of pie in the kitchen no more than a half-hour ago. He’s been working at the brewery.’
I said I would do that and, as we dodged our way out of the storeroom, I asked, in as disinterested a way as I could, ‘The serving girl you mentioned. Amelia – is that her name?’
‘No. We’ve not got an Amelia here. It’s Maggie. Maggie Satterthwaite. Matter of fact, she’s granddaughter of old Isaac, you know.’
‘Ah, yes! Of course. Maggie. And Isaac’s granddaughter, you say? Well, well.’
I watched Primrose as he returned to his pastry rolling and then headed off to see if I could find the rat catcher himself.
* * *
The yard gates gave onto a little rutted lane that looped back to Stoney Gate. I went out of the gate and crossed the lane to Lacey’s, one of Preston’s four breweries, and here I found Isaac Satterthwaite, leaning in contemplative fashion over the mash tun with brew-master Ted Lacey himself. Also in the company was a skinny, desiccated fellow dressed in clothes that were not flamboyant but distinctly modish and elegant: the silver-buttoned waistcoat was of red damask, the shoes were expensive and the wig was a finely made ‘natty scratch’. This was Michael Drake, the haberdasher, whose shop was next door, fronting Stoney Gate itself. The three of them were contentedly breathing the mash tun’s fumes. Satterthwaite turned to me as I approached.
‘How do, Mr Cragg? I did not think we would meet again so soon. Now have a sniff of this ale fermenting here. I was just saying to Mr Lacey and Mr Drake that it’ll be a very manly one when finished.’
‘It will an’ all,’ muttered Lacey, a man of few words.
‘Aye, it will be a strong, fighting brew, will this, Mr Cragg,’ confirmed Drake.
‘And it’s only to be had at the Gamecock,’ continued Satterthwaite. ‘What they call in London an exclusive ale.’
We discussed the various ales on offer in town for a few minutes before Drake left us, saying his dinner hour was done.
‘I must attend to the shop. Shall we take our guns out on Moor Nook later, Ted? Does six o’clock suit you?’
The brewer’s grunt implied that six o’clock was indeed a very suitable time for the slaughtering of rabbits. I took Satterthwaite’s elbow and guided him into the yard.
‘I should have mentioned it this morning, but we have a particularly bothersome family of rats under the house, so I’ve come over for advice about getting rid of them.’
‘In such cases you call for me, sir. It’s a dangerous business to dabble in, is rat catching.’
‘What would you do?’
‘The rat is my strongest and most wily enemy.’ Satterthwaite spoke with steely severity. ‘I have three lines of attack. My terriers, which you have seen, and very sporting they are to work with. Traps, which are chancy but they’re the only way to take your rat alive. And laying poison, which for efficiently killing the animal can’t be beaten. White arsenic. I get it from Wilson in Church Gate. It’s a dangerous element, mind. You’ve got to keep it safe.’
‘Have you used it about the place here?’
‘I did on Tuesday night and I bagged a monstrous one, as big as a buck rabbit. I’ve just been putting some more down. Come and I’ll show you.’
He took me round to the back of the building, where he slapped the wall.
‘Other side of this is where the barley’s kept. They can never get enough of it, rats. They get in through the drain here.’
He indicated an aperture low down in the wall.
‘Why not simply block it up?’
‘That’s useless. They’d find another way. This is best because with this I know where to catch them. They will always run the easiest, quickest way. See this?’
He pointed to an earthenware pipe about 3 inches in diameter and 4 feet long lying on the ground beside the wall.
‘I put the poison in that pipe mixed with some of Mr Lacey’s best grain. I soften the grain first, of course.’
‘You mean you cook it?’
‘Aye. It makes it easier to mix, does that. And mark that pipe. It’s got to be too narrow for a cat or a dog, and too long for a child to reach into, see? I’ll never know how a rat as big as that got in, but it did, f
or it lay dead just over there by the water butt.’
I went down on one knee, planted a hand on the ground and lowered my head until my cheek almost touched the pipe’s end. In this ungainly position I peered into the pipe. I could see light coming through from the other end but some substance partially blocked it about halfway along. I got up and dusted the dirt off my hand.
‘I see just how you’ve planted the poison, Mr Satterthwaite. I will certainly call for you if our nuisance persists.’
I held out my hand and he shook it with military rigour but, as I was leaving, he called after me.
‘I hope Dr Fidelis is enjoying his pet.’
I turned, momentarily at a loss to know what to reply.
‘Has she settled with him?’ Satterthwaite went on. ‘Do you know?’
‘Alas, she has not,’ I replied. ‘She has died.’
Satterthwaite looked concerned.
‘Well, she were lish as a butcher’s brat when I gave her over. What was up with her?’
‘Nothing intrinsic,’ I replied. ‘Let’s just say she gave her life in the cause of justice.’
I left him to scratch his head over this and walked back across the lane, and into the courtyard of the Gamecock. I had much to think about. Allcroft could certainly have been poisoned with the rat catcher’s arsenic, but I had not proved the case. Even if I could do so, it would not mean of necessity that Satterthwaite was guilty. Anyone could have collected some of the poison, as long as they knew where and how he laid it – and it may have been no secret that he had done so most recently only last Tuesday night.
Of course, it had not escaped me that one of those perfectly placed to know such details was Maggie Satterthwaite – who was not only the rat catcher’s granddaughter, but had served Allcroft with his meal.