Mingled With Venom

‘Gone to Truro, has he?’

‘No, botanising for this new book of his. Sometimes I wish he’d fall into a quarry and break his neck.’

‘Or over the cliffs like my grandmother,’ said Garnet, dealing with his cookery in an expert manner. He began to laugh. ‘The old fraud,’ he concluded.

‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Diana.

‘What I said to Gamaliel yesterday. She was no more pushed over the cliff than I was. She lost her footing and tumbled down, that’s all, but she made up that story to forestall criticism. My mother and Fiona are always warning her against taking these cliff walks on her own.’

‘But Garnet, I think she was pushed.’

‘Oh, well, all right, if you think so.’

‘Garnet, I don’t just think. I know.’

‘Don’t tell me you got behind her and did the pushing, because I shan’t believe you.’

‘Maybe not, but what would you say if I told you that the same thing happened to me?’

‘What! You’re joking!’

‘All right. Is this a joke?’ She came up to the stove and spread out the palms of her hands almost under his nose. They were badly lacerated. ‘Gorse prickles,’ she said. ‘I was lucky enough to grab a bush as I went over the edge. I’d gone out with the dogs to give them a run and I had knelt down to look at Beethoven’s paw, because he was limping, when somebody gave me a dirty great shove in the back and sent me flying.’

‘Good Lord! Did you see anybody?’

‘No. The dogs set up hell, of course, and the next thing I knew was that I’d fetched up clutching this gorsebush.’

‘But nobody would push you over a cliff.’

‘The fact remains that somebody did.’

‘One of the dogs lurched against you and you imagined the rest.’

‘I hope your eggs and bacon choke you!’

‘Oh, well, they’re ready. Where’s the toast?’

‘There isn’t any. You’ll have to make do with bread.’

‘That cliff-path ought to be patrolled. There must be some kind of maniac about, unless—’

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless somebody with a grudge wants to murder somebody in our family.’

‘Why pick on me and your grandmother?’

‘Somebody knows something about her Will and possibly the same person knows about you and me.’

‘The only person who cares anything about our relationship is your grandmother herself. At least, that is what I suppose. Oh, no, she isn’t, though! What about the black boy? He resents our relationship, I’ll bet, and he thinks, after the way he greased round her at that dinner party, that he stands to gain something when she dies.’

‘Don’t talk such utter nonsense! Gamaliel doesn’t have any expectations at all.’

‘Yes, he does—well, most likely he does. At the dinner party Mrs Leyden promised that she would have him taught to ride and made a tremendous fuss of him.’

‘Gamaliel’s a good kid, one of the best.’

‘That’s what you think. You and Parsifal have your occupations and Blue has her painting. How much do any of you really keep tabs on that boy? I tell you, Garnet, you have no idea what goes on in his mind, no idea at all.’

Remembering a recent conversation with Gamaliel—‘A bad man, perhaps, but with his ideas I have sympathy’— Garnet began to wonder whether she was right. What did he know of what went on in Gamaliel’s mind?

Chapter 6

The Smugglers’ Inn

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With becoming modesty the hotel called itself The Smugglers’ Inn. It was the kind of place which attracts the same visitors year after year. It was expensive, but not ruinously so, children were not encouraged and dogs were barred. It was a family business and Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley had visited it at various times over the years and had known the proprietors, grandfather, father and son, for more than half a century. Old John Poltrethy had been dead for the last twenty years, his son Paul had retired and bought the house opposite the hotel, and the Smugglers’ was now in the possession of young Trevelyan Poltrethy, known to his constant and appreciative guests as Trev.

The original inn and the much larger annexe, which had a private bathroom to every bedroom, were separate buildings; but by an ingenious use of a passage made between the cellars of both, the lounge, the bar, the dining-