Sweet Poison

by David Roberts

  15

  Thursday Morning

  Verity telephoned Edward at a frighteningly early hour to berate him for going off to the Cocoanut Grove the previous evening without her. She would have liked to accuse him of . . . of something . . . she wasn’t sure what exactly, for taking Amy out to dinner but, on reflection, she did not think she dared tell him whom he could and could not entertain. When she heard how he had been knocked down and almost killed by a taxi and ended up in a peculiarly noisome gutter, her wrath left her and she felt positively cheerful. Despite Edward begging her to leave him alone to lick his wounds, she jumped in a taxi and came straight round to his rooms. Fenton’s haughty demeanour as he opened the door of the apartment to Verity showed what he thought of his master permitting an unmarried girl to minister to his hurts while he was still in his dressing-gown and silk pyjamas.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Verity, giving his nightwear a steady stare. She poked him in the ribs and he groaned noisily. ‘That will teach you to “pursue your inquiries” without a chaperone,’ she said, smugly.

  Edward groaned again even more piteously. He was a mass of bruises and he wanted to be cherished, not told his discomfort was all his own fault. In fact, he thought Verity might congratulate him or at least commiserate with him but she seemed intent on riling him. He had no idea why. However, by the time Fenton appeared with his breakfast on a silver tray he was beginning to feel less like tenderized steak and was able to talk.

  ‘You can imagine what Inspector Pride said when I presented myself at Scotland Yard looking as if I had been in a particularly nasty brawl – and Captain Gordon was, if anything, looking rather worse. Here, do you want to see my bruises?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Verity with a theatrical shudder, ‘it might put me off your breakfast.’ She buttered a piece of toast from the plate on his tray and drowned it in Oxford marmalade. ‘It must be so nice to be cared for by someone like Fenton who will bring you china tea and soft-boiled eggs in bed.’ She sighed theatrically. ‘Why can’t women have valets?’

  ‘Ladies may have ladies’ maids, I suppose,’ Edward replied, seizing his cup of coffee before Verity could drink it.

  ‘Am I a lady?’ Verity mused. ‘I wonder . . . I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to turn myself into a woman comrade but I may have failed. I shall ask Fenton.’

  ‘No, please don’t,’ said Edward hastily.

  ‘But seriously, how could you go off detecting without me – or was it just spooning over Amy? I expect it was, dash it. Fenton was very evasive when I gave him the third degree yesterday. Anyway, what did you discover?’

  ‘Ah, well, nothing, I suppose . . . nothing we did not know before, I mean.’

  ‘You spent the evening “meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow”,’ said Verity, who had read Pride and Prejudice at school and had immediately identified with Elizabeth Bennet.

  Edward blushed. ‘Ah, I see Lord Edward “is not to be laughed at”,’ Verity added, getting up from her perch on the bed and going over to the window. She wished she did not feel interested in Amy Pageant.

  ‘Gordon was in a pretty bad way when we got him to the Yard,’ Edward repeated, hoping thereby to draw attention to his life-saving activities and choosing to ignore Verity’s jibes.

  ‘I don’t feel sorry for Gordon,’ said Verity scornfully. ‘Why feel sorry for a dope-pedlar?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Edward weakly. ‘I just feel he may have been put in a difficult position, that’s all.’

  ‘For pity’s sake, stop being saintlike and wish someone ill for once,’ said Verity crossly. ‘All this feeling sorry for people who ought to be in gaol is getting on my nerves. The inquest is tomorrow, isn’t it?’

  ‘General Craig’s? Yes, tomorrow. I don’t know when the inquest will be on Larmore – or Lomax for that matter. Never having attended an inquest in my life, it seems my diary is now to have “inquest” written on every page. Perhaps I won’t have to appear at Larmore’s. Pride couldn’t tell me. I did say though that I would talk to Celia Larmore. Pride seemed to think I ought.’

  ‘Well,’ said Verity, ‘we’ve still got a few more hours to try and come up with something.’

  ‘Prove he was murdered, you mean? I think it’s all too late. We’ve talked to everyone who might have killed him and it’s hardly surprising that none of them confessed.’

  ‘No, but two of them said the Bishop did it,’ said Verity triumphantly, taking the last slice of toast off Edward’s plate and covering it thickly with butter.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Edward, ‘but I don’t seriously think that a bishop of the Church of England would murder a distinguished general at a duke’s dinner-party.’

  ‘Well, someone did,’ said Verity stubbornly, spearing a slice of peach with a fork.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Edward. ‘I thought you said you didn’t want any breakfast.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Verity, grinning as well as she could with her mouth full. ‘There is one thing though – actually, it was David who suggested it.’ Edward’s face fell. ‘He said that if Craig was murdered, the reason probably lay in his past.’

  ‘I think David is right,’ Edward admitted. ‘I have been thinking along the same lines. I suggest, as soon as you have finished my breakfast,’ and he looked meaningfully at Verity as she shoved the last of the peach into her surprisingly large mouth, ‘we toddle along and have a word with Jeffries.’

  ‘General Craig’s valet?’

  ‘Yes, as far as I know he is still staying at the General’s house. He’s going to go and live with his mother in Brighton or somewhere but I am sure he would not go before the funeral.’

  ‘Who’s organizing all that side of things?’

  ‘There’s this distant cousin – a lawyer, I think.’ He read Verity’s mind. ‘He’s the General’s only living relative and will inherit what there is to inherit but he hardly knew the General and wasn’t at the dinner so he’s not a suspect, at least I don’t see how he can be.’

  ‘No, you are right, of course,’ said Verity, looking round his breakfast tray to make sure she had not missed anything.

  ‘Still, I think we should speak to Jeffries. He’s rather a depressed-looking cove, don’t you know, but no fool. We probably ought to have thought of him before.’

  ‘Will it be all right for me to come?’ said Verity, unusually meekly. ‘I don’t seem to make a very good impression on valets. The Communist comes out in me, I am afraid.’

  ‘What? Oh, you mean Fenton! Don’t worry about him. His bark’s worse than his whatnot. He’ll love you one day.’

  ‘If I live so long,’ muttered Verity to herself.

  ‘Of course you must come, and we won’t telephone and make an appointment either. Let’s take him unawares, “sleeping in his orchard”.’

  ‘What orchard?’ said Verity, who had not taken to Shakespeare with the same enthusiasm she had for Miss Austen.

  In the taxi to Cadogan Square Edward said, a little shyly, ‘Will you come down with me tonight and stay at the castle? The inquest is at ten so it would be a bit of rush if you were going to come down by train in the morning.’

  ‘Oh, that’s very sweet of you,’ said Verity, genuinely touched, ‘but I don’t think I could. After . . . well, you know . . . getting into your brother’s house under false pretences and then writing that piece in the Daily Worker . . . I just couldn’t.’

  ‘No, I mean it. I’ve talked it over with Connie on the telephone and she insists. I won’t pretend Gerald looks on you as his favourite person but he’s not a fool and Connie says he realizes that you only did what any journalist would have done. You made no promises and therefore broke none.’

  Verity was about to butt in but he raised his hand. ‘Before you say anything else I think it might be important that you are there for another reason. Bishop Haycraft and Lord Weaver are also going to make statements at the inquest and they are stayi
ng at the castle tonight. I thought it might be our last chance of straightening things out.’

  Verity was pleased that Edward should have included her in the ‘we’ who were going to get things ‘straightened out’ so on impulse she leant across and kissed him on the cheek. ‘If you think it’s all right, then I will be glad to come,’ she said. ‘It’s just the Bishop and Weaver – no one else?’

  ‘No. Obviously Mrs Larmore is not coming, and I believe Blanche is probably going to stay with Hermione. Apparently she is not at all well. Haycraft is leaving his wife behind, quite sensibly. I’m afraid the inquest is going to be a grisly if brief affair. There will be lots of you around, I expect.’

  Verity was puzzled for a moment as to what he meant, then she understood: ‘Oh, journalists?’

  ‘Yes, vultures at the feast.’

  ‘But why do you say it will be brief – the inquest?’

  ‘Well, unless we come up with something very dramatic the verdict will be accidental death.’

  ‘I see, and you don’t think we will come up with anything dramatic?’

  ‘I doubt it and, of course, you might argue that it is kinder to the General just to leave it at that. After all, if we were to prove he was murdered, what would it achieve? Nastiness all round and the General would be remembered not for what he did but for how he died.’

  Verity, remembering her Communist principles, wanted to say she did not feel a warmongering imperialist had much to be proud of anyway, but the words stuck in her gullet. It seemed wrong, whatever David might say, to besmirch the old man’s memory.

  ‘You don’t mean that?’ she said instead. ‘Of course we must see justice done if we can. Everyone deserves justice even if most people don’t get it.’

  ‘“Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder”?’

  ‘You are quoting again,’ Verity accused him.

  ‘Sorry! You started it. I don’t know why but Hamlet has been rather on my mind.’ He stroked his chin and repeated, ‘Don’t know why.’

  At that moment the cab drew up outside 22 Cadogan Square and they got out. Edward paid the driver and then rang the bell. Nothing happened so he rang the bell again. He was just about to hammer on the door, thinking that the electric bell might not be working, when he heard a shuffling sound followed by a pulling of bolts. Then Jeffries’ head appeared round the door.

  ‘Lord Edward!’ exclaimed the man, opening the door wider. ‘I thought it might be newspaper people,’ he said gloomily. ‘They have tried everything to get in, even offered me money. As if I would ever . . .’ He paused. ‘And you, miss, are . . . ?’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry, Jeffries, how rude of me. This is Miss Verity Browne. She was there when the General died. I don’t know whether you saw her then?’

  They were still standing on the doorstep and it looked as though that was where they would remain unless Edward produced something to persuade the suspicious old retainer that they were allies not the enemy. ‘Excuse me, miss,’ Jeffries went on, ‘but weren’t it you who wrote about the General’s death in the . . . in the Daily Worker?’

  It had taken Jeffries some moments to remember that journal’s name and Verity got the feeling that the Daily Worker was not often seen in Cadogan Square. Why was it, she wondered, that gentlemen’s personal gentlemen, as she had heard Edward describe valets, were so unwilling to throw off their chains and join the revolution? Could David and all the rest of them be wrong, and were the working classes satisfied with their lot? If so it was a poor outlook for the revolution. The Communist Party couldn’t be solely a middle-class movement. If anything was to be achieved, the Party had to capture the hearts and minds of the workers, and the workers Verity had met recently did not seem likely to rise and cut their masters’ throats or cry ‘A la lanterne’ as the tumbrels rolled by.

  ‘Yes, Jeffries,’ said Edward firmly, ‘but Miss Browne is a friend of mine and you can trust her absolutely.’

  Verity was gratified. Edward continued: ‘She and I believe that the General may not have died by his own hand, as it is said. I mean – he did die by his own hand but he did not intend to do so.’

  Still casting suspicious glances at Verity, Jeffries opened the door and she and Edward stepped into the narrow, gloomy little hall. It was odd, Edward thought, for such a handsome house to be so dark. Then he saw that it was a house in mourning: every shutter was closed, every curtain drawn to block out the sunlight. The occasional shaft of light which penetrated the gloom made rainbows on spiders’ webs. Verity shivered and wondered whimsically if they would bump into Miss Havisham on their way to the pantry in the basement. The basement was clearly Jeffries’ domain, his home, and hadn’t the musty smell which pervaded the rest of the house. There was even a window unshuttered through which a weak and watery light shone. They were at the front of the house below street level and Jeffries’ view of the world outside was the small ‘area’ with steep stone steps leading up to the street.

  The melancholy manservant offered his guests no refreshment and brought out no chairs, so they perched against the knife cupboard as well as they could. ‘We may be quite wrong, Jeffries, but it is our belief that the General did not die accidentally. We wondered if you had any thoughts about it?’

  ‘How do you mean, my lord?’ said Jeffries unhelpfully.

  ‘Well, for instance, is it true he carried a cyanide pill around with him?’ Edward ploughed on.

  ‘Yes, sir, I told Inspector Pride he did.’

  ‘Was it a pill he had from during the war?’ Edward asked.

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ said Jeffries in mild surprise. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I have read that some officers carried cyanide in case they were captured and did not want to undergo questioning.’

  ‘Yes, my lord, that was it. The General used to joke about it sometimes.’

  ‘Joke about it? How, man?’

  ‘He used to say he was afraid of nothing and that death had no dominion over him. I am not sure what he meant exactly, my lord, but especially when his wife died – God rest her soul – and later when he became very ill, I think it gave him comfort to know he could end it all.’

  ‘But suicide – didn’t he consider that cowardice?’ said Edward unwisely.

  ‘General Craig was the bravest man I ever knew, my lord,’ said Jeffries indignantly.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ Edward said.

  ‘But you don’t understand. No one can who did not know him like I knew him.’ The little man screwed up his eyes and Edward saw that he was remembering something. ‘I was his servant during the war, his batman. Once, about seven o’clock in the evening but very dark, we were in his car near the front line inspecting the battalion before an attack. I should tell you, he wasn’t one of those generals who never came near his men – not at all. I was driving. He was asleep in the back – he had been awake for two days and two nights but he had a knack of being able to catnap whenever he could. He used to say to me, “Jeffries – Napoleon, Wellington, all the great generals, they had the knack of sleeping when and where they could, even in the midst of battle if need be. I’m not saying I’m any sort of Napoleon but at least I have that in common with those great soldiers.”

  ‘Anyhow, on this occasion, with the guns pounding away on all sides and the flashes – well, I have no very good sense of direction at the best of times – I turned right instead of left and we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of soldiers speaking a foreign language. I thought at first they might be French because they were holding the next part of the line but then I realized they were talking German. I can’t speak German, you understand, but I could recognize it. I stopped the car and very gently woke up the General and told him what had happened. He was wonderful, sir.’ Jeffries’ eyes were shining as he remembered those far-away events as if they were yesterday. ‘We started to turn the motor car around but we were challenged. Cool as a cucumber the General pretended he was a German officer. In the dark they could not see his uniform
and it was too dangerous for anyone to shine a torch. He made the soldiers help turn the car around – it was a very narrow path we had come along and they had to manhandle the old girl. Then, just as we had thanked them and I was starting the engine, a flare lit up the sky and the soldiers saw who we were. “Drive like hell, Jeffries,” he said and I did. When we got back to our lines we found that the General had taken a bullet in his shoulder but he never made a sound, just said, “Good work, Jeffries, but next time wake me if you don’t know the way!”’

  Jeffries seemed exhausted after telling his story and slumped in the wooden armchair which was the room’s only seat. ‘He was not a coward, my lord,’ he mumbled.

  ‘No, of course not. I never meant to suggest it. I just meant that I cannot believe a man like the one you describe would have killed himself.’

  ‘Maybe not, my lord, maybe not, but,’ said the man, shrugging his shoulders, ‘he was very weary of this world. He thought it had all gone to the dogs. He thought there was going to be another war and that all he had been through had gone for nothing.’

  ‘He hated Germans?’

  ‘He did, sir, he hated the Hun as he would call them – the Hun or the Boche – never Germans, he would never say Germans. I asked him once how he spoke such good Boche and he said he had been at a university over there as a very young man. Would it be Heidelberg, my lord? I think that was what he said.’

  ‘Yes, Heidelberg.’ Edward thought for a moment and then asked, ‘Did he have any special enemies?’

  ‘No, my lord,’ said Jeffries firmly.

  ‘No one, no one at all? No German for instance?’ Edward pressed.

  ‘Not that I know of, my lord. He did not like a lot of people – people he read about in the newspapers – but as far as I know he had no special enemies.’

  Verity, who had been silent up to now, said, ‘Jeffries, forgive me for seeming to pry, but how did the General’s wife – Dolly, was that her name? How did she die? It must have hit him very hard.’