Murder Makes an Entree

by Myers, Amy

  He must do something about a present for that chef one day.

  Apart from the fact that both were in formal attire, there was nothing to distinguish Rose and Auguste from hundreds of other late promenaders on the seafront. They were on their way to Blue Horizons after a busy afternoon on both sides, Rose with Naseby and on the telephone.

  ‘The widow was left without much money. She didn’t murder for money, so Chesnais says,’ Rose reported.

  Auguste had had a rewarding afternoon at the library. Now there was little doubt in their minds. Only proof was lacking.

  ‘If it fails,’ said Rose as they reached Blue Horizons, ‘we’ll have to play a waiting game. But if we succeed we’ll at least know where we are with Freimüller.’

  Sid, who seemed to have appointed himself sheepdog for such occasions, was sitting, arms akimbo, astride a chair in the parlour doorway. His four sheep were waiting inside. Alice’s arm was round Emily on the sofa; and Alfred sat bolt upright on a balloon-back chair, and Algernon lounged in an armchair with a nonchalance he did not feel – if his fingers twisting nervously on the arm were anything to judge by.

  ‘As you know,’ Rose began, ‘Herr Freimüller has been arrested for the murders of Sir Thomas Throgmorton and James Pegg. He has told us how he did it, and given an explanation of why.’

  A moan from Emily.

  ‘But we have to check his story, so our investigations are continuing.’ Rose looked round the blank faces listening to him. ‘He tells us that he served the poison in the soup. He held the plate while Pegg put the soup in, and he then added the poison. James Pegg saw him and threatened to give him away, so he put opium in his coffee and watched him drown. Anyone any comments?’

  There was an appalled silence.

  ‘I don’t think James would blackmail anyone,’ said Alfred, unusually forcefully. ‘He would come to tell you.’

  ‘Where did he keep the poison?’ asked Emily suddenly.

  ‘In his pocket.’

  ‘Then there’d be traces of it in the pocket,’ said this latter-day Lady Molly. ‘I know Heinrich is innocent. Have you checked the pockets?’

  ‘The laboratory has done so, Miss Dawson. There is no trace of poison.’

  ‘Then he’s innocent!’ shouted Emily. ‘You must free him.’

  ‘Not yet. He still holds to his story, but the new evidence gives credence to our view that he may be protecting someone. It would have to be someone he’s very fond of. Someone like you, Miss Dawson,’ Rose observed quietly.

  Emily stared at him as all eyes turned to her.

  ‘No!’ cried Alice, outraged.

  Emily said nothing.

  ‘Cor,’ said Sid, expelling a long breath.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ Emily said flatly. ‘It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t,’ shriller and shriller.

  Rose ignored her. ‘We learned a day or two ago of a young lady called Elizabeth Stebbins, though I doubt if that’s her real name; she murdered her English husband in France. He had been Sir Thomas’s groom and stolen a great deal of money in bonds which were never recovered. We wondered whether perhaps, just perhaps, this young murderess – who used atropine – had also been in Sir Thomas’s household. She’d be about your age, Miss Dawson. And Miss Throgmorton told us she remembers an old cook by the name of Mrs Dawson.’

  ‘Grandmama,’ moaned Emily. ‘Oh no. She has nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Hasn’t she, Miss Dawson? Didn’t you visit her at Throgmorton Park? Didn’t you get to know the staff there? Meet a young groom?’

  ‘No!’ bawled Emily, as Alice withdrew her arm, moving slightly away from her.

  ‘Then why did your grandmama leave under a cloud?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with her. Nothing. I’ll tell you, and then you’ll be sorry. Her eyes weren’t good enough any longer. She was confusing plants, and she put some wrong berries in the blackcurrant jam and one or two people –’ her voice faltered – ‘were taken ill.’

  ‘What plant, Miss Dawson?’

  ‘Deadly nightshade,’ she whispered.

  ‘The atropine plant,’ said Rose with satisfaction. ‘I thought you were anxious about something. Why didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘You would have thought it was me,’ cried Emily. ‘As you do now,’ she wailed.

  ‘So I would, if it hadn’t been for Mr Didier, and something he saw on the day Sir Thomas was killed. He saw a donkey cart pass Sir Thomas with Miss Fenwick and Lord Wittisham in it, and Sir Thomas noticing it and shouting something.’

  ‘He asked what I was doing here,’ said Alfred forlornly. ‘But I’ve told you that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Auguste. ‘He wanted to know what you were doing here. You had omitted to mention you’d be in Broadstairs, you had threatened to kill him. He saw you later that day and you reiterated your threat and then carried it out by poison in his brandy. You have served in India. You know all about atropine. You put poison in the entrée dish to make us think it was the food and not the drink to blame.’

  ‘No!’ He was on his feet glaring, a ferret at bay.

  ‘Then you were forced to kill your friend James Pegg because he’d heard you quarrelling with Sir Thomas. Whom else would he protect? He was an honest man. He’d have come straight to me or the Inspector about anyone else.’

  ‘No!’ Alfred yelled.

  ‘You swam out after James Pegg,’ said Rose inexorably, ‘and held his head down knowing he wouldn’t struggle because you’d put laudanum in his coffee.’

  Alfred looked wildly round for James Pegg to come to his aid in his hour of need, but he wasn’t there. He looked desperately to his other protector. She did not fail him.

  ‘I think it is me you want, Inspector, do you not?’ Alice Fenwick, her face as composed as ever, stood up and walked to where Sergeant Stitch awaited her. As she reached the doorway, she turned.

  ‘I would have made you a wonderful wife,’ she said anxiously to Alfred. ‘I really would.’

  Everyone seemed to be gathered at the Albion Hotel that Monday evening, though Gwendolen Figgis-Hewett kept well away from the ladies’ retiring room, in case Mr Dickens, too, was interested to hear about how the murders were solved. Mr Multhrop, who when news of the arrest reached him realised that his ordeal was all but over, was somewhat concerned that this evening cooks were to mingle with Lionisers, but was relieved to discover that in their evening clothes cooks looked not much different from real human beings. Araminta was sitting demurely by his side, a vision in rose pink chiffon and about as practical.

  Algernon Peckham wore a haunted look, as if now that the murders had been solved, Scotland Yard’s attention might well be turned to a small matter of a necklace. Heinrich Freimüller sat dazed next to Emily who still sniffled a little through shock. Auguste had apologised very nicely and said it had been necessary in order to free Heinrich, but she did so hate Grandmama’s little secret being general knowledge. She didn’t want the story to follow her wherever she went in her new career. Career? Suddenly that seemed rather a dismal word. Alfred, looking even more dazed, sat next to Sid whom he seemed to have appointed as his temporary keeper.

  Gwendolen sat next to Lord Beddington, her arm firmly through his, Angelina with Oliver and Samuel Pipkin next to Edith Rose. They seemed to have struck up an animated conversation about The Pickwick Papers.

  The landlord eyed the bottle of hollands wistfully, but was mindful of the fact that Scotland Yard had forbidden it to be served at least until after dinner.

  ‘Alice Fenwick,’ began Rose, ‘though I doubt if that will turn out to be her real name, was a housemaid in Sir Thomas’s establishment ten years ago. She was, and has remained, ambitious and determined. She furthered these ambitions by whatever means she could; she found out about the bonds, stole them, and persuaded the groom, who was in love with her, to take them to France. Any suspicions Sir Thomas might have had were countered by the fact that she was – um – having an intimate relationship with him. She blackmailed him
by threatening to tell his sick wife of their relationship, and he consequently did not report her in connection with the theft. She duly left his employ some months later, travelled to France and once there married the groom. They changed their names and disappeared. Unfortunately, the money being in his name, he had spent a large part of it, and she decided at last she would gain her freedom and preserve what money was left. She poisoned him and removed herself to England as an independent, young, unmarried woman, ready to – urn – move up classes, so to speak.’

  ‘You mean she was Throgmorton’s mistress?’ asked Alfred, stunned. A murder he could understand, but this was a new, and terrible, concept. ‘But, dash it, she was an officer’s daughter.’

  ‘No, a sergeant’s daughter. He was a sergeant in the Indian frontier wars, killed in eighty-seven. She was born out there, came to England after his death and went into service. But it was in India she learned of the powers of their datura plant, which is as common to them as deadly nightshade is to us,’ Emily gripped Heinrich’s hand, ‘and the ease and frequency with which it was there employed. In France she discovered it was the same poison as used by grooms to treat horses – if not in the same form.’

  ‘Why did she do it?’ asked Alfred plaintively.

  ‘Quite simple, Lord Wittisham. She was determined to marry you, and if Sir Thomas saw her before the event, there could be no chance of that. But once married to you, it would never occur to him, even if they met, that it could be the same woman. The nobility never marry housemaids, or so would be his reasoning.’

  ‘But couldn’t she just have avoided him?’

  ‘No doubt she hoped to do so, but she could not be sure. And in the end of course he did recognise her and sealed his fate. Mr Didier put me on to that. He saw you in the donkey cart, Lord Wittisham. He also saw her. You thought, and Auguste thought, that he was speaking to you, for you answered. It was natural enough. But he wasn’t. He was speaking to Alice Fenwick – not that he knew her by that name.’ Rose looked at his rapt audience. ‘I should have realised because when he next saw Lord Wittisham late that afternoon he asked him what he was doing down here – his attention had been elsewhere when Lord Wittisham answered that same question from the donkey cart. Once he’d seen her, he was determined to see justice done, his wife being dead, and accused her when he saw her in the hotel before dinner.

  ‘Unfortunately for her, James Pegg overheard at least part of the conversation. He probably did not realise the significance of what he’d heard, but it was enough to perplex him. Then you, Lord Wittisham, announced you were going to marry Beatrice Throgmorton. Alice was horrified but Pegg, of course, was delighted. You were safe. He only wanted to protect you, Lord Wittisham. When Miss Throgmorton decided not to marry you, you turned back to Miss Fenwick, and Pegg was put in a dilemma. He decided to tell us all about it, and foolishly told her so on the Wednesday evening. He was drowned before he could do so.’

  ‘I was not alone in the morning and so he was going to tell me,’ said Auguste bitterly, ‘after we had bathed.’ He glanced at his demure-looking Delilah in pink chiffon. ‘Alice drugged and drowned him,’ he went on. ‘When Mrs Figgis-Hewett was screaming for help in the water, Alice bobbed up behind her, which showed she had no fear of water, could swim, and indeed was probably on her way back from drowning James Pegg.’

  ‘But how did she poison Sir Thomas?’ asked Algernon, partly out of genuine interest and partly to keep the Yard’s attention firmly on murder.

  Auguste looked modest as he produced his coup de théâtre.

  ‘Alice was a very determined young woman, but not one of many original ideas. This poisoning required great planning ability. I recalled how much store she set on Mr Harmsworth’s excellent magazine for information. She had a great interest in murder, and in the graphic stories and pictures that adorn the magazine’s pages. It had already occurred to me that the poison might be safer employed if it were on the china plate, and not in the food itself. And how better, as Alice herself had laid out the dishes, as she confidently informed us. Yet I could not see how the poison would remain undetected.

  ‘So I paid a visit to the library and looked through the past issues of the Harmsworth Magazine. There I found a most interesting article on poison devices; it told me of poisoned gloves, of poisoned boots, of poisoned shirts, even of a poisoned hockey stick. But what interested me most was a Chinese device. The Chinese had a most interesting way of disposing of their victims to avoid the problem of food tasters. The poison was put not in the food itself, but in the cup or bowl. The bowl was heavily coated with a colourless soluble poison which dissolved when hot tea was poured in. Alice did not wish to use a poison that would be certain to act immediately and draw attention to the dish straightaway, before the dirty dishes could be washed, and gambled that atropine usually takes a little time to work. She was used to the poison, having poisoned her husband. It was colourless and soluble. She coated the bowl with atropine, dissolved in alcohol and set into a colourless jelly which adhered to the sides and bottom of the bowl and would not be noticed because it was both firm and thin. She then poisoned the left-over kidneys to divert attention not to the later courses, but away from any suspicion that it was the bowl that had been poisoned.

  ‘Did I not say,’ Auguste concluded rather complacently, ‘that no pupil of mine could poison food of our creation? Particularly a dish of mine,’ he added.

  ‘That reminds me, Auguste,’ said Rose offhandedly. ‘Miss Fenwick has a message for you. She said to tell Mr Didier I’m sorry I used commercial jelly.’

  ‘But why did you do it, Heinrich?’ asked Emily, walking in the conservatory shortly afterwards amid the potted palms, in a state of mingled relief and romantic joy. ‘You didn’t really think I’d done a murder, did you?’

  ‘I did not know. I was afraid,’ said Heinrich simply. ‘You knew much about poisons. You did not like Sir Thomas, and you let it slip that you knew him before we came here. You said he had a weak stomach, but no one had told us that.’

  ‘But murder!’ said Emily, still rather shocked. Then she reflected. ‘You did this for me, Heinrich?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘I lost my Greta to Sir Thomas. I let her go, and she killed herself. I would not allow another woman to be lost to Sir Thomas also. And certainly not a woman that I—’ He hesitated.

  ‘Yes, Heinrich?’ Her grip tightened.

  ‘That I lof,’ he finished. ‘But I am so much older—’

  ‘Oh Heinrich.’ She hardly dared breathe.

  ‘But if you would become Frau Freimüller, we will cook great banquets together. You with your patisserie and me with my meat pies. You like?’

  ‘Oh yes, I like very much.’

  ‘What should I do, Sid?’ asked Alfred Wittisham plaintively, over a third glass of hollands.

  Sid considered. ‘I reckon there’s a fortune to be made down at the docks for someone who can cook decent grub.’

  Alfred brightened. ‘Do you think I could do it?’

  ‘They’ll think you’re the cat’s whiskers down there, mate,’ Sid assured him, correctly.

  Alfred beamed. ‘Will you help me?’ he asked confidently.

  ‘Well, my dear,’ said Gwendolen Figgis-Hewett, unable to take offence at anything today, ‘I brought the wedding dress just in case, you know. You see,’ she hesitated, with a sidelong look, ‘dear to me though Thomas was, it is true he had rather a sharp tongue. I was just a little upset that he asked me to portray Mrs Leo Hunter from The Pickwick Papers reading the Ode to an Expiring Frog. Can you imagine anything more unsuitable?’

  Angelina, who had escorted her to the ladies’ retiring room, just in case Mr Dickens should be lurking, gravely assured her she could not.

  ‘And I was so cross I thought it would serve him right,’ Gwendolen went on vehemently. ‘Then I thought, well, Agnes was much more suitable for someone my age, but in the event, he was so unpleasant – you do understand, don’t you?’

  ‘I d
o,’ said Angelina gravely, and kissed her.

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ said Gwendolen, pleased. ‘I wonder if – perhaps you might – just a quiet ceremony. But if you would be my bridesmaid . . .’

  ‘A word with you, Mr Peckham,’ said Rose, tapping him on the shoulder. ‘About that necklace.’

  Algernon started like a rabbit faced with a piecrust.

  ‘Mr Didier tells me you’ve the making of a brilliant cook,’ Rose continued unexpectedly.

  Algernon nodded helplessly.

  ‘I dare say you had it in mind to tour the great kitchens of Europe in order to nip up a few drainpipes. That right?’

  A nod of the head, swiftly followed by several shakes.

  ‘I’ve persuaded Higgins to part with the necklace, Peckham. My advice is stick to the cooking. Or we’ll be waiting right at the end of that drainpipe, with the Comtesse de la Ferté’s necklace to drop over your head. Understand?’

  Algernon Peckham did. A vision of a small restaurant in Wiltshire with brilliant dishes with a touch of France about them floated before his mind. Even meat dishes . . .

  ‘This Alice doesn’t sound a very nice person, Egbert,’ Edith pronounced her severest sentence.

  ‘She had a lovely face, Edith,’ Auguste said wistfully.

  ‘Now that isn’t everything, Auguste,’ said Edith gently. ‘As you well know. So had Lucrezia Borgia, no doubt. And Adelaide Bartlett. And Florence Maybrick. Even Maria Manning—’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about husband-murderers, my dear,’ observed her husband drily.

  ‘Oh, Egbert.’

  ‘Would she have murdered Wittisham had they married, do you suppose?’ said Rose.