Mingled With Venom (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Your relative died of food poisoning, I gather. No wonder your cook is upset.”

  “It was the horseradish sauce, you see, or so the analyst says. The whole thing is a complete mystery. Mrs. Plack has been making it for years and there has never been anything wrong with it before.”

  “Did nobody else experience any ill-effects?”

  “That is what has made the police and the doctors so suspicious.” Bluebell led the way into the house and they took chairs in a small sitting-room from which a very young woman edged out as soon as they had entered. “That was Ruby Pabbay, an orphan who was my grandmother’s protégée,” Bluebell explained. “She was in London studying to become a singer when grandmother died, but, of course, we sent for her.”

  “You were about to tell me what makes the police and the doctors—one of them is the police surgeon and the other the family’s medical adviser, I imagine—so suspicious.”

  “Yes. It puts a very bad complexion on things. You see, grandmother was the only person who liked horseradish sauce. Nobody else ever touched it. This was known to the whole household.”

  “Did the servants not partake of it either?”

  “No. It was Mrs. Plack’s contention that the recipe she used was much too good for the servants’ hall. It was more than a servant’s life was worth to touch grandmother’s jar. Either they took mustard with their beef or they paid for a manufactured pot of horseradish out of their own money.”

  “I wonder whether I might have a word with Mrs. Plack?”

  “She is rather hysterical, I’m afraid.”

  “That is hardly a cause for wonderment. Have the doctors named the poison?”

  “Oh, yes. It was aconitine. They asked about liniment ABC, but there was none in the house. My mother told them that the household had never had any use for it.”

  “I believe you keep horses.”

  “There are three. The groom, Mattie Lunn, could tell you about them.”

  “Aconitine is a deadly poison for which there is no specific antidote. The only treatment is gastric lavage and that should be done without delay.”

  “Unfortunately there was delay, fatal delay. There is no doctor in the village and my grandmother’s own man lives in St. Austell. By the time Lunn came back with him grandmother was dead. According to what my mother has told me, grandmother’s symptoms came on during the meal.”

  “Yes, aconitine is a poison which acts quickly.”

  “Yes. In a few minutes after eating her plate of beef with a very liberal helping of the horseradish sauce, she complained of tingling and numbness in her mouth and a constricted throat. They thought and said that Mrs. Plack must have over-stressed the mustard in the mixture, but the other and more dreadful symptoms, stomach pains, vomiting and a sort of horrible frothy dribbling followed rapidly. Her breathing became difficult and she found she could not move her limbs and, as I said, she died, before her doctor could get here, in a state of total collapse.”

  “Yes. Will you take me to see the cook?”

  Mrs. Plack was in her kitchen superintending the kitchenmaid’s preparations for lunch.

  “For touch another bit of food in this house except what I gets for myself and my own eating, I will not,” she said, rising from her chair as the visitors came in.

  “Very reasonable,” said Dame Beatrice in her beautiful voice. “We must get this whole matter cleared up as soon as we can, so that the household may resume normal working. I expect you are tired of talking to the police—

  “Sick and silly of ’em.”

  “So I wonder whether you would do me a favour? I am attached to the Home Office. I am also a medical practitioner. This story about the horseradish is a strange one and will probably become a classic case of aconitine poisoning. It interests me very much and I should like to write it up for publication. This I cannot do without your expert help.”

  From the cook’s red-rimmed eyes and blotched countenance and the reserved air of the kitchenmaid, Dame Beatrice deduced that the latest fit of hysterics was just over.

  Mrs. Plack, who had resumed her seat at the kitchen table, sniffed in a suspicious manner and said: “I’ve talked till I’m sick and silly of talking. Police, doctors, Mrs. Porthcawl, Mr. and Mrs. Bosse-Leyden, and now you and Mrs. Leek. I’m sick and silly of it all, I tell you.”

  “You realise, I suppose,” said Dame Beatrice, changing her tone and speaking sternly, “that for your own sake—no, no more tantrums, I beg of you—that for your own sake you had better give the authorities every scrap of assistance in clearing up this dreadful business. I shall not harass you or keep you for more than a few minutes, but you must co-operate with me.”

  Mrs. Plack pushed back a lock of hair which, escaping from her cap, had been adding to the disoriented and raffish nature of her appearance and, cowed by the sharp black eyes and even sharper tones of the masterful invader, said weakly that she would be glad to do what she could.

  “Although I’m telling you, madam,” she began.

  “That you’re sick and silly of the whole business,” said Dame Beatrice. “I know and I sympathise. Let us take all that for granted. Now, Mrs. Plack, all I want from you at present is exact information on two points. How do you prepare your horseradish sauce and when was this particular consignment put into your stock-cupboard? I believe that a properly-constituted horseradish sauce will keep for some days.”

  “That’s right. It’s the vinegar in it, I suppose,” said Mrs. Plack. “Well, I don’t mind giving you my recipe. It’s in the cook book, anyway, so it isn’t no secret.”

  “Splendid. I will write it down. We shall soon have you cleared of suspicion.”

  “Suspicion? But I never—“

  “Of course you didn’t, but we have to prove it. Come, your recipe.”

  Cowed by her visitor’s uncompromising attitude, the cook said:

  Grated horseradish, four tablespoons

  Sugar, one teaspoon and salt ditto

  Pepper, half-teaspoon

  Mustard, ready made up, two teaspoons

  Vinegar, that’s guesswork for quantity

  Double cream, not whipped, three tablespoons

  “Thank you,” said Dame Beatrice. “Where does the horseradish come from?”

  “I orders it where I orders my garlic when I uses garlic. It’s the village greengrocer brings it, but it depends whether he’s got any or not. If he hadn’t got none, the mistress had to have mustard with her beef like everybody else, or the ready-made horseradish from the shop.”

  “Did you often cook joints of beef?”

  “It were the usual Sunday dinner unless we had chicken for a change, but most Sundays it was beef.”

  “And when did you make the last lot of horseradish sauce?”

  “Also, as usual, on the Friday, soon as the greengrocer called, mine being, like I say, a regular weekly order most weeks.”

  “Who usually grated the horseradish root?”

  “That be kitchenmaid’s work.”

  The kitchenmaid, who was now busying herself at the sink, looked round. “That’s right,” she said.

  “Are you familiar with the appearance and texture of horseradish?”

  “Never seen it until I come here. Only ever seen it in a jar in the supermarket.”

  “And how long have you been here?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “My last kitchenmaid,” said Mrs. Plack, “had words with Ruby and had to go.”

  “Miss Ruby would sound more in keeping, cook,” said Bluebell in a tone of gentle remonstrance. Mrs. Plack glared at her.

  “Forgetting my place for the moment, Mrs. Leek,” she said with ponderous dignity, “but call that jumped-up bit of preciousness Miss I cannot bring myself to do. She was only give the name Pabbay because the orphanage lady had just come back from a holiday in Scotland when Ruby was admitted. Ah, and there’s things I could tell you about that, if I’d a mind. I could put a name on her—”

  “Well, I
beg that you won’t,” said Bluebell hastily. “Ruby is beside the point.”

  “Not if she was the reason for the last kitchenmaid’s having left her employment here,” said Dame Beatrice. “What is your name child?” she added to the girl at the sink.

  “Sonia, madam.”

  “Well, Sonia, tell me a little more about the horseradish. Where was it put when the greengrocer left it on the Friday?”

  “In the vegetable rack with the turnips and carrots and taters and such.”

  “And you took it out and grated it?”

  “I took it out and give it her to grate,” said Mrs. Plack. “I ain’t going to have the girl blamed, not if it was ever so.”

  “That is a very handsome observation, cook. So you handed Sonia the roots, she grated them for you and then—”

  “Then I made the sauce same according to the recipe I just give you.”

  “There’s one thing you haven’t said, cook,” said the kitchenmaid deferentially.

  “Oh, and what’s that, then?” demanded Mrs. Plack.

  “You haven’t said as when the sauce was all finished and ready you tried it yourself to see was it what you called ‘up to sample,’ cook.”

  “How much of it did you eat?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “Does it matter? A cook’s entitled—”

  “Yes, of course she is. This is important in quite a different way. How much?”

  “Oh, well—”

  “It was a heaping great tablespoonful on a piece of bread,” said the kitchenmaid, “cook being partial to the cream, like what we all might be, given the chance.”

  “Hold your tongue, girl! None of your business,” said Mrs. Plack sharply.

  “It is the business of all of us,” said Dame Beatrice. “Surely you have wit enough, as this intelligent child obviously has, to realise that if you ate a heaped tablespoonful of your horseradish sauce and took no harm, it was not your horseradish sauce which caused Mrs. Leyden’s death.”

  The cook stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment; then she flung her apron over her head and rocked herself to and fro to the accompaniment and almost (Dame Beatrice thought) to the rhythm of hysterical sobbing.

  Encouraged, apparently, by Dame Beatrice’s approbation, the kitchenmaid, having regarded the cook with something which looked like an air of resignation, said calmly, “I don’t know if I should mention it, madam, but it’s quite a wonder as it wasn’t cook herself as was poisoned, instead of the missus, ain’t it?”

  At this, Mrs. Plack lowered her apron and stared round-eyed at her fellow servant.

  “Why,” she said, “that’s right, too an’ all. It could have been me, if I’d a-taken a taste of it when I usually do.”

  “You tasted your mixture as soon as you had made it, did you not?”

  “For the very first time, your ladyship, it being my custom, as Sonia knows, for all she’s been here for only three roast beef dinners, not to try the horseradish until I ladles it into a dish to go to table. I only tastes it then to make sure as the cream has kept.”

  “Why did you not do the same last Sunday?”

  “Well, we’d run out of honey on the Friday, me preferring it to the jam as does very well for the gals, so I puts the horseradish on a bit of bread as a relish for myself, Sonia and the housemaids and the parlourmaid making do with jam for their elevenses, as usual. On the Sunday we was a bit late with lunch, so missus rung down very, very peremptory, so while I dishes up I says to Sonia to spoon out the horseradish all quick, as there seems to be a tiger in missus, and to hurry up about it so as the lunch could be tooken in and missus pacified.”

  “So, if Mrs. Leyden had not been so peremptory, I suppose you would have tasted the condiment again?”

  “To see if it was still all right, the day being unusual hot, yes, I’m sure I would have.” She looked at Dame Beatrice and then buried her head in her apron once more.

  “Well,” said Bluebell, as she and Dame Beatrice left the kitchen, “Mrs. Plack undoubtedly had a lucky escape, but I’m very glad that a release from tension does not take me like that. But why on earth didn’t she tell the police that she had sampled the horseradish sauce?”

  “On her own confession, the home-made variety was taboo to the servants. I am surprised, but very glad, that she allowed the kitchenmaid to see her helping herself to it so lavishly.”

  “Of course, it doesn’t help in one way,” said Bluebell. “If it wasn’t Mrs. Plack’s horseradish sauce which killed grandmother, it was somebody else’s, and that’s going to look very bad indeed for the rest of us. We all knew that she was the only one who liked it.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Unexpected Ending to an Inquest

  As she and her escort reached the door which led from the servants’ quarters to the rest of the house, Dame Beatrice stopped. “I must return to the kitchen for a moment,” she said, “and I will go alone.”

  “You mean that now we know that a substitution for the horseradish must have been made, I can no longer be in your confidence?”

  “Let us not think of it quite like that. I may be able to explain later and there may not be anything to explain at all. There is a small matter which I overlooked just now.” She returned to the kitchen to find Mrs. Plack wiping her eyes and Sonia peeling potatoes. “Mrs. Plack,” she said, “you took the roots of horseradish out of the vegetable rack so that Sonia could grate them. Was the whole consignment grated, or were one or two roots left over?”

  “Oh, no, nothing was left, ma’am. Sonia grated all that there was.”

  “I wonder whether you would be good enough to make quite sure?”

  “I be quite sure,” said the kitchenmaid, turning round, “because I says to cook as there didn’t seem hardly enough to make the four tablespoons cook wanted, so us both had another look in the rack and there wasn’t no more, not mixed up with the other veg nor nothing.”

  “I wonder, all the same, whether you would look again?”

  The two servants looked at one another and then went over to the rack.

  “Nothing in the nature of horseradish here, my lady, Dame Beatrice,” said Mrs. Plack, when she and Sonia had emptied the rack and then replaced the vegetables. “Can’t be too careful, though, can you?”

  “Indeed not. If the poisonous root which formed the foundation of the last condiment of which your mistress partook could be mistaken once for horseradish, the same mistake might be made again.”

  “Oh, my lady, what a dreadful thought!”

  “What are the chances of anybody else entering this kitchen without being detected?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “Oh, anybody could pop in here either from inside the house or outside it,” said Mrs. Plack. “I have my afternoon rest when lunch is cleared away and Sonia, she closes the door between kitchen and scullery while her does the dishes, on account she likes a fag while she’s a-washing up and I can’t have my kitchen stinking of cigarette smoke in case missus or Mrs. Porthcawl come in, so kitchen’s empty about twenty minutes to a half-hour. Then Sonia makes a nice cuppa tea and brings it upstairs.”

  “What about outsiders?”

  “Mattie Lunn and Redruth Lunn, they’d use the side door by the pantry if they wanted anything, but they wouldn’t, knowing as I was having my afternoon rest.”

  “Did they often come into the kitchen?”

  “On and off in the morning, specially if it was my baking day. Jam tarts and such and my home-made biscuits, or perhaps a scone or two, was what they’d fancy. Wasn’t ever missed because Missus, God rest her, not being one as checked on the left-overs. Quite liberal she was, I will say that for her, and never one to ask where the rest of the pudden or the last couple of bits of cake had got to. Sonia’s put on nigh a stone since she came here, haven’t you, gal?”

  “So, not only the Lunns, but anybody else could have used the side door to come into the kitchen while you were upstairs and Sonia was in the scullery? Neither of you would have been a
ware of the fact?”

  “Not with me clattering the dishes and perhaps singing when I hadn’t got me fag on,” said Sonia. “But who ud want to come in all secret-like?”

  “Whoever changed Mrs. Plack’s horseradish condiment for a jar containing the poison.”

  “Oh, yes, of course, mum.”

  “Sonia,” said Mrs. Plack, “before you’re a day older, my gal, you throws out all them veg on to the bumby heap and you scrubs out that veg rack like as you have never scrubbed out nothing else in your life!”

  “The poison roots were never in your vegetable rack,” said Dame Beatrice. She left them to it and re-joined Bluebell, who was waiting for her.

  “You’ll come and meet the others, won’t you?” said Bluebell. “They will be together in the drawing-room. We rather tend to cluster at present.”

  “It would have to be like that, unless you were so suspicious of one another that you deemed it advisable to remain apart.”

  “Did you get what you wanted from Mrs. Plack and Sonia?”

  “Yes, more than I expected. I will not meet the rest of your family today. The time to do that will be after we get the Coroner’s verdict.”

  “Is there any chance that the jury will decide upon—will decide that the death was accidental?”

  “But it was not accidental, was it?”

  “There is only one of us who is capable of wilful murder and that person is the only one of us who could be certain that she had nothing to gain—in fact, who might have everything to lose by my grandmother’s death.”

  “Do I assume that you refer to Miss Ruby Pabbay, whose name I heard mentioned in the kitchen? Tell me more of her.”

  “Ruby was the last kitchenmaid but one. Grandmother heard her singing one day, decided that her voice was something out of the ordinary and sent her to have it trained. Ruby, of course, now puts on airs and graces and is very much disliked by the servants. She has every reason to expect that she has been left enough money to complete her training. Should this prove not to be the case and that the legatees disown her, the thing she wants most will be denied her. This, to my mind, clears her completely. In any case, she was in London.”