The Opium Purge (Lady Fan Mystery Book 3)

by Elizabeth Bailey

  She broke off, abruptly aware that the three oblong packets purloined by the boys, which she had put back in the drawer, were missing. She rummaged, only half aware of Francis picking up the packages.

  “Flora Sugars? Is this the trade name for Roy’s business?”

  “Associated with his wife, Florine,” Ottilia said without ceasing her search.

  Patrick was checking the bottles ranged along the top of the press. “Good God, look at this, Fan. Pomade and Jessamine butter. Perfumed mouth water too. A jar of Bergamot snuff? This is a nice little box though.”

  He was joined by Francis, who picked up the snuff box and examined it. “Ivory and jade. A trifle too pretty for my taste.”

  “But it argues another bad habit, equally bad for the fellow’s lungs.”

  “Tobacco?” Francis was inspecting further items. “What in the world? Cold cream and almond paste? And this is orange-flower water, Patrick. Do you use such things?”

  Her brother laughed. “Not I. This Cadel fellow seems to have had a fastidious attention to hygiene.”

  “Personal vanity more like. The man was clearly a fop.”

  “Or leaning towards femininity?”

  “You think so?” Francis made a derisive sound. “That rather puts paid to your notion of Miss Ingleby fancying herself in love with the fellow, Tillie.”

  Ottilia was staring into the drawer, puzzling over the missing sweets, but at this she looked across at the two men, distracted. “You mean she had hoped in vain for his favours? They were not then lovers, I surmise,” she said, thinking aloud. “She was distraught. She might have felt some affection. Or heavy disappointment perhaps. Did she seek only for the protection of a ring upon her finger?”

  Her spouse threw up his eyes. “He was scarcely likely to marry her, was he, if Patrick’s surmise is correct?”

  “No, and it is scarcely germane at this moment. Where in heaven’s name are those sweets?”

  Both husband and brother stared. Patrick glanced at the discarded packets well labelled and containing humbugs or sugared almonds. “I presume you don’t mean those?”

  Ottilia slipped a hand into her pocket and brought out the single oblong confection she had taken the day before. She held it out. “There were four of them in here. I took only one to show you. Someone has taken the others.”

  All at once she recalled the empty packets retrieved from the wastepaper basket, and began to hunt again, only half aware of the two gentlemen studying the sweets.

  “Flora Sugars,” Francis announced, reading over Patrick’s arm. “What is in that one?”

  “It does not say.”

  “Just so.” Ottilia was shifting items around in the drawer in haste. “Why should someone take those and not the others? It must be deliberate.”

  “You don’t seriously suppose this confection is larded with an overdose?”

  “You said it was possible, Patrick.”

  “Yes, but not enough to kill.”

  Francis grabbed the thing from his hand. “But why should anyone remove it, if it’s innocent.” His frowning gaze came around to Ottilia. “And who? Whom do you suspect?”

  “Were not those two women packing in here when we entered?” asked Patrick, sounding interested, at least in this point.

  “Yes, but they didn’t empty the drawer,” said Francis at once. “The ones she is talking about have been selected out from the rest. Are you still looking for them, Tillie?”

  Ottilia abandoned her search as futile. She toyed with mentioning the empty packages she had stuffed into the drawer, but on balance decided to keep that close for the time being. Meanwhile, her brother’s sceptical gaze shifted from Francis to herself.

  “I suppose your so-called murderer crept in here in the dead of night and secreted the evidence?”

  “You have no idea how cunning these murderers can be, Patrick,” said Francis. “But if there is one thing more certain than another, it is that Giles cannot have taken the thing.”

  “No, I think we must confine our suspicions to someone in the house,” Ottilia agreed.

  “You are jumping to conclusions.” Patrick sounded exasperated. “In the first place, it’s highly unlikely that any confection could be used to poison a man.”

  Ottilia balked. “Why not? Such laudanum sweets may be given to children. You’ve prescribed them yourself.”

  “I grant you this looks just like that sort of laudanum lozenge. They are wrapped like this, and then packed in sets in boxes.”

  “There you are then,” she returned, her mind still busy. How many to a box? Had Sir Joslin a box of them to hand?

  Her brother sighed out an irritated breath. “Ottilia, you are fair and far out. Laudanum lozenge it might have been, but it could only have been used by the dead man to relieve some disorder as simple as a headache.”

  “Or his chest pain, perhaps?” Francis put in.

  “Certainly. But to suggest one of these could be larded with enough opium to provide a lethal dose, absolutely not. Even were it possible, the sugar would be insufficient to disguise the taste.”

  Ottilia began to feel baffled. Instinct? Someone had definitely removed both the missing sweets and the packaging she had secreted into the drawer the day before. She threw out a fresh notion.

  “What if he were to eat several at once?”

  “No,” said her brother with finality. “He would have to consume the whole box, and would likely fall asleep before he could do so.”

  Ottilia sighed, relieved she had kept the tale of the empty packages to herself. “Then I must take your ruling on it, Patrick. I suppose there is little future in analysing this then?”

  “None at all.”

  “Oh, dear, I really thought we had something.”

  Patrick’s eye gleamed. “In any event, I thought we were here to search for rum.”

  Ottilia’s mind snapped in. “Yes, we were. Do you take the press and I will look around the bed.”

  Francis was standing over the half-packed trunk. “What about this?”

  “A waste of time,” said Patrick. “You can’t suppose those women would pack up a bottle of rum.”

  “Check it, Fan,” said Ottilia, heading for the bedside cabinet. She struck lucky at once, discovering a flat-shaped bottle concealed in a corner behind the chamber pot. But when she rose with it in her hand and would have opened it, her brother stayed her.

  “Wait! Give it to me.”

  She handed it over at once. “Why? What are you going to do?”

  He sniffed at the edges of the cork. “Definitely alcohol.” He shook it. “Less than half full, I should think.”

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” asked Francis with impatience.

  “I am opening it.”

  Patrick moved the bottle a little away from him and eased the cork out with his fingertips. There was no instant aromatic scent to tickle Ottilia’s nostrils. She was not surprised. The rum might or might not contain opium, but the niggle of the sweetmeats had superseded her interest.

  “Why the excessive caution?” Francis demanded.

  “Because I don’t want to fall down in a dead faint.” He shook the bottle, sniffed the air and then brought it to his nostrils. “Hm. It’s not an obvious scent, but there is definitely a mix here.”

  “Then you will have it analysed?”

  “I think we must, Fan. We are doing as much with the laudanum you found. Though there is no saying whether it is from this bottle that Sir Joslin drank the dose that killed him.”

  Ottilia eyed her brother. “If you are doing so much, you may as well add the sweetmeat, do you not think?”

  “Humour her, Patrick. Her instinct is rarely at fault, you know.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I dare say I’ll get no peace until I do. But I personally doubt any of this will lead you to Ottilia’s alleged murderer.”

  She thanked him and threw her spouse a grateful look, but her disquiet was palpable. All the signs indicated her brother
was right, but she could not rid herself of a conviction that the secrets of Willow Court hid a tapestry of evil.

  Mrs Whiting had been persuaded to sit in one of the shawl-covered chairs, while Ottilia took the other. The woman thus could not easily see either Francis or Patrick without turning to locate them. Patrick had taken a cane-seated chair, while Francis chose to lean against the wall between the two sets of windows.

  The housekeeper’s discomfort was plain, augmented by the incongruity of her girth against her short legs, which only just reached the floor. Ottilia could see the toes of her black shoes awkwardly pressing down.

  She began with a commonplace designed to set the creature more at her ease, for she would not disclose anything pertinent if she remained resentful. “I wish you will tell me more of Tamasine’s life in Barbados, Mrs Whiting. She told me herself that she was used to hide among the sugar canes.”

  The housekeeper pursed her lips. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

  “Indulge me, if you please. I gather she is much attached to Hemp?”

  The switch of topic put a frown between the woman’s brows. “As much as she’s attached to anyone. Hemp handles her best of all of us, which isn’t surprising.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Mr Roy put him in charge of her when she was just a toddler.” Disapproval was writ large in the housekeeper’s countenance. “Not that young Hemp was much more than a piccaninny at the time.”

  Ottilia’s ears pricked up. “Indeed? How old was he?”

  “Nine or ten, or thereabouts.”

  “Then he was her constant companion for some years?”

  “In between his duties and his schooling.”

  “Ah, I thought he’d been educated.”

  Mrs Whiting sniffed. “They all were, after a fashion, the slaves. Mr Roy insisted on that. Employed a schoolmaster for the purpose. But he taught Hemp himself. Gave him what you might call extra-curricular lessons.”

  Evidently the black boy was a favourite. A random thought occurred to Ottilia, startling in its potential ramifications. So bizarre was the notion that she hesitated to give it voice.

  “What happened when Miss Ingleby came?” she asked instead.

  A derisive expression came into the woman’s face. “She put a stop to it. Or tried to. Thought it was unseemly. But Miss Tam wouldn’t have it. Too used to the fellow by then.”

  “She was fourteen, I understand?”

  Mrs Whiting sighed faintly. “Can’t blame Miss Ingleby, I suppose. She was fresh out from England and didn’t understand colonial ways. Scared of the black workers. She thought it was downright dangerous letting a brawny young black fellow make free with a girl of Miss Tam’s years.”

  Ottilia could not but acknowledge she had thought the same, but she did not say so. If her sudden suspicion was correct, the child must have been quite safe.

  “But you say Tamasine would not be parted from him.”

  “Oh, she didn’t have much to do with him, except when she managed to escape from Miss Ingleby. Hemp was working all hours by then, both in the house and out. But Miss Tam would follow him all over when she got the chance. And seeing Hemp was the only one who could quiet her when she got into one of her rages, Miss Ingleby was obliged to call him in time and again.”

  Ottilia pounced on this. “But Tamasine was not permitted to fly into rages, was she, Mrs Whiting? She is kept sedated with laudanum, is she not?”

  The housekeeper visibly started at the mention of the drug, her eyes flying to meet Ottilia’s, her lip faintly trembling.

  “And you, Mrs Whiting,” Ottilia pursued doggedly, “are in charge of giving her the drug. Where do you keep it? Is it under lock and key?”

  For several minutes the woman could only stare, a myriad collection of thoughts evident in the changing reflections within her eyes. In the periphery of her vision, Ottilia noted that Francis had shifted away from the wall and her brother was leaning forward, both men in tense attitudes of concentrated attention. She kept her gaze trained upon the housekeeper, maintaining the pressure.

  At length Mrs Whiting spoke, her voice hoarse and protesting. “It’s strictly controlled. I know exactly how much to give her. I’ve been doing it for years. I’ve never made a mistake.”

  “Did I suggest you had?”

  The woman’s hands gripped together and belligerence entered her tone. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting. You said the master died of opium poisoning, that’s all I know. Do you mean to accuse me, is that it?”

  Ottilia gentled her voice. “My dear Mrs Whiting, I am merely trying to discover where in the world your master came by an overdose of the drug massive enough to kill him. If you assure me that Tamasine’s laudanum was secured where no one could have taken it, then —”

  “Who’d take it from my housekeeping cupboard?” interrupted the other. “It’s locked and I keep the key on my belt.” She felt for the chatelaine that hung from her waist and rattled the keys hanging from it with some violence. “I’d have noticed if anyone had tried to get it off me, wouldn’t I?”

  “Do you sleep with it under your pillow?”

  Mrs Whiting gaped. “Sleep with it under my pillow? No, of course I don’t.”

  “Then is it possible someone could have sneaked into your housekeeper’s room at night and abstracted it?”

  A disbelieving laugh escaped the woman. “What, and sneaked back in afterwards to return it? Rubbish! It couldn’t have gone. I’d have noticed it missing. Moreover, I’d have noticed if the level in the bottle of laudanum had gone down. I told you, I keep it strictly controlled. I can show you, if you like. I write it all down in my book.”

  She stopped, breathing hard. Ottilia smiled. “Thank you, Mrs Whiting, I would like to see it.”

  It was clear from the expression that swept across the housekeeper’s face that she was outraged. She glared at Ottilia and shoved herself forward so she could place her feet flat on the floor and push herself up from the chair.

  “You better come with me.”

  Nothing loath, Ottilia threw a conspiratorial glance at the two men and followed her from the room.

  Francis had barely managed to exchange a brief word with his brother-in-law when the door opened again and the butler came into the room. He eyed them both with undisguised irritation.

  “Still here then, sirs?”

  Francis’s hackles rose. “As you see.”

  Lomax’s lip curled in an insolent fashion. “Found your murderer, have you, my lord?”

  With difficulty Francis kept a rein on his temper, and fired a broadside. “Not yet. But then we haven’t questioned you, Lomax.”

  The man’s brows snapped together. “I didn’t kill him!”

  “No?”

  “No! Nor, I may add, did anyone else in this house.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “So he took opium, so what?” A sneer crossed the man’s face. “Did you think Miss Ingleby wouldn’t tell me? Not that we didn’t know that already.”

  “Then it rather leaps to the eye that one of you might have helped him to his overdose.”

  Lomax closed his lips tight. He was plainly unnerved, for his gaze swivelled from Francis to Patrick and back again, a faint twitch attacking his cheek, which was certainly a degree paler than it had been.

  Taking a leaf out of his wife’s book, Francis pressed his advantage, his mind flitting over the various bits of information Tillie had so far garnered. He seized one at random.

  “Tell me about Flora Sugars, Lomax.”

  “The master’s manufactory?”

  To see the man so rattled could not but give Francis a feeling of satisfaction. His annoyance settled and he began to enjoy himself. “By master, you mean Mr Roy, I take it? We took it for a trade name for his products. Was that correct?”

  Lomax’s frown spoke his growing puzzlement. “Yes, but I fail to see what that has to do with —”

  “Did he name the pla
ce after his wife?” Francis interrupted, keeping the pressure on. “Florine, was it not?”

  “It wasn’t Mr Roy who called it that. It was Mrs Roy’s father. She inherited the place.”

  “And it became Mr Roy’s property when they married?”

  Lomax nodded, looking more and more perplexed by this line of questioning.

  “Sounds like a handsome dowry,” commented Patrick, drawing the butler’s glance.

  A derisory look overspread the man’s features. “A handsome bribe, sir.”

  Francis could not repress a gasp of shock. “You mean he knew Florine was deranged when he married her?”

  “The master thought it a worthwhile bargain.” The cynical note was pronounced and Francis watched him closely. “Had an eye to the main chance, had Mr Roy. And the mistress was easy-tempered to begin with.”

  “You were there?”

  “I came with the property. I was a footman then.”

  So his loyalties were rather with the wife’s family than with Roy. Less likely to be loyal to his master then?

  “It would appear Miss Ingleby is the most recent addition to the family circle.”

  Lomax blinked in a baffled way, as if the change of subject confused him.

  “I believe she joined you only when Miss Tamasine was fourteen,” Francis pursued. “A relative newcomer then?”

  “You won’t find anyone ready to include her in the family circle.” The old derisory look was back. “She wouldn’t have been, if Mr Martin hadn’t died.”

  “Who was Mr Martin?”

  “Overseer. Miss Ingleby came out to marry him. One of these arranged marriages. Martin perished of fever before she arrived and she’d no money to go back to England.”

  “So your Mr Roy gave her a post as governess to his daughter,” put in Patrick, a note of approval in his voice. “He sounds a most considerate fellow.”

  Lomax had nothing to say to this, and it was plain to Francis that his opinion of his former master’s character left something to be desired. He shifted ground.