Sowing Poison

by Janet Kellough

  “We didn’t have pumpkin pie last night. We had apple cobbler.”

  Now it was Daniel’s turn to be puzzled. “Well, we had it one night this week, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, we had it Friday night.”

  Lewis looked at Daniel. “Are you sure it was the pumpkin pie Mr. Gilmour liked so well?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “That means he’s been missing for more than a day.”

  “What do you think we should do?” Daniel asked.

  “I’m not sure.” A guest was well within his rights to go off and do whatever he wanted and was under no obligation to inform anyone when he did so, but it was generally considered a courtesy to let the innkeeper know, especially where meals were involved. But supper the night before had been a hurried affair, because of the meeting upstairs, and Lewis could not recall with any degree of certainty whether Gilmour had been present in the dining room or not.

  “You don’t suppose he’s taken a powder?” Daniel said anxiously. “He’s run up quite a bill.”

  It was possible, Lewis supposed. It was true that some of Gilmour’s personal belongings were still in his room, but they had no way of telling whether or not everything was there. What were a set of hairbrushes and a valise against the amount that was owing for the room? And they hadn’t even looked inside the valise. For all they knew, it could be sitting there empty, a decoy to cover his departure.

  “Let’s look around his room again. We’ll be a little more thorough this time.”

  But the valise was full of clothing, along with a number of letters bundled together with string. In the drawer of the washstand they found a tin of moustache wax and a container of hair pomade. There was no sign of his overcoat or the tall hat he wore when he went out, but as far as Lewis could tell, the rest of his effects were still there. It appeared as though Mr. Gilmour had had every intention of returning at some point.

  “Should we inform someone?” Daniel asked. “I mean, I know it’s only been a day or so, but what if something’s happened to him? Should we let the constable know?”

  “Why don’t we talk to the other guests first?” Lewis said. “Maybe one of them can shed some light on his whereabouts.”

  He and Daniel discreetly canvassed the guests during the supper hour. Everyone was aware of the gentleman, they said — he was difficult to overlook, what with his brightly-coloured accessories — but no one could recall having seen him during the last two days.

  “I’ll ask around town tomorrow morning,” Lewis said to Daniel. “If no one’s seen or heard from him, I’ll talk to the constable then.”

  The next morning Lewis went up and down the street asking about their missing guest. No one had much helpful information, except the postmaster, who informed him that Gilmour hadn’t been to collect his mail since Wednesday or Thursday of the previous week.

  “He gets quite a lot of it, you know,” the man said. “And it’s all from New York.”

  Lewis stopped in at the livery stable on the way back, but Gilmour had hired neither horse nor cart, nor, as far as anyone there could tell him, had he boarded any of the coaches. Wherever he had gone, he had apparently gone on foot. Up and down the main street Lewis asked everyone he met, and although most he asked could remember seeing Gilmour at some point within the last week, no one had any recollection of setting eyes on him within the last two days.

  Lewis began to wonder how such a striking figure had managed to disappear without anyone noticing. Not even Meribeth Scully could shed any light on Gilmour’s whereabouts. In fact, she seemed a little put out that she had no information for him.

  Lewis decided it was time to report the disappearance to Constable Williams.

  “Are you sure he hasn’t just skipped out?” the constable asked.

  “I can’t rule it out,” Lewis replied. “But his things are still in his room. I’m just a little concerned, that’s all, and my brother-in-law and I both feel we would be remiss if we didn’t say anything, and then subsequently discovered that he had met with an accident.”

  Williams nodded. “I’ll ask around town about him, but I’m sure he’ll turn up. If he returns to the hotel in the meantime, could you please inform me?”

  Lewis wasn’t sure what else he could do. Gilmour might well have gone out of town for a day or two and forgotten to let them know. But he couldn’t get rid of a nagging suspicion that the disappearance might have something to do with Mrs. Elliott. Apart from the fact that Gilmour seemed to have been spying on her, there was no apparent connection between the two — unless Clementine Elliott really was the Madame LeClair from the New York newspaper, and Gilmour had followed her to Wellington, hoping to collect the reward that had been mentioned. But if that were the case, why would he have disappeared before he had a chance to collect it?

  So much for putting the matter entirely out of mind, he thought ruefully.

  Clementine wasn’t at all sure what her next move should be. It was clear that the preacher had deduced the means by which she summoned the “spirits” that so enthralled her clients. She had no idea what would he do with the knowledge. He had been skeptical from the first, she knew, and had made no secret of his disapproval. In ordinary circumstances, his detection of her methods would have been a clear signal that it was time to leave, to pack up and carry on to the next place where there was a ready supply of bereaved relatives. But these were anything but ordinary circumstances.

  More than ever, she missed her husband. They had always listened to each other’s advice, plotted each move as a team, played to each other’s strengths. She understood the importance of playing her role, of improvising only within the boundaries of the story that had been agreed upon, but this plot had unravelled somehow, and she was no longer sure what her role was. But she had been left no message, no instruction, no indication that the plan had changed. She had questioned Reuben closely, had made him go over the details many times, but he could shed no light on what had happened.

  Sometimes in the dark of a sleepless night she wondered if her husband had deliberately abandoned her. She was no longer the young girl she had been when he’d scooped her off the streets of Boston. She’d not been on her own for very long when he found her, and she had not yet honed the skills she needed to survive. She’d picked the pocket of a prosperous-looking mark, but she had been clumsy and the man felt a tug as she removed his purse. He’d spun around and accused her. Suddenly there was a second man at her side, who proffered the purse to its owner.

  “This fell from your pocket, sir, as you were walking,” he said. “It’s fortunate that I saw it fall. You should be more careful.”

  She had no idea how the purse had made its way from the sleeve where she had tucked it to the hand of the second man, but she was grateful that he had managed it. The owner of the purse glared at them, as if he knew that something was not quite right, but then he went on his way with a nod and a muttered thank-you.

  Her saviour, who she now realized was quite a fine-looking young man, had taken her by the elbow and marched her down the street.

  “If you’re going to be a common cutpurse, you need to be better at it,” he’d hissed in her ear. “I was able to remove only half the coins from his wallet before I had to hand it back. I’ll split the take with you if you like, but you’ll make far more if you come with me. I could use a pretty accomplice.”

  He’d introduced her to less risky methods of generating funds and she discovered that she had a talent for discovering secrets that were used to good effect in his schemes. They worked well together, and the partnership was further cemented when she fell in love with him. He had always seemed to return the regard.

  But now there were fine lines gathering at the corner of her eyes and every day it was becoming more of a struggle to corset her body into the hourglass shape that showed her expensive dresses to best advantage. Perhaps her husband had tired of their partnership and had found opportunity to get away cleanly. But in her waking moments she c
ouldn’t take this explanation seriously. He would never have willingly left the boy behind. He doted on his son.

  Perhaps he truly had met with an accident and she really was a widow. But if that were the case, where was the evidence? His body should have been found by now, somewhere, and then maybe she and Reuben would be able to come to some sort of arrangement. The way matters stood, however, she was in limbo, with no definitive proof of what had happened and no definite indication of what path she should follow. She knew that the sensible thing to do was to cut her losses and leave, but even that would be far from simple. Gilmour had been dogging her closely, but in some respects that made him easier to deal with. At least she had known who he was and why he was following her. Now, apparently, he had disappeared and she had no way of knowing if he had given up or had merely been replaced by someone new — someone she wouldn’t immediately mark as a bounty hunter.

  She had denied any knowledge of Gilmour’s whereabouts when the innkeeper asked at supper the previous evening, but before the final dishes were cleared away she had sent the boy upstairs to Gilmour’s room, with instructions to look for any correspondence that might shed some light on the situation. By the time she had finished her meal and retired upstairs, her son was back in their bedroom with a fistful of letters, some of them personal, but many of them from the old man in New York. These confirmed that Gilmour was a hired detective, but there was nothing to indicate that he had been instructed to give up the case. One letter noted that Clementine’s husband had been tracked to Wellington, and another that he had vanished shortly thereafter. She found that the date of her arrival had been reported, but there was no hint that Gilmour had been replaced. Maybe he had changed his tactics. Maybe he was hoping that his absence would provoke a move on her part.

  Until she knew for sure what he was up to, the safest place, and the one with the most promise, was Wellington.

  In the meantime, she would destroy the letters and find some way to silence the preacher. She could try the time-honoured method, she supposed, one that she had used successfully before in order to get out of a tight spot. To be sure, he was religious man, but in her experience that sometimes made it all the easier. She would have been surer of this approach if he had been one of those men who scrambled to tip his hat to her. But she knew that her charms had so far failed to enchant him in any way, and she wished she hadn’t seen the way his face softened when he looked at his wife. She had no idea what else to do.

  Upon his return to the hotel, Lewis reported his conversations of the morning to Daniel, who appeared to be somewhat relieved that the constable was unconcerned.

  “Well, I guess Gilmour will turn up,” he said. “So, do we hold his room in the meantime?”

  “I don’t think we can do anything else until we have a more definite idea of what has happened to him, do you?”

  “No, I guess not. As long as we’re not stuck for the money he owes us.”

  Just then Sophie announced that they could begin serving dinner. She continued to conjure miraculous meals out of the kitchen, this noontime serving up a succulent chicken stew with fat floury dumplings. Daniel, in the meantime, headed upstairs. He had lingered too long over his morning tea break with Susannah, apparently, and had not yet finished cleaning the rooms. That left Lewis and Francis to manage the service by themselves, a task they performed adequately, if not efficiently, and they briskly cleared away the plates from the main course as soon as the diners had finished.

  For dessert, Sophie had concocted a savoury pudding from the plums that Susannah had preserved in jars at the end of the summer. This was served hot, with a dollop of heavy cream poured over it. It was met with enthusiasm by their guests, but in an effort to appear efficient, Lewis balanced too many plates on his arm at once, which forced him to stand very straight and awkwardly lower each serving to the table. With all of his attention focused on making an uneventful delivery, Lewis failed to notice that Clementine was reaching for the plate at the same moment he was placing it in front of her. Her hand and the plate collided slightly in mid-air, sliding the dessert forward and causing a thick blob of the cream to land on the front of her dress.

  Lewis apologized profusely as she leapt up and dabbed at the mess with her napkin.

  “It’s of no matter,” she said. “But I wonder if you might bring me a jug of hot water after the meal, so that I might sponge the stain.”

  Lewis agreed and left Francis to serve the rest of the dessert as he scurried off to fill a jug from the reservoir at the side of the sink-room stove. He had assumed that Clementine meant him to take it to her in the dining room, but when he returned, she was nowhere to be seen.

  “She’s gone upstairs,” Horatio said through a mouthful of pudding. He must have taken what was left of his mother’s dessert as well as his own, for there were two plates in front of him. “She said to tell you to take the water up there.”

  Lewis was annoyed at having to climb the stairs. The carrying of pans and jugs up and down was one of the things that aggravated his aging knees, and he avoided it whenever he could. He had caused the current problem, however, and he supposed it was incumbent on him to deliver the means of rectifying it.

  Clementine called to him as he crossed the hall. She was not in her bedroom, but in the sitting room next door, and the heavy scent of the herbs she burned during her spirit sessions still hung in the air. They would have to leave the windows open for weeks to get rid of the smell, Lewis thought, for no one would want to sleep in the room until it was gone.

  Clementine had made no effort to hide any of her paraphernalia, although he noted that she quickly closed the door behind him. He could see a corner of what appeared to be a closet jutting out from behind the dark curtains. It was a much larger camera than the one the lecturer had used. That stood to reason; she needed to project a nearly life-like image in order to convince her patrons. There were wads of gauzy material on one chair, no doubt the materials that streamed from her ears when she assumed her trance-like state. How she made them move was still a mystery, but one that he needn’t concern himself with. It was enough to know what it was.

  He set the jug on the table and was preparing to leave her to her cleaning when she asked, “Did you bring a cloth?”

  He hadn’t. “I’ll go and fetch you one.”

  “That’s such a lot of trouble for such a small stain,” she purred. “Perhaps if I could just borrow your handkerchief it would save you all those steps.”

  He dug in his pocket. Fortunately, he had grabbed a fresh one that morning and it was still pristine. He held it out to her, but she didn’t take it as he expected.

  “Just dip it in the water and bring it here,” she said.

  He moistened the cloth and again held it out to her. She had undone the top few buttons of her bodice and held the stained area away from her undergarments, which were plainly visible underneath.

  “If you’ll just rub it here,” she said, “that should take the stain out.”

  He hesitated.

  “Go on,” she said, “I need both hands to hold the material taut. Otherwise the water will leak through underneath.”

  He stepped closer and dabbed tentatively at the stain. “Rub a little harder.” She breathed the words in a husky voice and removed her hand from her bodice.

  He stepped back. There was no mistaking the invitation she was extending, and he wanted no part of it. Surprisingly enough, he had found over the years that attempted seduction was almost an occupational hazard. Too often some lonely woman had misinterpreted his interest regarding the state of her soul as an interest in something else entirely. He had several times been the object of some unhappy woman’s designs, and although he was often hopeless at discerning the nuances of courtship, he was adept enough at recognizing the signals of enticement. This was a trouble he didn’t need.

  Clementine stepped forward and closed the distance between them. “What’s the matter?”

  He noted that she no longer s
poke with the high-pitched twang that irritated him so, but rather with the rich contralto voice that she had evidenced when calling spirits.

  He knew he should turn and leave immediately. He had no intention of falling victim to her wiles, and the situation was compromising in the extreme, but this could also be a golden opportunity to gain some information. Curiosity won over caution.

  “You’re not really from the American south, I take it?”

  She laughed. “Of course not. It’s just a way to sound a little more exotic for my customers. It’s one of many personalities I can conjure up. I can be anything you want, you know.”

  “Including a spirit guide?”

  “Especially a spirit guide.” She shrugged. “People see want they want to see. I just make it easier for them.” She reached out and laid her hand on his arm. “And what could I make easier for you? It must be so hard for you, having to be so circumspect all the time. Wouldn’t you like to let go for once?”

  He grasped her hand and removed it from his arm, then let it drop by her side.

  She changed her tactics at this rebuff. “I know you’ve been suspicious of me ever since I got here,” she said. “Fair enough. Now you know you were right. It’s all trickery. So the question is, what do you want in exchange for your silence? You can have anything you want, you know.” She unfastened another button and pushed her bodice down over one shoulder. “Anything. You’re a man in the prime of life, but your wife is an invalid. That must be difficult.”

  So she was prepared to offer a straight bargain, he realized. He would keep his knowledge to himself and she would offer up her body in exchange. It was no bargain as far as he was concerned. Had he been inclined that way, there had always been far more attractive women who put themselves in his path. He had never even been tempted. He had always known that Betsy was there for him and he wanted no one else, not even now when her ailing body had aged her beyond her years. He began to laugh.

  “You’re going to have to give me something besides that,” he said.