way to the servants' hall.'
'But I want to know-' Kate began angrily, then stopped. She might compel Sir Charles to tell her what he was thinking, and she could certainly detain him until she could accompany him to the servants' hall. But compassion required her to talk with the vicar at once, and besides, Aunt Sabrina had entrusted her with a private message to the vicar that was not for other ears. She raised her chin with a look of sharp displeasure. 'Good day, then, Sir Charles,' she said coldly.
The vicar sank down in the chair as Sir Charles hurriedly left the room. He shook his head and dropped his face in his hands. 'Death becomes harder and harder to bear,' he murmured, more to himself than to her. 'But this one is hardest of all. Oh, my poor, dear Sabrina.'
43
'Any discriminating diner will attest to the truth of the old adage, The proof of the pudding is in the eating of it.'
Charles had no difficulty finding his way belowstairs. As he went, he brooded upon the look in Miss Ardleigh's eyes when she had spoken back to him, alternating between fire and chill, and the urgent touch of her fingers on his arm. But she had no cause to challenge him, he told himself, feeling wounded. He had withheld his idea only to keep from causing her pain. In fact, no other woman he knew would have attacked him in so headstrong a fashion when he was simply trying to spare her.
Women. They were either fragile and fainting or-viragoes. Being an American and Irish, Miss Ardleigh belonged, doubtless, in the latter category. Although he had thought it possible, before he came this afternoon…
He shook his head, perplexed. He did not know what he had thought, exactly. He had certainly not planned to develop yesterday's photographs in such haste, nor to make a special call to bring them to her today. But since the luncheon less than twenty-four hours ago, her image had imposed itself persistently upon his thoughts-her russet flyaway hair, her mouth that could be sternly sober and inviting by turns, her steady hazel-green eyes, her quick witHe quickened his pace. Well, if he had been attracted to
the woman yesterday, he was saved from fatal error by having met the spitfire today. He straightened his shoulders, recalling himself to the task at hand. Miss Ardleigh was, after all, an altogether unsuitable person for any seriousHe did not complete the thought, being distracted by the sight, in the passageway outside the servants' hall, of five people. The butler, the parlor maid, the groom, and two girls in gray stuff dresses with pinafores were leaning or sitting against the wall, arms folded, faces variously impassive, nervous, and in the case of the two girls, frightened. The cook, Charles concluded, must be with Constable Laken in the servants' hall. Constable Laken. Edward Laken. Ned. It had been years since Charles had seen him, for their lives had taken very different ways. But the name opened an album of memories as bright and clear as any photograph: the warm summer days two carefree boys had spent lazing under fragrant hayricks; swimming in the deep, cool waters of the River Stour; stalking the wild mushroom through gloomy woods below East Bergholt.
The wild mushroom. Fungi were less of an interest to Charles now than they had been when he and Ned Laken were twelve. Ned had wanted to be chief of Scotland Yard when he grew up, and Charles had planned to be the world's greatest mycologist. His juvenile ambitions along that line had been encouraged by his grandfather, a connoisseur of mushrooms who had taught him to recognize the marvelous variety to be found in the woods and fields around East Bergholt. That was a long time ago, and his grandfather was dead. But Charles still remembered what he had learned from the old man. From Kath-ryn Ardleigh's descriptions of the fatal symptoms, he had a very clear notion of what had caused the deaths of her aunts.
Charles went past the waiting group of servants, feeling their eyes on him, and into the kitchen. It was an ordinary kitchen, high-ceilinged and drafty and no doubt the devil to work in. The only light came from a high window in one wall and a fire in the fireplace. A heavy coal range stood in one corner with a simmering pot of soup at the back; on the table, covered with a cloth, were dishes for luncheon, if anyone had thought to eat it-a roast joint, a cheese, sliced tomatoes, and cucumbers. The sideboard was stacked with pots and bowls and empty of foodstuffs, with the exception of the spices that
were used in daily food preparation. Charles looked around. Where the blazes did they store the food?
He went to a door in the wall and opened it. It led through a short passageway to the outside, but off to the right was a pantry with shelves for produce, root vegetables, and the like. It smelled of onions and faintly, of something else, of damp earth and rotted wood. It was dark. Very dark.
Charles returned to the kitchen and found a candle on the mantel. He lighted it at the fire and returned to the storeroom to search the shelves, starting at the top. On the floor at the back, in a willow basket covered with a damp cloth, he found what he was looking for. He sniffed appreciatively. The earthy scene brought back the memory of walks with his grandfather through the autumn forests.
Gently, one at a time, Charles took the mushrooms out of the basket, examining each and placing it in its proper pile. Judging from the great variety, he thought, they had been collected in the woods, rather than in a mushroom house. The most numerous by far were the common field mushrooms, Agaricus campestris, whose smooth gray-white tops and pink gills had a clean, crisp look. Beside these Charles placed the horse mushrooms, which had the same rounded shape but were much larger, with grayish gills rather than pink. Next to these he piled several velvety buff-colored specimens of Lep-ista saeva, and a handful of Lepista nuda, also known as the Blue Cap-not to be eaten uncooked, but pleasantly aromatic when properly sauteed. He also found a few satiny yellow Cantharellus cibaria, which seemed to him to smell of apricots, and one large Hydnum rufescens, the wood hedgehog, not frequently collected, owing to the skill required to cook it without bitterness. But it was not until Charles reached the very bottom of the basket that he found, with almost no surprise, what he was looking for: one large and marvelously healthy specimen of Amanita phalloides. The Death Cap.
Admiring, he held the lethal toadstool in his hand for a moment, thinking what an extraordinarily beautiful specimen it was, how pearly its soft flesh, how perfect the fan of its radiating gills, how delicate the circumference of the volva that still embraced the lower stem. Such a glorious specimen, and so lethal. He wondered briefly if the other had been this
perfect-since it was his hypothesis that there had been at least one A. phalloides in the pudding.
Charles gently placed the toadstool on the table. So, then, assume that there had been two, and presume innocence. Someone who did not know his mushrooms had accidentally included two A. phalloides among the variegated assemblage of edible fungi in the basket. He frowned. That seemed doubtful, however, because of the presence of H. rufescens, which was usually collected only by a mushroom connoisseur with sufficient knowledge to ensure its proper preparation. Which led to the conclusion that the person who collected two A. phalloides did so with deadly intent. A defensible conclusion, but difficult of proof.
Or set aside for the moment the motive of the collector, and search instead the intention of the one who had prepared the deadly pudding. Given a basket of edible mushrooms which included (either by accident or design) two or more fatal fungi, the cook should have recognized and quickly discarded the intruders. Unless, of course, the cook were inexperienced or incompetent-or inspired by a deadly intent to slice it up and add it to the pudding.
Charles stood up. He shook out his handkerchief, placed in it the splendid specimen of A. phalloides, and tenderly tied the corners into a bundle, which he pocketed.
It was time to look into the preparation of the mushroom pudding.
44
