Mingled With Venom

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