Death in a Scarlet Gown (Murray of Letho Book 1)

by Lexie Conyngham

  ‘Oh, well – if old Shaw wants you here, then I don’t see …’ Peter tailed off, not, apparently, much conscious of what he was saying. His gaze flickered away from them, feverish in its nerviness. George cleared his throat.

  ‘I beg your pardon – your sister – Miss Keith – I hope she is … recovering?’

  Peter’s eyes swooped back to meet his.

  ‘I have no idea. Mother is in with her, talking to her.’

  ‘So she’s awake, anyway?’ George snatched at the hope.

  ‘Awake and moaning and groaning fit to shake the house,’ Peter snapped. ‘I’m not going in if she’s like that.’

  ‘The doctor’s gone up to her now,’ Charles said.

  ‘I saw him,’ Peter said. ‘A shiny wee man. Professor Urquhart was looking at him as if he smelt bad.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to study medicine at one stage, Peter?’ Charles asked, remembering. It took a second for Peter to catch up.

  ‘Oh, yes, I did. I read a few books, anyway: Father always has books like that round the house. It comes from doing natural philosophy.’ He sighed sharply, and shoved his hands hard into his waistband as he strode to the window. He stared out at the garden, but did not relax. ‘He’s dead, you know!’ He turned suddenly with a breathless laugh. ‘Out cold on the study floor, like – like a fish! I bet he never expected that! I bet he wanted pomp and grandeur and the whole family round the bed weeping as he spoke his final significant words!’ He gabbled so fast it was all they could do to understand him: he was as white as chalk.

  ‘I’ll ring for some brandy,’ said George, pulling himself together and going to the bell. Barbara appeared again, looking more exhausted each time they saw her, and brought a bottle of brandy and a glass. When she had gone again, they found it was still corked, and it took George a minute or two with his knife to open it. Peter, throughout the process, said nothing, but stared out of the window, breathing heavily. Occasionally he fumbled with the window catch, as though he remembered some reason for going into the garden, then forgot again.

  ‘I think I’ll go up and see if Professor Shaw needs any help,’ Charles said at last. George could cope with Peter, and should not leave him for a while until he was settled. The expression on George’s face, anyway, seemed to say that even if they were left alone, he was not going to tell Charles anything about the cantharides. Charles went out into the hall, found himself alone, and rubbed his face hard right up to the line of his hair. It was only eleven o’clock, but already the world seemed to be upside down.

  Upstairs, Professors Urquhart and Shaw were waiting on the landing outside the drawing room where the party had been the night before. Shaw was perched on a hard hall chair with a knobbly back, while Urquhart had disposed himself against the old wooden kist on which Charles remembered seeing Barbara set a jug and tray last night. Now it only held a narrow glass vase of daffodils, shining against the white plaster wall in an unsuitably cheerful fashion, and even the old family portraits around the walls seemed to be laughing. It was unnerving. Shaw and Urquhart greeted Charles in silence, with the kind of half-smile appropriate to a house of mourning.

  ‘Has the doctor given his verdict yet?’ Charles asked, in a low voice.

  ‘No: he threatened to start sniffing urine, and we thought it prudent to leave.’ Urquhart’s nose wrinkled fastidiously. ‘Mrs. Keith seems to have kept jugs of the stuff for the purpose.’

  ‘He’s going to blister her, he said,’ Shaw added sadly. His hands were clasped closely on his lap, and he sat in a dejected heap, like a schoolboy awaiting the rector’s verdict, and knowing it would involve tawses. Distantly, Charles became aware of a breathless groaning, very much alive, but certainly miserable, and punctuated by the occasional squeal. A murmur, almost soothing except for a hint in it of anxiety, susurrated like a contralto accompaniment to the soprano groans: Mrs. Keith’s motherly comfort.

  In a moment or two, a door opened and shut. The doctor appeared at the top of the next flight of stairs, paused theatrically to adjust his waistcoat and straighten his wig, and then descended the stairs trying to control his compulsive smirk. His smart shoes clicked on the bare wooden treads, and it was a relief when he reached one of the rugs on the landing and could move in comparative silence. Shaw stood up, but Urquhart did not straighten.

  ‘Well?’ asked Shaw anxiously. The doctor was gratified by this, and allowed a heavy sigh to escape his lips.

  ‘She is not at all well,’ he pronounced. His polished face was as solemn as it could be.

  ‘Of course she isn’t,’ snapped Urquhart. ‘What’s your diagnosis and prognosis, man?’

  ‘My diagnosis is that she has been poisoned,’ stated the doctor, his dignity offended. ‘It is gravely affecting her kidneys, and I have purged her quite heavily.’

  ‘Cantharides,’ muttered Shaw, wide-eyed. He sat down again as if he had been folded.

  ‘What’s that?’ said the doctor.

  ‘We think,’ whispered Shaw, not looking at him, ‘that she was given cantharides.’

  ‘Spanish fly? Well, why did no one tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Urquhart, in a dangerous tone. ‘Which is why I did not tell you: no one told me, either.’ Shaw met his eye.

  ‘We only worked it out when you went for Dr. Pagan,’ he explained. ‘Charles here saw who gave Miss Keith the sweetmeats we found on Professor Keith’s desk, you see.’

  ‘Well, who the devil –‘ Urquhart began, then broke off. ‘Never mind,’ he said, with a half-nod indicating that they should wait until they were in private. ‘We shall speak about it later.’

  ‘Oh, certainly, certainly.’ Shaw was eager not to be the only academic with this burden of knowledge.

  The doctor breathed out sharply, trying to regain the lead in the conversation.

  ‘We use Spanish fly professionally, you know, for blistering,’ he said brightly. ‘Some fools think it has other powers, but what blisters the skin outside will blister the flesh inside, you know. It can kill.’

  Professor Shaw swallowed hard, and Urquhart drawled,

  ‘And obviously it has.’ The doctor looked dismayed: he had forgotten that there had been more than one victim in the case.

  ‘And your prognosis, Doctor, in the case of Miss Keith?’ Charles quietly reminded him. Urquhart paid attention to the doctor again.

  ‘Well, she is young and strong.’ At this point a little frown crinkled Dr. Pagan’s face. ‘However,’ he added, ‘in her interesting position … I think, on the whole, it is likely that she will survive. I have told her mother to make her drink a good deal of milk. Milk is always soothing. I shall return later to apply leeches, which will relieve the pressure of the discomfort within. And, of course, she needs to calm herself, which again is where her mother can help. She keeps calling out a name – Peter.’

  ‘That’s her brother,’ said Charles. ‘He’s downstairs: shall I fetch him?’

  ‘No! Not at all,’ cried Dr. Pagan hurriedly. ‘She is crying out that he should not be admitted, on any account. She is half-delirious, and does not know what she is saying, but it would only upset her further if we went against her requests at this stage.’

  ‘Well, it is of no matter,’ said Urquhart smoothly. ‘Now to the father, I suppose. The study where we found him is along this corridor, here. We directed that he should be left as we found him.’

  He led the way, followed by the doctor. Charles brought up the rear, in a state of mild anxiety: he had seen corpses before, of course, for you could not go to a funeral without paying your respects, but he had never seen anyone who had been poisoned, or who was still … in situ. What on earth was he to expect?

  ‘Apparently he often slept in here if he was working late,’ Urquhart was explaining to Dr. Pagan, ducking under a low beam. Charles did the same in his turn. ‘As you can see, he has a species of campaign bed – well, usually made up.’

  Urquhart opened a low door, and, crowded in the doorway, all four of
them reeled at the stench that swept out over them. Professor Shaw choked and buried his face in his sleeve. Urquhart and Charles drew out handkerchiefs, but Dr. Pagan, screwing up his nose professionally, stepped a pace or two into the room unmasked. He was followed by Urquhart, and the pair of them stopped abruptly, blocking most of the view. Charles, buoyed up to confront the corpse, had to hold himself in check and make do with what was visible to him.

  The part of the room that Charles could see was lined with books, all the books that were missing in the rest of the house. He could see a few familiar titles, and suppressed the desire to examine them further for the moment: it was the largest private library he had had the chance to see, outside Letho where his grandfather had been a bit of a collector. His father would not have contributed much to it beyond pedigree books and estate manuals … he shook himself and tried to concentrate on the room he was in. There was, so far as he could tell, one window, a rounded corner one, in a little turret, over a window seat padded with a cushion, panelled below. The window curtain had been tugged back, probably by Urquhart and Shaw earlier, for on the corner of the great oak desk was a candlestick covered in icicles of wax where the candle had burned right down. Beside it were an open notebook, with Professor Keith’s sharp black writing on half of one page, and a small wooden tray. Charles recognised it: it was the one Barbara the maid had left on the landing the night before, holding a plate of biscuits, now somewhat diminished in number, a used wine glass, with a fine spiral stem and a bud-shaped bowl, and the chased silver claret jug. Someone had added the sweetmeats, the box now rather crumpled. By straining round the corner Charles could just see the edge of what he thought was George’s box of candied fruit.

  At that moment, Urquhart and the doctor moved forward into the room and bent over, and Professor Shaw shifted slightly to one side. Charles could easily see over his shoulder. Against the wall he had been unable to see before was a set of shelves, high up, containing scientific apparatus. Below them was a kind of campaign bed, set into the wall, low and flat with a hard pillow, and covered with a couple of rumpled plaids and a grey English blanket. Tangled up with them, as if forgotten in a rush to leave the bed, was a leg.

  Swallowing hard, Charles followed it with his eyes. It was not, as it had at first appeared, detached. Professor Keith, grand, fiercesome and relentless, lay upside down like a clown in a pantomime, swinging from a trapeze.

  The most striking thing was his look of shock. He seemed to be saying, upside down, ‘What, me? Now?’ The eyes were still open, the folds of flesh around them sagging into strange, unnatural shapes, and the chin rested awkwardly out of place. There was a thick trail of vomit from one side of his mouth, splashing down over his shoulder and on to the bare boards of the floor where he must have tried to turn his head away and not to choke. Incongruously, its substance was raspberry pink, with little flecks of scarlet.

  Professor Urquhart stepped delicately across the room and opened one casement of the window, relieving the stench considerably. Everyone tested the air with cautious sniffs, then breathed normally. Dr. Pagan peered at the body from a standing position, then reluctantly crouched down beside it, finally covering his own mouth and nose with a handkerchief. He pulled a flat object like a blunt knife from his pocket, and gently pressed back the corpse’s lower lip to open his mouth wider. Charles tensed: he half-expected Professor Keith to choke and struggle up, in the worst of all his tempers. Peter’s words downstairs came back to him: ‘I bet he wanted pomp and grandeur!’ Maybe: he would have wanted dignity, at least. This was far from that, and Charles suddenly felt embarrassed, as if he had walked in on his professor in his bath.

  ‘Now,’ said the doctor, standing again to ease the knees of his skin-tight breeches, ‘in a case of cantharides poisoning we would expect to see evidence of the victim having suffered great thirst as the poison took effect.’

  ‘What about the claret jug?’ Charles suggested. Professor Urquhart stepped back to the desk and flipped the silver lid back. He squinted inside, then lifted the jug and shook it, to make sure.

  ‘Empty,’ he said, setting the jug carefully back.

  ‘And the vomit is pink,’ added Dr. Pagan, as if he would not have expected the uninitiated to notice. ‘I think we can assume that he ingested it – though of course we don’t know how much was in the jug.’

  ‘It was full,’ said Urquhart. He stopped and looked at them. ‘I saw the jug last night as we left. I was admiring it, and lifted it to look at the chasing nearer the candles. It was full.’ He said all this flatly, as something that could not possibly be of interest to them. But Dr. Pagan, his attention drawn to the little supper tray, had begun to examine the biscuits and the sweetmeats. The biscuits were dry, and had probably been dipped into the claret: there was no trace of anything strange about them, but the doctor sniffed them cautiously, turning them over and over. Professor Shaw nodded at the sweetmeats.

  ‘Those,’ he said uneasily, ‘are what we believe the cantharides was brought in. They were a present for the young lady, you see.’

  ‘Then I wonder what they are doing here?’ Dr. Pagan mused.

  The box, now that Charles could see it better, showed itself to be the work of a local confectioner who had his shop in Market Street. The sweetmeats seemed to be irregular lumps of something treacly with a dusted sugar coating. The doctor poked at them cautiously with the blunt blade.

  ‘Just a little, pressed into the bottom of each piece,’ he murmured. Charles thought of the cantharides in his own bunk, and the missing piece, and felt sick. ‘The young lady upstairs says she took one piece and bit into it, but it tasted strange so she did not finish it.’

  ‘Would a little be enough to kill someone, sir?’ Charles asked. He found he was shivering. The doctor bit his lip.

  ‘I should not have thought so, not so quickly. He was a large, strong man.’

  They all glanced involuntarily down, noting as if for the first time the heavy, slumping jaw, the powerful arms and legs, the broad shoulders pressed into the floor.

  ‘But there is room for only one missing sweetmeat in the box,’ said Charles, unsteadily, ‘and presumably that was the one that Alison took.’ Professor Shaw was standing by the desk. Charles could not see George’s tray of candied fruits, to see whether or not it was full.

  ‘Perhaps there was a lot of poison just in that one,’ suggested Professor Shaw, but without much hope. He sounded confused: it would have been a bit of a coincidence. Urquhart frowned. Dr. Pagan met Charles’ eye, and looked away, fidgeting with his blunt blade.

  There was a distant sound of footsteps in the silence, and Professor Shaw said,

  ‘Shut the door, Charles: someone might pass by.’

  Charles shut it and leaned on it. Still he could not see George’s candied fruits. He stared down at Professor Keith, at his tousled, sweaty hair, at his hand tangled in his cravat. It seemed to be grasping something, but when he bent over to look more closely, he saw that it was only the missing button from his coat, glinting between the fingers. The doctor saw where he was looking.

  ‘Is that his button?’ he asked. ‘Let’s see if we can get it out.’

  Professor Keith’s thick fingers were stiff with death, but not so much so that Dr. Pagan could not prise them open.

  ‘He must have died late last night, I think,’ the doctor remarked, then added, ‘My goodness!’

  It was in a tone that made them all lean over to see. Dr. Pagan showed them Professor Keith’s half-open hand with the button in it. It was bloody: the edges of the metal circle had dug hard into his flesh as he clutched it.

  ‘Is that from rigor mortis?’ asked Professor Shaw in amazement.

  ‘No,’ said the doctor, straightening, ‘no, I don’t think it is.’ He cleared his throat, and put the button on the desk with an air of importance.

  ‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ Professor Shaw asked timidly. Professor Urquhart, stony-faced, folded his arms, but his fingers twitc
hed. The doctor looked round them all, then glanced down at the body as though his host might have given him permission to proceed.

  ‘Well,’ he began, ‘the matter is this. I’m quite convinced that Miss Keith upstairs is suffering from cantharides poisoning: it is a typical case, and you seem to know who brought the poison into the house.’ He managed to keep most of the irritation at his exclusion from this knowledge out of his voice, but a taste of it remained. ‘If she does not die, and I think it likely she will not, that will be a simple matter for your poisoners.

  ‘However,’ he went on, ‘Professor Keith here has only some of the symptoms of cantharides poisoning. They are, however, as are his other symptoms, also signs of something quite different. The flecks of blood in his vomit, for instance, and the convulsions that led to the cuts from the button in his hand. Something quite different.’

  ‘And what is that?’ snapped Urquhart. Shaw looked as if he did not want to know.

  ‘Arsenic poisoning,’ pronounced the doctor.

  Urquhart gasped. Professor Shaw swayed, and sat hard in the chair behind him, and Charles could at last see the box of candied fruit.

  There was one missing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Professor Shaw cleared his throat for longer than seemed necessary, but eventually managed to speak.

  ‘Did – did our friends say anything about arsenic?’ he asked. Even then, Charles did not hear him for a moment, and Urquhart, his tone sarcastic as he had not been told who the ‘friends’ were, repeated the question loudly. Charles jumped.

  ‘Oh! Our friends! Ahh ...’ he thought, trying to put cantharides out of his mind, trying not to imagine how George could have got hold of arsenic. ‘Arsenic,’ he repeated, ‘No, no, they did not. Their aim was not to kill, I am sure. It was only to make Miss Keith, er ... well, rumpish was the word they used.’ He felt awkward using it himself in front of his tutors.

  Dr. Pagan nodded.

  ‘The common misconception I was telling you about. But a burning feeling in one’s nether regions is much more rarely the effect of passion, in my experience, and much more commonly a result of something you’ve eaten.’ Something about this suddenly seemed to embarrass him, and he turned away, rearranging his cravat with a few anxious touches. Urquhart smirked.