Murder at Blackburn Hall

by Sara Rosett

  He circled the pencil in the air. “No, go back to the beginning of the evening. What time did you arrive in the drawing room, and who else was there?”

  Longly took me back through the evening, reconstructing my movements around the room. When I described pouring coffee for Mrs. Shaw and myself, Longly asked, “Mr. Pearce joined you at the table?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Did anyone else approach the table?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I poured two cups of coffee.”

  “And that was all?” Longly asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t add anything to the cups?”

  “Only cream for Mrs. Shaw. I take my coffee black.”

  “And no one else approached the table during this time except for Mr. Pearce?”

  “As I said, I don’t think so.”

  He took a piece of paper from his pocket. It was a sketch of the drawing room. “Show me how you walked to the table where the coffee was laid out.”

  I was relieved he didn’t ask about what Pearce and I had talked about. I traced the route from the chairs where Mrs. Shaw and I had sat, through the room, and around the sofa to the table with the coffee.

  Longly folded the paper and put it away, then he worked a glove onto his hand. He reached into the bag the constable handed to him and pulled out my box of asthma cigarettes. “Is this the box of asthma cigarettes you had the servant retrieve from your room?”

  “Yes.” My stomach roiled. I didn’t know exactly where Longly was going with his questions, but my gut told me it wasn’t good.

  “How many cigarettes were in it?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps half a dozen. I don’t smoke them.”

  “You didn’t check?”

  “No. As I told you, I don’t smoke them. I only kept them because it was easier than trying to give them back to Essie—Essie Matthews. If you knew Essie, you’d understand. She doesn’t take no for an answer.”

  “Where did you leave them in the drawing room?”

  “On the table behind the sofa.” My heartbeat fluttered. I’d just traced my finger along the paper, showing my route through the drawing room, which had taken me near the sofa table.

  “Did you move them later?” Longly asked.

  “No. In fact, I forgot all about them.”

  Longly replaced the box of cigarettes in the bag, put it aside, and then took off the glove. “Were you acquainted with Mr. Pearce?”

  “No. I did know who he was, but I’ve never met him before.” I leaned forward. “You think the asthma cigarettes were used to poison Mr. Pearce? Was that what was in his coffee?”

  Longly’s eyes narrowed. “You noticed something about Mr. Pearce’s coffee?”

  “Only after it spilled. There was something on the rug with the coffee. It looked like bits of leaves or grass.”

  Longly made a note. “Did you speak to Mr. Pearce?”

  “Of course,” I said, noting Longly hadn’t answered my question about the substance in the coffee. “We all chatted throughout the evening.”

  “But your conversation with Mr. Pearce was tense. What was that about?”

  “I can assure you that had nothing to do with Mr. Pearce’s death.”

  “What did you argue about?”

  Someone must have overheard either my conversation with Pearce before dinner or his comments to me as he poured his coffee. For a moment, I debated glossing over my connection to Pearce, but I quickly decided it would be much better to tell Longly myself what had happened. That way, it wouldn’t look as if I were trying to hide something. I asked, “Do you know anything about Mr. Pearce other than his position in the community here? No? Mr. Pearce was involved in recruiting investors for Hartman Consolidated. Have you heard of it?”

  “The scam that masqueraded as an investment? Yes, I’m familiar with it.”

  “Mr. Pearce convinced many people to invest in it, I’ve learned. My father was one of them, and he invested a significant amount of money—well, the entire amount of my trust fund. It was all lost. Mr. Pearce says or—said—he lost money as well, but I didn’t believe him.”

  “No?”

  “No. I think Pearce was in on it, receiving money for every single ‘investment’ he recruited for Hartman. I’ve heard plenty of rumors to that effect. When the whole thing came crashing down, he was investigated, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him.”

  “You know quite a bit about this.”

  “If your means of financial independence were suddenly taken away from you, you’d look into it too, I think.”

  “I’m sure I would. How far did your inquiries go?”

  “I researched everything I could find in the newspapers, and then I went to the office of Mercer, Blackthorne, and Thompkins. I wanted to speak to Mr. Pearce myself, but he no longer worked there, and no one would give me his current address.”

  “So when you saw him here, this was the first time you’d met him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re very angry.” Longly set down the pencil he’d been rotating. “It would be understandable if you wanted revenge.”

  “I was angry and upset, but I didn’t do anything to hurt him. In fact, I was going to contact you and let you know about his background.”

  “I see.” Longly said, but his tone sounded doubtful.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “And then he wanted to inspect the trays of dirty cups and glasses from the drawing room,” Janet said as she put away my shoes.

  I tied the belt of my dressing gown and reached for my hairbrush. When Janet had arrived to help me change, I’d asked her if Inspector Longly had been below stairs, and she was relating what one of the kitchen maids, Bess, had told her. “And did he seem interested in anything he found?” I asked.

  Janet lifted her shoulders. “There was nothing to find. All the cups and glasses from the drawing room were already washed up, weren’t they?” Janet closed the doors of the wardrobe. “Then he looked in the rubbish,” she said, her tone indicating it was an outlandish act. “Took out a little scrap of paper and put it in another bag, even though the paper was soaking wet.”

  “How big was it?” I asked. “The paper, I mean. Did the scullery maid see it?”

  “Yes, the inspector showed it to her, and she said it was shoved down in the dregs of one of the dirty coffee cups on the tray. Some people do that, stub out their cigarette in their coffee cup.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “So it was a cigarette paper?”

  “That’s what Bess said it looked like. She saw it when she brought the tray of dirty cups from the drawing room to the scullery.”

  I dismissed Janet and climbed into bed, my thoughts spinning.

  Later that night, I rolled over and tucked the pillow under my cheek. I’d been awake for hours. The house had settled into silence, but each time I closed my eyes, I saw Pearce, his hand slamming down, and his frantic gaze. I drew the blanket over my shoulder. If only Father hadn’t invested my trust fund in Hartman Consolidated.

  Questions rotated through my mind, and worry gnawed at me as I circled through Longly’s questions. Why had I used words like revenge and comeuppance when I talked to Jasper about Pearce? I squirmed into a new position under the sheets. Had someone overheard me? Surely Longly knew I only wanted the truth about Pearce to come out. But the way Longly had looked at me with his cool gaze worried me. I’d thought of telling him what Jasper and I had worked out—how someone could add steeped leaves to the coffee so that it wouldn’t be noticeable--but I didn’t want to give Longly a reason to suspect me more than he already did.

  I shifted again, wondering about Longly’s questions about the cigarettes. Even though Longly hadn’t stated it outright, it seemed the asthma cigarettes had something to do with Pearce’s death. Longly’s interest in the discarded cigarette in the kitchen rubbish indicated he thought the ciga
rette was important.

  Had someone eased a cigarette out of the discarded package in the drawing room and used it to harm Pearce? Was that what Longly thought had happened? If it was, then he’d have the package analyzed for fingerprints, I was sure. And my fingerprints would be on the package. Perhaps he’d find another set? My heart lifted at the thought, then sank. All the ladies had on gloves. Then my spirits dropped again as I remembered the lace-edged runner on the sofa table. If it was a man who’d taken a cigarette, he could use the fabric to cover his thumb as he edged the box open and tilted it so a cigarette slid out.

  No, I couldn’t count on the possibility of another set of fingerprints on the box taking Longly’s attention away from me. If someone had been clever enough to use the cigarettes to kill Pearce, I doubted they’d conveniently left their fingerprints on the cigarette box, especially since it seemed they’d been sharp enough to soak the cigarette paper in a coffee cup and destroy any fingerprints on it.

  But asthma cigarettes were common. Plenty of people used them. One could buy them at any chemist. How could they be used to hurt Pearce?

  I squished the pillow, readjusting it under my ear. Mrs. Pearce had said her husband had a weak heart. I’d seen the bits of leaves in the dregs of his coffee, so I knew something was in it, but was that what killed him? Or was it a combination of the two things—the asthma cigarettes and his weak heart—that had caused his death? A post mortem would be done, but it would take a while. The results might not be made public for days and days.

  I forced myself to close my eyes and breathe in a steady rhythm. The faint tick of the clock marked the seconds. After a few minutes, I threw back the covers, shoved my feet into my slippers, and reached for my dressing gown. I had no way to figure out if Pearce’s health had any impact on his death, but I might be able to answer my questions. Blackburn Hall had a large, well-stocked library. I could at least read up on asthma cigarettes. I’d feel better if I did something instead of worrying.

  I closed the door to my room and padded silently down the thick hallway carpet, staying to the middle of the rug to make sure I didn’t bump into the furniture. Once I reached the staircase, the moonlight filtering through the tall windows over the landing provided enough light so I could see my way. I crossed the entry hall on the tips of my toes so my slippers didn’t slap against the parquet. Then I closed the library door, turned on a few lamps, and went to examine the bookshelves.

  After hunting through the books, I found a shelf dedicated to medical topics. I skimmed over titles about tropical diseases, equine health, and a thick anatomy book. About halfway along the shelf, I found a general medical tome. As I pried it out, a smaller book fell to the floor.

  I picked up the thin book bound in tan leather. I’d seen it on Lady Holt’s writing desk. It didn’t have a title on the spine, and the front was also blank. I flipped to the first page. Spidery handwriting proclaimed, Lady Holt’s Herbal. The date underneath it was from the seventeen hundreds, so it must have been handed down from generation to generation, from one Lady Holt to another.

  I took both books to the library table. I set aside the leather-bound herbal and focused on the medical book first. I found asthma cigarettes listed in the index, then went to the section describing them. I skimmed until I found a list of ingredients. My eyebrows went up. They didn’t contain tobacco, but were a mix of herbs from the nightshade family. My knowledge of plants was sketchy, but even I knew nightshade could be deadly. The most common ingredients in asthma cigarettes were belladonna and datura stramonium, also known as thorn apple. The plants contained atropine, which dilated the airways in the lungs and made breathing easier when it was inhaled. But when too much was inhaled, a person could die. My heart thumped. Longly had asked so many questions about the cigarettes. I took a deep breath and flipped to another section, looking for more information.

  The pages fell open at the entry for datura stramonium where a folded sheet of paper had been left in the book. I opened the paper. The heading read, A Comparison on Deterioration Rates of Types of Fabric by Serena Shires. The whole thing had been handwritten in a hurried cursive. I skimmed over the description of how cotton, linen, wool, and silk broke down when buried. Parts were lined through and some words changed or deleted. It must have been a draft of the article Serena had mentioned to Calder. But why was it in the medical book . . . at an entry about datura stramonium? Odd to find it there.

  I’d think about that later. I set it aside and focused on datura stramonium and the atropine it contained. Besides dilating the airways, atropine acted on the body in other ways. It dilated pupils, increased the heart rate, and often caused dry mouth, thirst, elevated body temperature, confusion, hallucinations, drowsiness, and even coma.

  Earlier that evening I’d been focused on my playing cards and hadn’t noticed what Pearce’s eyes had looked like, but he’d asked for water and pulled at his collar as if he were overheated. Serena had lifted one of his eyelids. I could ask her what she noticed. Pearce had been confused, and the whole thing with the bugs—that had definitely been a hallucination. I couldn’t suppress a shiver, remembering the intensity of his gaze and his urgent tone as he commanded Jasper to flatten the bugs on the table.

  I shook off the memory and returned to the first entry to finish reading about asthma cigarettes. I read on, fascinated and slightly amazed that such a dangerous plant was used to treat asthma. While datura stramonium was the most common ingredient, the potency of asthma cigarettes varied. Different chemists had their own recipes and the different brands of cigarettes also had their own individualized compositions.

  Essie had said the asthma cigarettes she gave me were a new brand that would be released soon, which meant I couldn’t run down to the chemist in the village and pick up another box to see what the brand contained. And it probably wasn’t a good idea to do that anyway. It would look suspicious to Longly since I’d told him that I didn’t use asthma cigarettes. A summary at the bottom of the article stated cases of accidental overdose were known, but benefits outweighed the risk for most patients.

  I fingered the piece of paper about Serena’s research. Was it just a stray bit of paper someone had picked up and used to mark a place in a book? But why was it at the entry about datura stramonium? Had Serena placed it there? I put the paper aside and closed the book, wondering if Serena had consulted the medical book recently. It seemed I had two reasons to speak to her later.

  I picked up the herbal and flipped through it, but there were no extra bits of paper or pages inserted as bookmarks. The leather-bound volume was filled with home remedies, including poultices for coughs and salves for burns as well as recipes for lotions and perfumes.

  I went back through the book more slowly. The variety of handwriting showed different women had listed their own recipes and added notes to older entries. I paused and re-read one of the entries, a remedy for sleeplessness that listed crushed thorn apple leaves. Thorn apple was listed as one of the common names for datura stramonium in the medical book. I stared at the last line of the recipe. Careful dosage is essential, noted the cramped, old-fashioned handwriting. Too much causes heart palpitations.

  I closed the herbal and stacked it on the larger book. Had Serena consulted the medical books . . . or the herbal? The books were shelved next to each other. It was possible she’d looked at both. But why would she want to harm Pearce? She had no connection with him that I could see. They hadn’t spoken to each other much that evening, and I hadn’t picked up on any undercurrents between them. I’d ask Jasper if he’d noticed anything. Despite his relaxed demeanor, he was incredibly observant.

  I ran my finger along the edge of the herbal, which had been on Lady Holt’s desk when I first arrived at Blackburn Hall. Did Lady Holt know thorn apple was a common ingredient in asthma cigarettes?

  I pushed back the chair and stood. The thoughts were too absurd, too fantastic. Could I really be considering Lady Holt—the authority on manners and proper behavior—as some
one who’d poison her dinner guest? I replaced the books on the shelf, picked up the paper about decomposition, switched off the lamps, and climbed the stairs through the silvery moonlight. My thoughts were full of what I’d read, and I was halfway down the darkened corridor upstairs when I heard the groan of a floorboard and the swish of fabric. I snapped out of my reverie and stood motionless.

  I didn’t want to be discovered in a darkened hallway. Certain people might take my presence here as an invitation. If I turned and went backward, the moonlight on the staircase would highlight me. I couldn’t go forward because the sounds were coming from that direction, and all the doors around me were closed. I couldn’t slip into a room—that could cause worse problems.

  I darted to the side, hands outstretched. My fingertips touched the cool glass of a display cabinet. I squished in beside it. The swooshing sound grew louder, and a tall broad-shouldered form with the lithe movement of a young person walked by. The pace was brisk, and the person’s steps didn’t check.

  Once the figure passed me, I let myself breathe again as I watched the person disappear down the stairs. When I’d left my room earlier, the little clock on the mantelpiece had shown it was nearly one o’clock in the morning. Who would be creeping around at that hour? The ridiculousness of the question hit me. I was creeping around at an absurd hour. What was to prevent someone else from doing the same?

  I stepped back onto the thick rug and crept down its center to the staircase. Moonlight fell on Zippy as he turned at the landing and trotted down the last flight of stairs to the entry hall. I waited until his head, which was visible through the balustrades, disappeared below the level of the floor, then I tiptoed to the top of the stairs but stayed in the shadows near the wall, away from the moonlight.

  I expected the confident tap of Zippy’s slippers on the parquet to continue across the entry, but he only took a few steps. A few notes of a whistled melody floated up, then a metallic click sounded. The murmur of his voice drifted up to me, but I couldn’t distinguish the words. I moved down to the landing and leaned over the rail, then drew back. Zippy was seated on the chair beside the telephone table. I was directly over him, looking at the top of his head as he pressed the earpiece to his ear.