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Lance grinned at her. “Just as you say, Aunt Effie.”
“Humph!” Miss Ramsbottom sniffed disapprovingly. “You’ve chosen a nice time to do it. Your father got himself murdered yesterday, the house is full of police poking about everywhere, grubbing in the dustbins, even. I’ve seen them out of the window.” She paused, sniffed again, and asked: “Got your wife with you?”
“No. I left Pat in London.”
“That shows some sense. I shouldn’t bring her here if I were you. You never know what might happen.”
“To her? To Pat?”
“To anybody,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
Lance Fortescue looked at her thoughtfully.
“Got any ideas about it all, Aunt Effie?” he asked.
Miss Ramsbottom did not reply directly. “I had an inspector here yesterday asking me questions. He didn’t get much change out of me. But he wasn’t such a fool as he looked, not by a long way.” She added with some indignation: “What your grandfather would feel if he knew we had the police in the house—it’s enough to make him turn in his grave. A strict Plymouth Brother he was all his life. The fuss there was when he found out I’d been attending Church of England services in the evening! And I’m sure that was harmless enough compared to murder.”
Normally Lance would have smiled at this, but his long, dark face remained serious. He said:
“D’you know, I’m quite in the dark after having been away so long. What’s been going on here of late?”
Miss Ramsbottom raised her eyes to heaven.
“Godless doings,” she said firmly.
“Yes, yes, Aunt Effie, you would say that anyway. But what gives the police the idea that Dad was killed here, in this house?”
“Adultery is one thing and murder is another,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “I shouldn’t like to think it of her, I shouldn’t indeed.”
Lance looked alert. “Adele?” he asked.
“My lips are sealed,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
“Come on, old dear,” said Lance. “It’s a lovely phrase, but it doesn’t mean a thing. Adele had a boyfriend? Adele and the boyfriend fed him henbane in the morning tea. Is that the setup?”
“I’ll trouble you not to joke about it.”
“I wasn’t really joking, you know.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Miss Ramsbottom suddenly. “I believe that girl knows something about it.”
“Which girl?” Lance looked surprised.
“The one that sniffs,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “The one that ought to have brought me up my tea this afternoon, but didn’t. Gone out without leave, so they say. I shouldn’t wonder if she had gone to the police. Who let you in?”
“Someone called Mary Dove, I understand. Very meek and mild—but not really. Is she the one who’s gone to the police?”
“She wouldn’t go to the police,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “No—I mean that silly little parlourmaid. She’s been twitching and jumping like a rabbit all day. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ I said. ‘Have you got a guilty conscience?’ She said: ‘I never did anything—I wouldn’t do a thing like that.’ ‘I hope you wouldn’t,’ I said to her, ‘but there’s something worrying you now, isn’t there?’ Then she began to sniff and said she didn’t want to get anybody into trouble, she was sure it must be all a mistake. I said to her, I said: ‘Now, my girl, you speak the truth and shame the devil.’ That’s what I said. ‘You go to the police,’ I said, ‘and tell them anything you know, because no good ever came,’ I said, ‘of hushing up the truth, however unpleasant it is.’ Then she talked a lot of nonsense about she couldn’t go to the police, they’d never believe her and what on earth should she say? She ended up by saying anyway she didn’t know anything at all.”
“You don’t think,” Lance hesitated, “that she was just making herself important?”
“No, I don’t. I think she was scared. I think she saw something or heard something that’s given her some idea about the whole thing. It may be important, or it mayn’t be of the least consequence.”
“You don’t think she herself could’ve had a grudge against Father and—” Lance hesitated.
Miss Ramsbottom was shaking her head decidedly.
“She’s not the kind of girl your father would have taken the least notice of. No man ever will take much notice of her, poor girl. Ah, well, it’s all the better for her soul, that I dare say.”
Lance took no interest in Glady’s soul. He asked:
“You think she may have run along to the police station?”
Aunt Effie nodded vigorously.
“Yes. I think she mayn’t like to’ve said anything to them in this house in case somebody overheard her.”
Lance asked: “Do you think she may have seen someone tampering with the food?”
Aunt Effie threw him a sharp glance.
“It’s possible, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yes, I suppose so.” Then he added apologetically: “The whole thing still seems so wildly improbable. Like a detective story.”
“Percival’s wife is a hospital nurse,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
The remark seemed so unconnected with what had gone before that Lance looked at her in a puzzled fashion.
“Hospital nurses are used to handling drugs,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
Lance looked doubtful.
“This stuff—taxine—is it ever used in medicine?”
“They get it from yewberries, I gather. Children eat yewberries sometimes,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “Makes them very ill, too. I remember a case when I was a child. It made a great impression on me. I never forgot it. Things you remember come in useful sometimes.”
Lance raised his head sharply and stared at her.
“Natural affection is one thing,” said Miss Ramsbottom, “and I hope I’ve got as much of it as anyone. But I won’t stand for wickedness. Wickedness has to be destroyed.”
II
“Went off without a word to me,” said Mrs. Crump, raising her red, wrathful face from the pastry she was now rolling out on the board. “Slipped out without a word to anybody. Sly, that’s what it is. Sly! Afraid she’d be stopped, and I would have stopped her if I’d caught her! The idea! There’s the master dead, Mr. Lance coming home that hasn’t been home for years and I said to Crump, I said: ‘Day out or no day out, I know my duty. There’s not going to be cold supper tonight as is usual on a Thursday, but a proper dinner. A gentleman coming home from abroad with his wife, what was formerly married in the aristocracy, things must be properly done.’ You know me, miss, you know I take a pride in my work.”
Mary Dove, the recipient of these confidences, nodded her head gently.
“And what does Crump say?” Mrs. Crump’s voice rose angrily. “ ‘It’s my day off and I’m goin’ off,’ that’s what he says. ‘And a fig for the aristocracy,’ he says. No pride in his work, Crump hasn’t. So off he goes and I tell Gladys she’ll have to manage alone tonight. She just says: ‘All right, Mrs. Crump,’ then, when my back’s turned out she sneaks. It wasn’t her day out, anyway. Friday’s her day. How we’re going to manage now, I don’t know! Thank goodness Mr. Lance hasn’t brought his wife here with him today.”
“We shall manage, Mrs. Crump,” Mary’s voice was both soothing and authoritative, “if we just simplify the menu a little.” She outlined a few suggestions. Mrs. Crump nodded unwilling acquiescence. “I shall be able to serve that quite easily,” Mary concluded.
“You mean you’ll wait at table yourself, miss?” Mrs. Crump sounded doubtful.
“If Gladys doesn’t come back in time.”
“She won’t come back,” said Mrs. Crump. “Gallivanting off, wasting her money somewhere in the shops. She’s got a young man, you know, miss, though you wouldn’t think it to look at her. Albert his name is. Going to get married next spring, so she tells me. Don’t know what the married state’s like, these girls don’t. What I’ve been through with Crump.” She sighed, then said in an ordinary voice: “What a
bout tea, miss. Who’s going to clear it away and wash it up?”
“I’ll do that,” said Mary. “I’ll go and do it now.”
The lights had not been turned on in the drawing room though Adele Fortescue was still sitting on the sofa behind the tea tray.
“Shall I switch the lights on, Mrs. Fortescue?” Mary asked. Adele did not answer.
Mary switched on the lights and went across to the window, where she pulled the curtains across. It was only then that she turned her head and saw the face of the woman who had sagged back against the cushions. A half-eaten scone spread with honey was beside her and her tea cup was still half full. Death had come to Adele Fortescue suddenly and swiftly.
