“It is therefore incumbent upon me,” Patrick pursued, taking advantage of the heavy silence, “to make a search of this room for any means by which a fatal dose of opium could have been administered to the victim.”
Miss Ingleby found her voice, a strangled croak. “Victim? Administered?”
Ottilia cut in without compunction. “Just so. Either by himself, or by another.”
The companion’s hand lifted and the back of it hovered at her mouth in a gesture Ottilia recalled from the previous day.
“No,” she whispered. “He would not have taken his own life. I will never believe that.”
“Then we are left with the alternative,” Ottilia said ruthlessly, pushing through to confront the creature. “There is of course a third possibility.”
The woman’s eyes dilated, and her tone was wretched. “Which is?”
“An accident, Miss Ingleby,” Ottilia said, gentling her tone. “He may not have realised just how much he had taken.”
It was the least likely solution, but it served to bring the woman out of shock. She visibly pulled herself together, her dazed eyes darting about the chamber as if she thought to find some evidence to support the latter notion. Ottilia took advantage of her state.
“Will you let Doctor Hathaway make his search, ma’am?”
The woman nodded, moving in a vague fashion towards the door. Mrs Whiting, looking anxious, made to follow her. Ottilia intercepted the housekeeper, speaking in a low tone.
“Pray keep her from re-entering this room until we have done, Mrs Whiting.”
“I’ll do my best.”
She began to move, but Ottilia stayed her. “One moment, if you will. How is Tamasine today? Is she in her room?”
Mrs Whiting looked curiously at Ottilia, as if she did not understand her interest. “Hemp has taken her for a drive.”
“Ah. You wanted her out of the way while you did what was needful in here.”
“Yes, ma’am. Unpredictable, she is.”
Decidedly. Feeling a trifle disappointed, Ottilia almost let the woman go. But a thought occurred. “Mrs Whiting, I believe there is much you might add to my —” Remembering her invidious position in this house, she checked what she had been about to say and resumed smoothly, “— Doctor Hathaway’s gathering of information on Doctor Sutherland’s behalf. Would you object to talking with him in a little while?”
The woman cast a glance at Patrick, whose faintly questioning expression was bland enough to pass for one eager for new knowledge, Ottilia hoped. Then her gaze returned to Ottilia’s face, her brows drawn together.
“Miss Ingleby says it’s you who wants to know, ma’am,” she said in a tone bordering on the accusatory.
Ottilia opted for frankness as she had done with the companion, and essayed a rueful smile. “True. I have in the past had a little success in this line, and in this case I am concerned particularly for Tamasine.”
“Well, with Sir Joslin gone, so are we all,” conceded Mrs Whiting. “But I don’t see what it has to do with the manner of the master’s death.”
“It has a great deal to do with it,” Ottilia returned, delivering a body blow without compunction. “How shocking if she were to be consigned to Bedlam for murdering her guardian.” Taking instant advantage of the woman’s evident horror, she threw in a clincher. “Or even hanged, should the justices decide she was wholly responsible for her actions.”
Mrs Whiting’s features matched her name for pallor and her eyes dilated as she stared at Ottilia, opening and shutting her mouth in an ineffectual fashion that screamed her agitation. Ottilia waited, holding the woman’s eyes.
“No! No, I couldn’t let them,” she managed at length.
“You could hardly stop them.”
Mrs Whiting looked away, her breath short and unsteady. She shivered, as if the images conjured up by Ottilia’s words were too much to endure. “All right, I’ll talk.”
Ottilia ignored the gruff tone and the resentment that almost matched Miss Ingleby’s. “Thank you. We will send for you to the downstairs parlour in due time.”
Nodding dismissal, she watched the little creature waddle to the door with something less of her usual bustle.
Walking swiftly across, Francis shut the door, and Patrick let out a whistle. “Phew! What a tartar you are, my dear sister.”
She was inclined to laugh, but her spouse chose to take up the comment. “That’s nothing. She can be a deal more ruthless than that, I promise you.”
Ottilia tutted. “Do you want to know the truth of it, or don’t you?”
“I just want to know it wasn’t Giles, as you are perfectly well aware,” snapped Francis. “Can we get this over with, if you please? If we are going to search, for pity’s sake, let’s get started.”
“Let me first show Patrick what I found.” She moved to the press as she spoke, pulling open the long top drawer and searching therein. “There are packages of confections. These, you see. They have each an inscription: barley sugar, sugared almonds and the remains of humbugs.” She took them out as she spoke. “The others, however —”
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?”
&nbs
p; “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?”
The Lady Fan Series: Books 1-3 (Sapere Books Boxset Editions) Page 87