Fool's Gold (A Lord Ambrose Mystery)

by Jane Jakeman

  Sandys put his face close to the body and sniffed.

  “He’s been dead three days,” said I. “The funeral is at noon, and none too soon.”

  “Yes, there is a particular smell, beyond the commencement of the processes of decay, and the inside of the mouth is engorged with blood as would be consistent with swallowing prussic acid, and the other signs are also present, the color of the face, the tinge of the fingernails. I see no cause to quarrel with the diagnosis of the cause of death.”

  “What were you sniffing at him for? Anyone could tell you he’s beginning to stink.”

  “Yes, beneath the odor of commencing putrefaction—”

  “Y’mean, he’s turning rotten.”

  “Yes, but there is another scent which is still detectable—the smell of bitter almonds.”

  “Now I come to think of it, Sandys, Elisabeth mentioned something of the sort in a letter.” I sniffed like a fox, closer to the bed. An acrid, nutty sort of smell, quite distinctive.

  “Is the bottle still here?”

  “Don’t think so, Sandys. I can’t see it.”

  I looked round the room, walked to a chest of drawers, rummaged: A few shirts of coarse brownish linen, clean, carefully folded. Nothing more. There was little else in the room: a cloak behind the door. There was a small table beside the bed, with a white cloth upon it, its surface innocent and empty. That was where the bottle would have been, as Elisabeth had described it. The bottle from which this young man had taken his final, fatal draft. No sign of it now.

  Nor were there any more scraps of paper like the one Elisabeth had picked up. I recalled its words: Coals of fire, quicksilver cakes of glass. A list, a cypher? There seemed no meaning. Coal—well that was commonplace enough, and coal fires would have been burning in this house; it had been a chilly May till now. Quicksilver—that was mercury, surely? Not exactly a common substance, yet not unfamiliar—used for mirrors, for gilding. If I had the ballroom at Malfine restored, the craftsmen would use it there. As for cakes of glass…I confess, I was at a loss. My mind ran only on the Venetian chandeliers of Malfine, and I thought of the skills of the glassblowers of Murano, of their ability to conjure threads of glass as fine as lace, and work the substance into frills and piping as if it were sugar icing. Perhaps that was what was meant—some sort of table ornament? A glass cake, hard as ice and glittering forever, designed to grace a dining-table?

  Enough of rambling!

  “Come on, Sandys, if you’ve seen enough. There’s nothing we can do here. But tell me, man, you agree with Dr. Langridge’s view, that it was prussic-acid poisoning?”

  “Yes, I do. The stuff is easy enough to purchase. There is a commonplace proprietary brand, which contains a strong solution of the acid. The symptoms would appear in a few seconds—the eyes fixed and glistening, the pupils dilated, the convulsive breathing, the agonizing pains. I have not seen many cases myself. Perhaps it is rarer in the countryside than in the towns, where Scheele’s acid can be purchased at a number of chemists’.”

  “It is quite ordinary, then?”

  “Oh yes. When much diluted it is used as a remedy for stomach complaints—though in my opinion it is a very dangerous one, and liable to misuse. Let me see, what do I recall from the textbooks in my student days? So poisonous is it that the fumes alone can result in unconsciousness and even death. There was the famous case of a medical man who allowed some Scheele’s acid to fall upon the dress of a lady who was standing in front of a fire, so that the drops of poison became evaporated with the heat and she immediately collapsed from the mere fumes. She recovered, though. And there was a case of a young man who entered a druggist’s shop and attempted to snatch a bottle of prussic acid from the hand of the shop assistant; there was a struggle, during which some acid was spilled on the face of the attacker. He died in about a quarter of an hour without even swallowing any.”

  “So it’s highly dangerous. Do you think there is any possibility that some could have been taken by mistake in this instance?”

  “By the unfortunate young fellow lying in this chamber? None, I would think—for a medical man would instantly recognize the odor, which is most characteristic. It is still lingering here, even though he died several days ago. I’d like to perform an autopsy, as a matter of fact, and if I did, you would smell the poison even more strongly—as soon as I made the first incision in all probability.”

  “The funeral is to take place at noon, thus I believe an autopsy is a pleasure you must forgo, Sandys. No doubt the pallbearers will be here very shortly. But tell me, suppose he swallowed some poison by mistake—put the wrong bottle to his lips and took a draft, say?”

  “Well, then he would instantly feel a burning sensation in his mouth and throat and realize the mistake. There are certain measures that can be taken, if the dose has been small. If I remember correctly, pouring cold water upon the spine and administering brandy or ammonia have on occasion saved lives, but only where a very little has been swallowed, or some fumes breathed in. So if he had swallowed a small amount in error, he might try to call for help. But prussic acid produces muscular failure and loss of consciousness much more quickly than any other poison. The jaws clench, the fingers contract…there would in all probability be no time to summon any assistance.”

  “And yet if this young man is supposed to have swallowed the best part of a bottle of prussic acid and then to have carefully replaced the stopper in the bottle and placed it upright on his bedside table, what would you say?”

  “Why, I would maintain that such a thing would be quite impossible! The acid would take effect within a few seconds.”

  “Yet that was what was found here.”

  “In that case…”

  “Yes?”

  Sandys spoke carefully and cautiously, as he usually did, yet his words had the more effect.

  “Some other hand replaced the stopper.”

  We stared at each other without speaking. For the moment, there seemed nothing more to be said.

  As Sandys and I descended the stairs to the first floor, it was clear that there was no need for caution on our parts if we wished to be unnoticed. The devil himself would not have been noticed at that moment, not if he had suddenly materialized on the stairs of Jesmond Place in a blazing halo of sulfurous flames.

  “Open the door, madam! I say you shall open it this instant!”

  Cyriack Jesmond was pounding in a fury on a door and a woman’s voice cried out from within.

  “Cyriack, you are behaving like a crazy fellow. Leave off! You have no right to treat me like this!”

  “And have I no right, madam? And whose house is this, pray? My father’s—and it will be mine one day. And then I’ll treat you how I please, you damned witch and whore. You know what they say about you in Combwich!”

  As he spoke, he again set his shoulder to the door, which this time burst open, and I could see the terrified face of Lady Jesmond in the room beyond. Cyriack had his arm raised over her head, and his face was contorted with rage, as his anger became fouler.

  He thrust his face closer to hers.

  “I saw the smoke from the chimney, madam, as I drew near the house. No smoke without fire, they say. I’ll have Knellys to you, damn me if I don’t!”

  Most of this speech was quite incomprehensible to outsiders such as Elisabeth and myself; I am bound to say that intelligibility appeared rarely to have been one of Cyriack Jesmond’s prime concerns in any case. But before we could even try to make something of his curious outpourings, Lady Jesmond herself replied.

  “Pray, curb your anger, Cyriack, on this occasion at least. Remember there’s a young man lying dead upstairs!”

  But nothing, not even this rebuke, could stop his anger. His fist clenched viciously in mid-air and she seemed frozen before him like a rabbit in front of a stoat.

  He was about to bring his hand smashing down into her face when I managed, with a leap from midway up the flight of stairs, somehow to seize his arm and drag it
backward, wrenching it down as we tumbled together and rolled to the head of the next flight.

  Cyriack’s bellow of rage changed suddenly. I was gratified to hear it become a scream as I twisted his arm out of the shoulder-joint, and heard the scraping of the ball against the socket. I did not release the arm. An agonizing hold: pure hell-fire burning along the nerve. I congratulated myself on still having the trick of it.

  “Get up!” The voice came from above us.

  Sir Antony was standing outside his wife’s room, wearing an old dressing-gown. He looked feeble, but there was some authority still in his face. He looked from his wife to his son.

  “Cyriack, I will not endure this behavior! Not even if you are my son—it is intolerable. D’you hear me, sir?”

  Cyriack was standing up, nursing his arm.

  “Clara has been intriguing against me! And this damned fellow here…” He jerked his head in my direction, his lower lip jutting spitefully out.

  His father sighed aloud.

  Cyriack’s excuses died away, as if in anticipation.

  “I saw what happened,” said Sir Antony. “Tell me no more lies, my son.” Turning to me, he said, “Lord Ambrose, I trust you are not injured?”

  “No, Sir Antony,” said I. “A trifle dusty from rolling about on your floor—you might tell your servants to keep better vigilance about their work!”

  It was a charming family group, which soon broke up. The son of the house flung past me and clattered down the stairs and out through the front door, Sir Antony calling after him: “And we expect your attendance here at midday, sir.” There was no answer but the bang of the front door.

  Lady Jesmond, wrapped in a loose overgown, reappeared on the landing, surveying the splintered lock of her bedroom as if she were in a state of staring disbelief and terror. “I’ll send a man to get it repaired,” said Sir Antony.

  “Lord Ambrose, if it had not been for you, that lunatic would have struck me such a blow as might—”

  “Go back into your room and get dressed, Clara.”

  But before she retreated, Mrs. Romey and Elisabeth appeared from the nether regions of the house, staring up at the tableau. Then the housekeeper rushed up the stairs and, putting her arms round Lady Jesmond, making clucking and soothing sounds the while, she led her into the room beyond. At the same time, Sir Antony also dived back into his own rooms, and the Malfine party, Sandys, Elisabeth and myself, were left staring at one another from our various vantage points.

  I thought I saw a thin and stooping shadow move against the banisters on the landing above, outside the room where Kelsoe’s body lay.

  CHAPTER 7

  It was a sad little ceremony at the church of St. Chad, for so the old and crumbling pile that stands on the edge of the Jesmond estate is called. It looks out toward the hills: I fancy it is even older than Norman, with a low, squat gray tower, much ivied about.

  There were more mourners than I had expected, although Kelsoe’s own relations had been unable to make the journey from their home in the north. We consisted of the entire party from Jesmond Place, family and visitors, enlarged by the landlord of the Green Lion and his wife, presumably as representatives of the nearest village to the Jesmond estate, with a snuffling young woman in attendance whom I supposed to be their daughter, for she bore a striking facial resemblance to Naomi, the landlady. They had driven over for the occasion in a pony and trap, with a black crepe bow on the pony’s harness, which seemed out of proportion to any grief they could feel for a young man who must have been almost a complete stranger. The chief motive for their presence was perhaps supplied by the eagerness with which the landlady peeped about her, taking particular note of the Jesmonds as they filed past to the family pew at the front of the church.

  The church was cold, even on a late spring day with the butterflies flickering about outside, for a chill struck up from the uneven stones of the floor, which were gloomily inscribed with worn and forgotten remembrances to the dead. A few staring white sculptured faces of marble and plaster Jesmonds peered out at us from carved biers set into the walls.

  The coffin was carried by six lads, hired from the village, who looked to be wearing borrowed clothes and to have had their ruddy faces compulsorily scrubbed for the occasion. There was not far to go from Jesmond Place to St. Chad’s; once inside the church, they set their load down before the altar.

  A raw-faced young curate began to drone.

  “Who is he?” I muttered to Sandys.

  “A curate from a place called Otterhampton,” he whispered back. “It seems there is no church or clergyman at Combwich.”

  “Well, that’s something to be said for the place. I suppose Otterhampton is some tiny out-of-the-way speck on the map.”

  The curate was gabbling on.

  “It is somewhat forsaken, I believe. I understand a previous rector kept his horses in the churchyard—and the present one is not much in attendance. But I have been told it is a charming little spot.”

  I was about to give my views on charming spots, and the unyielding tedium they impose upon their inhabitants, but our conversation was beginning to disturb some of the congregation; the landlady of the Green Lion was peering at us cautiously, turning a fraction in our direction. She had, I noted, as she saw me observing her and turned hastily back, a very fine profile.

  The congregation included Cyriack Jesmond—which surprised me, for I had not thought the young man would subdue his temper sufficiently to attend the funeral rites of someone who cannot have been much to him; however, he appeared to have calmed down, so that he stood and sat, and even knelt from time to time, in the family pew, as decency required. Had he even met young Kelsoe? I asked myself. It was quite possible that they had never encountered each other, if Cyriack had been in Oxford for the entire short time that Kelsoe had resided at Jesmond Place. Yet the rebellious son looked subdued—thoughtful, even—as we stood at the graveside after the service in the church was over and all that remained was the sad business of committing the body to the earth.

  Lady Jesmond and the other women had not accompanied us to that sad black trench in the green churchyard: she retreated to the house, supported by Mrs. Romey. The mistress of the house wore a broad, shadowy, feathered black hat covering her fair hair and a thick black veil over her face, and I could discern little of her reactions at the funeral service, but directly afterward, as we filed into the hall at Jesmond Place, she threw back the cobwebby netted layers of her veil and I saw her eyes were reddened, the lids swollen.

  She had been weeping, but was it for the young man who now lay in the coffin? Or was it perhaps for herself, married to a crabbed old creature with a vile-tempered son? I wondered what would happen when Sir Antony died. By the laws of nature, Clara Jesmond would survive him by many years, and she could hardly look forward to sharing the house with her brutal and foul-tempered stepson.

  By now, we had all assembled in the hall of the great house, which seemed older and gloomier than ever. How many occasions like this had it seen? How many deaths? Age is not always a desirable quality, neither in men nor in houses.

  The conventional baked meats, joints of beef, a ham and so forth, were set out on a long table, in the old country manner. The village boys, their boots banging on the flagged floor, piled their plates high, bolted down the food and soon departed, Sir Antony pressing coins into their hands as they left. The landlord and his wife looked about them with unabashed curiosity, but ate as heartily as the lads, though the wife and daughter sipped sherry with some gentility. However, they too went off in good time, having stared about them sufficiently, I suppose, and I heard the clatter of their pony and cart departing with some speed. The curate stayed only long enough to make some conventional phrases of commiseration and to collect his fee from Sir Antony.

  Charnock, who had remained a slight figure in the background all through the proceedings, was soon accounted for. He had, as he confessed, known nothing of the departed and, stopping only to claim t
hat he suffered from a headache, ascended into the upper regions of the house.

  That left the core, as one might say, of the family, if one included Mrs. Romey, plus the Malfine trio. And if there had been a family truce for the duration of the formalities, it was no longer being observed.

  Cyriack was not sipping sherry, nor even ale, I observed. He had poured out a tumbler of brandy and tipped it down his throat, and then turned to pour another from the decanter on the table, his father remonstrating with him. “Damn it, let me be!” shouted the son, then turned to Lady Jesmond and jerked an elbow angrily in her direction. “I suppose you think you’ll do for me!”

  There was a shocked silence. An uncomprehending one? Yes, I thought so, on the part of Sir Antony, at any rate, who stood beside his spouse as the unruly scion bellowed forth, his voice ringing to the rafters. After all, if anyone was done for, it was the poor fellow whose remains lay even now close by in the churchyard.

  Lady Jesmond’s face was transfixed, staring at her stepson. Cyriack went on: “Oh yes, madam, I. know you for what you are! The tragedy is, my father cannot see it. But there’s no fool like an old fool, you know. None knows better than I!”

  Sir Antony broke in at this. “Cyriack, I will not tolerate any more of this! You will return as soon as possible to your studies, and if I have bad reports of you, sir, you may be sure I shall not be generous with your allowance!”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, Father!” flung back the young man. “Faugh, I need some fresh air! I’m going out for a ride—I’ve been preached at enough for one day.”

  He strode for the door, pausing as he did so and half-turning back to the table. “Damn it, I want another drink!”

  “No, you’ve had enough. Cool your head for once, I beg you, sir!”

  “Where’s my flask? I’ll take that—I’ll not be back here in a hurry, you can be sure of that. Romey? Romey! Fetch my flask. I’ll take some more meat, too—or would you deny me even that, Father?”