by Robin Paige
Mercifully, Kate did not have long to wait for the constable’s arrival. At half past three, she heard the crunch of gravel outside and opened the French doors to look out. The constable had arrived on a bicycle. She went back to her chair in front of the fire, and after a few minutes, the doctor brought him into the library.
“This is Constable Edward Laken, Miss Ardleigh,” Dr. Randall said. “I have informed him of the circumstances of your aunts’ deaths.” He spoke slowly and gently, as if he were speaking to a child. Did he think her bereavement somehow made her more fragile? Or did he fear that, confronted by the constable and the need to consider the cause of her aunts’ deaths, she would fly into hysterics? He picked up his bag and went to the door. “I must see to other patients,” he said in a comforting voice, “but I leave you in capable hands. Do not hesitate to send for me if there is a need.”
“Thank you,” Kate said. When the doctor had gone, she turned to the constable. “I am sure you have questions,” she said, steadying her voice by keeping it low.
“I fear so, Miss Ardleigh.” The constable was a slender man with sandy hair, a ruddily thoughtful face, and alert gray eyes. His navy serge uniform was brushed, its buttons polished, his boots shined. “I am sorry to intrude on your grief, but if the questions are answered now, perhaps there will be no need for further intrusion.” His voice was well modulated and suggested an education beyond that of the village school.
“Please ask what you must,” Kate said, shivering in spite of the fire. Aunt Sabrina’s shawl was hanging over the arm of the chair. She fingered it for a moment, then draped it around her shoulders. “Do you wish to speak to the servants?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the constable said. “But I have several questions for you first, if I may.”
Kate saw that the constable’s level gaze held a certain regard, but something of the defensive as well. Remembering that her policeman uncle had often felt himself scorned by the upper class, Kate understood the look. But it would not make the man easier to know that she herself came from a policeman’s family and sympathized with his situation. So she only said, “I will answer if I can.”
Acting with deference and authority at once, the constable took a notebook and pencil out of his pocket. He wrote down the names of her aunts, the names and approximate ages of the servants and the length of their service, and her own name. She described her relationship to her aunts and her position at Bishop’s Keep, and saw as she did so a slight shift in his posture.
He looked up. “You are employed here, as well as related?”
“Yes,” Kate said. “My aunt was engaged in a work that required typing and other clerical duties, which I provided.” She paused, wondering what she should say of the difficulties of the past few days. She was about to mention the situation when Constable Laken spoke again.
“I understood that Miss Ardleigh had no relatives other than her sister? And yourself, of course.”
Kate hesitated. In her delirium, Aunt Sabrina had spoken of a child. But Dr. Randall had vigorously rejected the idea. Aunt Sabrina’s words—her last words—echoed in her mind. “You are the last Ardleigh.”
“I believe that is the case,” she said.
“Who benefits from the deaths?” the constable asked.
Her eyes widened. “Sir?”
“Who inherits the estate?” His tone was studiedly offhand.
“I do not know,” Kate said. It was not a question she wanted to think about right now. “I understand that the vicar has a copy of my aunt’s will. Perhaps he could provide you with the name of her solicitor.”
Constable Laken pocketed his notebook. “I will speak with him. Might I see the servants now, Miss Ardleigh?” His eyes were guarded. “Privately, if you please. That is, without you or the butler present.”
Kate was momentarily taken aback. Did he think she might influence their answers? Did he imagine that she or Mudd might wish the servants to conceal some fact that might have a bearing on her aunts’ deaths? But no doubt it was better this way. He would learn of the belowstairs animosity from the servants themselves. She bit her lip, remembering that more than one of them had good reason to want Aunt Jaggers dead.
“Of course,” she said. She rang the bell for Mudd. He opened the door instantly, a silver tray in his hand.
“I was about t’ knock, Miss Ardleigh.” He extended the tray, with a card. “I have asked th’ gentl’man to wait i’ the drawin’ room.”
“Thank you,” Kate said, taking a card. “Constable Laken wishes to interview the staff.” Feeling diffident about acting the part of mistress even though she knew it was expected of her, she added, “Would you please take him to the servants’ hall and assemble them there?” She glanced at the card and saw with surprise that it was Sir Charles’s. “And please ask Amelia to show the gentleman in.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mudd said. He gave the constable a disdainful glance and proceeded him through the door.
A moment later Sir Charles came into the room. “My dear Miss Ardleigh,” he said, with a look of such sympathy that Kate felt nearly undone. “I am so sorry. What an awful thing. Unimaginable.” He spoke almost awkwardly, as if the words were not adequate to his feelings. His eyes were on hers, warm with concern. “Are you ... well?”
“Yes, thank you, Sir Charles.” Kate felt the blood coming to her face and an unaccustomed confusion inside her. She looked away quickly, and gestured to the chair on the other side of the fire. “Please sit down. I am sorry I cannot offer you tea, but the servants are otherwise engaged just now. The constable is with them.”
He sat down on the edge of the chair, still looking at her. “I didn’t know until I came ... That is, I did not know of your trouble. I merely called to leave the photographs I took yesterday, as I promised.” He took an envelope out of his pocket and put it on the table beside the chair. “The constable. Does that suggest—?”
“Dr. Randall does not know the cause of the deaths. There will be autopsies and a coroner’s inquest. The doctor suggested that the constable be summoned immediately, and I thought it best to take his advice. I am sure his inquiry is simply ... routine.”
Kate shivered, pulling the shawl closer. She might speak lightly of the inquiry to Sir Charles, but she was perfectly aware of its significance. The constable was a perceptive man. Even if Mrs. Pratt and Mudd were not forthcoming in their answers, he would certainly sense their bitter enmity toward Aunt Jaggers and their resentment toward Aunt Sabrina. Kate did not think, she could not bring herself to believe, that either the cook or the butler could have gone to such awful lengths for revenge. But the constable might think differently. She shivered again. Perhaps she should have insisted on being present when he spoke with them. It was gradually dawning on her that until the matter of the estate was settled, all authority for the household rested upon her shoulders. She was responsible for the servants’ welfare.
Sir Charles cleared his throat. “I take it, then, that the doctor has ruled out food poisoning?”
Kate returned her attention to the conversation. “He seemed to doubt it, since neither was taken sick until this morning. Had it been food poisoning, he said, the symptoms would have appeared earlier. In any event, the three of us shared the same table last night—”
Kate stopped abruptly, struck by a thought. They had shared the same table, yes. But they had not eaten the same food. Aunt Jaggers and Aunt Sabrina had consumed the pudding. She had eaten only the soup and fricassee left from luncheon.
Sir Charles leaned forward, watching her face. “What have you thought of, Miss Ardleigh?”
“My two aunts ate something I did not,” Kate said slowly. “A pudding.”
“What sort of pudding?”
“A mushroom pudding.”
Sir Charles’ eyes were intent. “What were the symptoms of their illnesses?”
When Kate had told him, he stood up abruptly. “There is a line of inquiry I must pursue.”
Kate stared at him.
Was there something about the mushroom pudding? Was it possible that—
She rose. “What line of inquiry?”
In answer, Sir Charles half turned toward the door. “I must speak with your cook,” he said.
“She is with Constable Laken.” Kate frowned. “Please tell me, Sir Charles,” she said with greater distinctness, “what line of inquiry you aim to pursue.”
But again he did not answer. “Laken?” he inquired with great interest. “Do you refer to Edward Laken?”
“I believe that is his name,” Kate acknowledged. But she was not to be put off. Was this man so arrogant that he would refuse outright to answer her question? She put her hand on his arm. “This inquiry, Sir Charles,” she said for the third time, with urgency. “What is it you think has happened?”
He stared down at her hand, then up at her face, taken aback. He felt himself flush. “I fear it would not be appropriate to discuss my suspicions at this time. I—”
Kate pulled her hand back. “Not appropriate!” she exclaimed. “My aunts have died of an unknown cause, and you talk of hypotheses! Sir Charles, I find your behavior most appallingly—”
“Forgive me for intruding,” said a voice, thin and trembling. The vicar stood in the open library door, his hair a wild silver halo, his face ashen. “And for admitting myself. I came as soon as I heard. To ... to offer comfort.”
“Of course,” Kate said, feeling a rush of sympathy for the old man. He looked as if he had greater need of comfort than she. “I am very glad you did. Please come in and sit down by the fire.” Aunt Sabrina had had a special affection for him, and he must be feeling her death very deeply.
Sir Charles bowed to the vicar, then turned to Kate. “I will not trouble you further, Miss Ardleigh. I can find my way to the servants’ hall.”
“But I want to know—” Kate began angrily, then stopped. She might compel Sir Charles to tell her what he was thinking, and she could certainly detain him until she could accompany him to the servants’ hall. But compassion required her to talk with the vicar at once, and besides, Aunt Sabrina had entrusted her with a private message to the vicar that was not for other ears. She raised her chin with a look of sharp displeasure. “Good day, then, Sir Charles,” she said coldly.
The vicar sank down in the chair as Sir Charles hurriedly left the room. He shook his head and dropped his face in his hands. “Death becomes harder and harder to bear,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “But this one is hardest of all. Oh, my poor, dear Sabrina.”
43
“Any discriminating diner will attest to the truth of the old adage, The proof of the pudding is in the eating of it.”
—MRS. BARNSTABLE Kitchen Cookery, 1872
Charles had no difficulty finding his way belowstairs. As he went, he brooded upon the look in Miss Ardleigh’s eyes when she had spoken back to him, alternating between fire and chill, and the urgent touch of her fingers on his arm. But she had no cause to challenge him, he told himself, feeling wounded. He had withheld his idea only to keep from causing her pain. In fact, no other woman he knew would have attacked him in so headstrong a fashion when he was simply trying to spare her.
Women. They were either fragile and fainting or—viragoes. Being an American and Irish, Miss Ardleigh belonged, doubtless, in the latter category. Although he had thought it possible, before he came this afternoon ...
He shook his head, perplexed. He did not know what he had thought, exactly. He had certainly not planned to develop yesterday’s photographs in such haste, nor to make a special call to bring them to her today. But since the luncheon less than twenty-four hours ago, her image had imposed itself persistently upon his thoughts—her russet flyaway hair, her mouth that could be sternly sober and inviting by turns, her steady hazel-green eyes, her quick wit—
He quickened his pace. Well, if he had been attracted to the woman yesterday, he was saved from fatal error by having met the spitfire today. He straightened his shoulders, recalling himself to the task at hand. Miss Ardleigh was, after all, an altogether unsuitable person for any serious—
He did not complete the thought, being distracted by the sight, in the passageway outside the servants’ hall, of five people. The butler, the parlor maid, the groom, and two girls in gray stuff dresses with pinafores were leaning or sitting against the wall, arms folded, faces variously impassive, nervous, and in the case of the two girls, frightened. The cook, Charles concluded, must be with Constable Laken in the servants’ hall. Constable Laken. Edward Laken. Ned. It had been years since Charles had seen him, for their lives had taken very different ways. But the name opened an album of memories as bright and clear as any photograph: the warm summer days two carefree boys had spent lazing under fragrant hayricks; swimming in the deep, cool waters of the River Stour; stalking the wild mushroom through gloomy woods below East Bergholt.
The wild mushroom. Fungi were less of an interest to Charles now than they had been when he and Ned Laken were twelve. Ned had wanted to be chief of Scotland Yard when he grew up, and Charles had planned to be the world’s greatest mycologist. His juvenile ambitions along that line had been encouraged by his grandfather, a connoisseur of mushrooms who had taught him to recognize the marvelous variety to be found in the woods and fields around East Bergholt. That was a long time ago, and his grandfather was dead. But Charles still remembered what he had learned from the old man. From Kathryn Ardleigh’s descriptions of the fatal symptoms, he had a very clear notion of what had caused the deaths of her aunts.
Charles went past the waiting group of servants, feeling their eyes on him, and into the kitchen. It was an ordinary kitchen, high-ceilinged and drafty and no doubt the devil to work in. The only light came from a high window in one wall and a fire in the fireplace. A heavy coal range stood in one corner with a simmering pot of soup at the back; on the table, covered with a cloth, were dishes for luncheon, if anyone had thought to eat it—a roast joint, a cheese, sliced tomatoes, and cucumbers. The sideboard was stacked with pots and bowls and empty of foodstuffs, with the exception of the spices that were used in daily food preparation. Charles looked around. Where the blazes did they store the food?
He went to a door in the wall and opened it. It led through a short passageway to the outside, but off to the right was a pantry with shelves for produce, root vegetables, and the like. It smelled of onions and faintly, of something else, of damp earth and rotted wood. It was dark. Very dark.
Charles returned to the kitchen and found a candle on the mantel. He lighted it at the fire and returned to the storeroom to search the shelves, starting at the top. On the floor at the back, in a willow basket covered with a damp cloth, he found what he was looking for. He sniffed appreciatively. The earthy scene brought back the memory of walks with his grandfather through the autumn forests.
Gently, one at a time, Charles took the mushrooms out of the basket, examining each and placing it in its proper pile. Judging from the great variety, he thought, they had been collected in the woods, rather than in a mushroom house. The most numerous by far were the common field mushrooms, Agaricus campestris, whose smooth gray-white tops and pink gills had a clean, crisp look. Beside these Charles placed the horse mushrooms, which had the same rounded shape but were much larger, with grayish gills rather than pink. Next to these he piled several velvety buff-colored specimens of Lepista saeva, and a handful of Lepista nuda, also known as the Blue Cap—not to be eaten uncooked, but pleasantly aromatic when properly sautéed. He also found a few satiny yellow Cantharellus cibaria, which seemed to him to smell of apricots, and one large Hydnum rufescens, the wood hedgehog, not frequently collected, owing to the skill required to cook it without bitterness. But it was not until Charles reached the very bottom of the basket that he found, with almost no surprise, what he was looking for: one large and marvelously healthy specimen of Amanita phalloides. The Death Cap.
Admiring, he held the lethal toadstool in his hand for a moment, thinking what an extraordinarily beautifu
l specimen it was, how pearly its soft flesh, how perfect the fan of its radiating gills, how delicate the circumference of the volva that still embraced the lower stem. Such a glorious specimen, and so lethal. He wondered briefly if the other had been this perfect—since it was his hypothesis that there had been at least one A. phalloides in the pudding.
Charles gently placed the toadstool on the table. So, then, assume that there had been two, and presume innocence. Someone who did not know his mushrooms had accidentally included two A. phalloides among the variegated assemblage of edible fungi in the basket. He frowned. That seemed doubtful, however, because of the presence of H. rufescens, which was usually collected only by a mushroom connoisseur with sufficient knowledge to ensure its proper preparation. Which led to the conclusion that the person who collected two A. phalloides did so with deadly intent. A defensible conclusion, but difficult of proof.
Or set aside for the moment the motive of the collector, and search instead the intention of the one who had prepared the deadly pudding. Given a basket of edible mushrooms which included (either by accident or design) two or more fatal fungi, the cook should have recognized and quickly discarded the intruders. Unless, of course, the cook were inexperienced or incompetent—or inspired by a deadly intent to slice it up and add it to the pudding.
Charles stood up. He shook out his handkerchief, placed in it the splendid specimen of A. phalloides, and tenderly tied the corners into a bundle, which he pocketed.
It was time to look into the preparation of the mushroom pudding.
44
Mushroom Pudding
¾ Ib. of flour, 6 ozs. of chopped white vegetable butter, 1 tsp. baking powder, cold water, 1 qt. button or cup mushrooms, pepper and salt. Make a crust with the flour, baking powder, and 5 ozs. of the butter. Line with it a greased pudding-basin. Put in the mushrooms with the remaining oz. of butter, pepper and salt and moisten with a little water. Finish off like a beef-steak pudding. Boil or steam for one and one-half hours or longer.