The Dead Woman Who Lived

by Endellion Palmer

  “Well, sir, at least he’s thinking about it,” said Joe in a low voice.

  “He didn’t look too happy about it,” replied Alistair.

  “Oh, that’s just his way, I expect,” said Joe loyally, although he did not look entirely sure.

  One by one the household passed through the study door, to be questioned again, this time by a visibly grumpy policeman who had, despite himself, come to the same conclusion as Joe and Alistair had the previous day.

  The inspector was long-winded and pedantic, consulting frequently with the statements each had given, and jumping on any deviation. The hours passed, and the mood of the household sank deeper with each interview he did. He spared no one; despite losing their mother in what at best would be a violent accident, Jamie and then Damaris were grilled for a long time, separately at first, and then finally together. Willett eventually let them go, his lip curling over Jamie’s tears, and his eyes narrowed over Damaris’ cold quiescence.

  Alistair and Adrien sat together in the morning room towards the end of the morning. They had abandoned their attempts at reading the newspaper and were smoking in silence, when there was a sharp knock on the door and it pushed open to reveal Jinty Fennell, looking anxious, her hands twisting in front of her. She had returned to the house late the previous evening, although Florence and Ada had been waiting up to fill her in on what she had missed.

  “Mrs Fennell, come in, please,” Adrien said automatically. “What can we help you with?”

  She paused, as if she were unsure of how to begin. Alistair decided to ask her a question and see if that helped.

  “Mrs Fennell, would you be in a position to confirm that Mrs Evans was in the habit of taking a drink in the afternoon?”

  He wanted to know if it had been common knowledge among the staff too. The woman’s mouth thinned out, as it often did when she thought of Fancy Evans. The woman’s demise hadn’t cured her of that. She nodded.

  “She often had a drink in the afternoon,” she said. “Snuck into the library when she thought no one was watching.”

  She looked at Adrien.

  “Sir, is it true that there was poison put in one of the decanters? That Mrs Evans took a drink from the brandy decanter and that it was poisoned?”

  Adrien nodded, wondering where this was going. “We think so, Mrs Fennell.”

  “You need to speak to Florence, sir. Something happened yesterday morning that you should know about.”

  They debated whether or not to tell the inspector immediately, but the decision was made for them. Joe was standing outside the study door. Willett had taken himself to the Island to interview the Clevedons and left his subordinate behind to watch the house.

  Alistair looked at Adrien and they signalled to Joe to follow them. In the kitchen, Florence was a quivering wreck, sobbing onto the table. It took Alistair a while to get her to calm down enough to speak. Joe sat on a stool by the door, out of sight, pencil and notebook in hand. When the girl finally raised her head, her eyes were swollen and bloodshot.

  “You were responsible for cleaning in the library yesterday, Mrs Fennell tells me?” Alistair asked gently.

  “Yes, sir,” she sniffed. “Thursdays is the library, and the Long Gallery. Ada wanted to do upstairs, so I took the library.”

  For a moment there was a gleam of annoyance that Ada’s victory over the Long Gallery that morning had meant that she, Florence, had been the one to be in the library. Alistair was glad to see it. Anger was healthier than fear.

  “What happened?” he prompted. “Take your time, Florence. Think back.”

  “I was dusting,” she began, then stopped to blow her nose before she continued. “I fell off the stool and knocked into the side table. Some of the glass came off, onto the floor, and one of the decanters broke. Took me ages to clean it all up. Then I got scared. I know Mrs Evans isn’t in charge any more, but I was right worried there’d be trouble.” She sniffed again and rubbed her nose again with the thoroughly dampened cotton square. “So I replaced the broken one with one from the back of the little cupboard.”

  Adrien spoke up from the wall by the dresser. Joe, equally interested, had leaned forward and was listening keenly as he made notes.

  “There’s a hidden cupboard in the panelling. My parents used it for old glasses and various odds and ends,” Adrien said. “They’ve been there for years. I take it you found one of them, Florence?”

  “Yes, sir. Those ones. I chose one that was as close as I could make it. Just the stopper was different, and the glass wasn’t so fancy. The shape was the same. And then I refilled it. I didn’t want Mrs Evans to see what I’d done.”

  “Why didn’t you mention it before?” he probed.

  “It was stupid not to,” she admitted. “I knew someone would notice eventually. I was going to tell Mrs Fennell, but she left early, and then Ada scalded herself and in all the fuss getting her hand dressed, I just forgot. Oh, Mr Creed, it wasn’t me, I promise. I didn’t put poison in there!”

  Alistair understood why she had not spoken out immediately. Fancy’s reign of terror was only recently over. And Florence was very young. She certainly looked her age now, with her tear-stained face and the panic in her swollen eyes, despite the fact that Fancy Evans was not going to be lecturing anyone on their clumsiness ever again.

  They left her with the cook, who was pushing sweetened tea on the girl, and repaired to the side passage. The three looked at each other and made the decision to talk amongst themselves first. Quietly they made their way to the library, still unlocked, and slipped inside. Adrien went straight to the sideboard and groaned as he looked at the tray.

  “Dear God, how come I didn’t notice this?”

  Joe peered over his shoulder.

  “What am I looking at?” he asked.

  Adrien pointed to the decanters from which Fancy had taken her final drink. The area was still dusty from Joe’s ministrations the day before.

  “I saw it yesterday, but I didn’t see the significance. The decanter is the same shape, but the original had a square top to the stopper. This one is a tear-drop shape.”

  His breath caught in his throat, and he coughed. Alistair took a step forward.

  “It’s very similar to this one,” he said, and knew that his vague fears of last night were becoming real. The decanter he was pointing to was the one that was filled with sherry. The stopper was a similar shape to that of the decanter that Florence had refilled with brandy after the accident.

  It took Joe a moment to catch up, but his face went ashen.

  “You think that a mistake was made. That the poison was put in the wrong decanter,” he said, his voice hoarse. “That means that… Mrs Evans was not supposed to die. What was kept in the other one?”

  Adrien looked sick.

  “It’s sherry,” he said woodenly. “Juliana drinks it.”

  Alistair looked at him and nodded.

  “It would make more sense,” he said. “I couldn’t work out why Mrs Evans was attacked. It did not make sense. But at the least, this development reduces the window of time that the poisoner had. There were only a few hours between the decanter being broken and Mrs Evans’ death.”

  “Why would anyone want to kill Mrs Creed, though?” asked Joe.

  His companions exchanged a glance. If nothing else, then this might convince the police that Juliana’s original fall had not been an accident. It was just a pity that it had taken another death to do so.

  “I think that this was to do with the initial attack on her,” replied Alistair. “Someone is worried, and trying to ensure that Juliana does not remember any more about that night.”

  Inspector Willett stalked into the library at this point, glaring at the three men. “What’s all this? Vercoe, I didn’t want anyone else in here.”

  “You didn’t say so, sir,” said Joe. “And these gentlemen have something important to tell you.”

  Between them, Alistair and Adrien recounted the story of the breaking o
f the decanter the previous day, and the situation regarding which drinks were kept where. Willett’s eyes grew rounder as he listened with growing impatience to Joe’s explanation about the possibility that the brandy decanter had been poisoned in error, and immediately asked to be taken to the kitchen.

  At the end of five minutes of Willett’s questioning, Florence was in floods of tears again, and completely befuddled. Willett stood at the end of the table and looked at her as if she had just crawled out of the drain.

  “Put her in the car and I will take her to the station, Vercoe. I don’t believe a word of it. Why didn’t she tell someone earlier? The glass is broken and then that very afternoon someone monkeys around with the contents? Too much coincidence. And she didn’t mention the breakage to Dawlish last night, either.”

  “She’s just a lass,” interrupted Joe. “She was worried about getting into trouble. I’m sure she didn’t mean—”

  “Arrest her, Vercoe,” Willett interrupted, livid about being the last to know about the decanters. He was not in a mood to go softly now. “I’ll question her properly later. I am going to look over Mrs Evans’ bedroom first, then I’ll drive back to the station. Put the girl in the back. I shan’t be long.”

  He marched into the hall, where he saw Alistair waiting and misread his face.

  “Anything else I should know about, Mr Carr?”

  Alistair was boiling over with rage, but forbore to let it show. Losing his temper with this man was not going to lead anywhere good.

  “I don’t think that Florence had anything to do with Mrs Evans’ death,” he began. “I don’t believe for a moment that Mrs Evans was the intended victim. It makes no sense.”

  Willett listened, unconcerned. “She’s a mess, that girl,” he said coldly. “Unable to answer a straight question. And despite your instincts, Mr Carr, I think this is more straightforward than you are making out. I was asking around about Mrs Evans. Ran the household until very recently, she did, and had a reputation for knowing her own mind. The girl admitted that she got the rough side of Mrs Evans’ tongue on more than one occasion, and was thinking about moving on before Mrs Creed took over. They’ve had a fair number of maids go through here in the last couple of years by all accounts. I think that this one snapped. Easy enough to get hold of strychnine if you know about it. There was some right here, in fact, in the scullery.”

  “I would not have thought that poisoning Mrs Evans would be the first thing Florence would think of,” protested Alistair. “She’s not a stupid girl. There are a limited number of people who would have access to that decanter. She would know that anyone based in the house would fall under suspicion.”

  “You prefer someone else as murderer, do you?” Willett asked, curious despite his assurance.

  Alistair shook his head. “I really don’t know, Inspector. I am not going to jump to conclusions. There is something odd going on here, and I believe that Mrs Creed may well have been the intended victim.”

  At this, Willett clucked. “Well, that may be, but I’m not going to risk leaving that girl in the house until we find out. She had the best opportunity, and whatever you may say, she had a motive. I am arresting her now. If nothing else, it means she cannot attack Mrs Creed again.”

  Without looking to see Alistair’s reaction, he turned and walked upstairs, realising as he did so that he did not know where Fancy’s room was. Alistair was tempted to make the other man climb off his high horse and ask for help, but was curious himself to see Fancy’s room and instead offered to show him the way. Willett thanked him curtly and they walked swiftly upstairs and took a left turn. The door at the end of the passage gave onto a small square sitting room, very comfortably furnished. It had windows on two sides, curtained in elaborate tapestry, and a good-sized fireplace that had been lit recently, judging by the large heap of ash in the grate.

  Willett was looking around, but again he had not said anything about Alistair leaving, so he took advantage of the fact and kept quiet, following the policeman and looking eagerly around in his wake. It was very much as he had envisaged her room being, although he had not realised that she had taken another room as sitting room to herself as well. The furniture was very good, the upholstery lush, with plenty of cushions and what he privately considered flummery. Her bedroom led off to one side, and she shared a bathroom with an unoccupied guest room, so effectively had it to herself most of the time. The door to the other room was bolted shut from the inside.

  He walked back into the sitting room and realised that amid all the bibelots and fancy touches, there were few photographs. And of those few, only one appeared to be of the twins. They were still young in it, captured sitting either side of a middle-aged man, handsome and beaming at the camera, an arm round each child. The same man featured in the other photographs, all with Fancy herself and showing them in best bib and tucker. In none of them did her smile reach her eyes. The sight was chilling.

  He thought for a moment of his own mother. Lady Moira Carr was not averse to luxury, he admitted that, having had to listen recently to his elder brother expostulating on the subject of her bills. But her bedroom at home was cluttered with pictures of her children, her dogs, and her horses. Even when travelling, she kept in her dressing case a folding frame with various pictures of her children, both solo and together. She never went anywhere without it.

  Thinking of his mother, infuriating though she could be, reminded him that the occupant of these particular rooms would never return to them, and was lying on a marble slab, awaiting the pathologist’s scalpel and jars. The most he could do for her now was discover the truth behind her death. He was not sure that Inspector Willett was the man to do so. They walked back downstairs together, and he saw from the set of the policeman’s jaw that any further argument was pointless. The clock chimed two and Willett turned to give a sharp, complacent look to his companion, who was sorely tempted to punch him squarely on the nose.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Carr,” he said, and walked out to his car. Joe Vercoe was out there already, waiting beside his bicycle, Florence already in the back seat, dry-eyed and angry now at her treatment, but too stunned to do anything but obey orders.

  Alistair found Adrien with Bob Cundy in the study. The library was now open for use again, yet no one had chosen to go back into the library. Alistair told them what had happened with Florence. Adrien groaned and slumped in his chair.

  “He must be wrong,” he said. “I can’t believe that child had anything to do with it. If this is connected with what happened to Juliana, well, Florence wasn’t even here.”

  Bob agreed.

  “He’s a fool, but he’s in charge,” he said. “It is unfortunate that she broke the glass yesterday of all days.”

  Alistair agreed, and Adrien chimed in.

  “I am hoping that he will realise upon further thought that he is wrong, and release her. If not, then I will get Andrew Fenton to suggest a lawyer for her.”

  They all fell silent at the thought of the girl. Alistair hoped she would be strong enough to cope. She had definitely been angry enough, and despite the tears that had flowed, he suspected her of being tougher than her youth suggested. He thought she would be fine. But he had to work out a way of having her released.

  Juliana appeared, en route from the kitchen, where she had been consoling Ada and making plans with Jinty Fennell. She was furious at Willett’s arrest of the maid, and at the tone he had taken with her during her interview with him.

  “Joe Vercoe is such a nice man,” she raged, “but that inspector is horrid. He sneers so, even when he is being polite.”

  Bob gave a half-smile at her fury. “I get jumpy just being near him,” he agreed.

  “Frankly, I think everyone concerned is jumpy,” she said. “I can barely sit still today.”

  “With any luck we can convince the inspector that she is innocent,” said Alistair. “Although truthfully, at the moment I am not sure how.”

  Juliana prowled a little more, the
n turned to the men.

  “I wonder why Simon didn’t turn up today,” she said. “I kept thinking he’d come and at least check on Jamie.”

  “I told him to keep out of the way today,” said Bob. “Too much going on here. I said he can come and see Jamie tomorrow.”

  She nodded. “I’m going upstairs to check on the twins,” she announced. “Since we missed lunch, thanks to the inspector’s interviews, we’ll have tea early. It will be ready in half an hour. And we’ll take it in the library. That man said we didn’t need to keep it shut any more. I’m damned if I’m going to be chased out, which is what will happen if we don’t go back in right away.”

  She stalked out of the room, angry now instead of tearful, and nearly fell over Damaris, who was standing directly outside.

  “I’m sorry, Didi. I hope I didn’t hurt you,” she began, but Damaris shook off her hand and stepped back.

  “Don’t fuss, Juliana! Why does everyone fuss so!” she snapped, then turned away, but not before Juliana had seen the look on the girl’s face.

  She mentioned it over tea. Nothing much was being eaten, but they sat anyway, at Juliana’s insistence, in the library. Neither of the twins had appeared, so it was just Adrien, Juliana and Alistair. The chairs had been moved around, and a table placed over the place Fancy had lain. Juliana sat in Fancy’s chair, her back ramrod straight, and poured tea. Alistair approved but forbore from saying so.

  “No one else coming down?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Jamie is feeling a little better, but has a bad headache, so I gave him some aspirin. Didi says she doesn’t want tea.”

  She paused here. “She was downstairs earlier. She was acting oddly,” she said, stirring her cup with more force than was necessary.