‘Whoever changed Mrs Plack’s horseradish condiment for a jar containing the poison.’
‘Oh, yes, of course, mum.’
‘Sonia,’ said Mrs Plack, ‘before you’re a day older, my gal, you throws out all them veg on to the bumby heap and you scrubs out that veg rack like as you have never scrubbed out nothing else in your life!’
‘The poison roots were never in your vegetable rack,’ said Dame Beatrice. She left them to it and re-joined Bluebell, who was waiting for her.
‘You’ll come and meet the others, won’t you?’ said Bluebell. ‘They will be together in the drawing-room. We rather tend to cluster at present.’
‘It would have to be like that, unless you were so suspicious of one another that you deemed it advisable to remain apart.’
‘Did you get what you wanted from Mrs Plack and Sonia?’
‘Yes, more than I expected. I will not meet the rest of your family today. The time to do that will be after we get the Coroner’s verdict.’
‘Is there any chance that the jury will decide upon—will decide that the death was accidental?’
‘But it was not accidental, was it?’
‘There is only one of us who is capable of wilful murder and that person is the only one of us who could be certain that she had nothing to gain—in fact, who might have everything to lose by my grandmother’s death.’
‘Do I assume that you refer to Miss Ruby Pabbay, whose name I heard mentioned in the kitchen? Tell me more of her.’
‘Ruby was the last kitchenmaid but one. Grandmother heard her singing one day, decided that her voice was something out of the ordinary and sent her to have it trained. Ruby, of course, now puts on airs and graces and is very much disliked by the servants. She has every reason to expect that she has been left enough money to complete her training. Should this prove not to be the case and that the legatees disown her, the thing she wants most will be denied her. This, to my mind, clears her completely. In any case, she was in London.’
‘So the contents of Mrs Leyden’s Will are not known?’
‘There have been hints, even threats, of course, and Ruby, so I hear from another member of the family, claims to have seen a draft of the provisions, but Ruby is such a liar that this claim can be discounted.’
‘Yet you seemed confident that, either in a positive or a negative sense, Ruby’s future is assured and you claim that—’
‘She is the very last person to wish my grandmother dead. Yes, that is so and for the reasons I have given. Shall you attend the inquest?’
‘Certainly. I assume that, although it is to be held in this house, the public will be admitted.’
‘I suppose so. We shall all be present, of course. I must say that I am dreading it.’
‘Oh, the proceedings will be formal, I imagine.’
‘What does that mean? I am quite unversed in these matters.’
‘Evidence of identification will be taken, the medical evidence will follow and the business will be adjourned, no doubt, while the police make further enquiries.’
‘But if the death
‘So much the better for you all.’
The inquest, held on the following morning in the great dining-room at Headlands, attracted a very small audience. For one thing, the house was a long way from the village and, for another, the fact that the proceedings were held in a private house deterred the more timid and respectful from attending. The coroner sat at a desk which had been imported from what had been Fiona’s little office, the police, in the person of a detective- superintendent and a sergeant, sat on hard chairs at the side of the room and, for good measure, a police constable stood in the doorway. The witnesses were in armchairs and the public, including Dame Beatrice, in the row behind them.
Next to the kitchenmaid at the end of the row of witnesses which included a grey-haired woman whom Dame Beatrice supposed was Bluebell’s mother, sat another servant who was subsequently revealed as the parlourmaid who had waited at table on the occasion under review and another young woman whom Dame Beatrice could not identify.
A man whom she took to be the family lawyer was seated in the front row next to Maria Porthcawl. The jury, looking wooden to disguise their sense of their own importance, were on chairs of varying heights and were at the side of the room opposite the superintendent and his sergeant.
The proceedings were informal and seemed unreal. It was both fitting and incongruous that they should be held in the very room in which Romula Leyden had died. The family shifted a little in their chairs as the coroner opened the inquest. He made the usual little speech and, after Maria had given evidence of the identity of the deceased, the medical evidence was taken and those who did not know it already were informed that the cause of death was poisoning by aconitine.
‘Have you formed any opinion as to how the poison came to be administered?’
‘I find that the deceased partook of a condiment made from the grated root of
‘And such a condiment would be poisonous?’
‘Highly poisonous. It is fair to add that such a root has been mistaken for horseradish.’
‘Thank you, doctor.’ The doctor, who had been standing beside the coroner to give his evidence, returned to his chair, picked up the hat and case he had left there and hurried away to get back to his morning surgery.
