Mingled With Venom

‘Well, one of them seems to have been more favourably situated than the others for the commission of this particular crime and, psychologically, is the likeliest, except for Miss Aysgarth, to have committed it. It would be most improper of me to name names, however, when, so far, I have nothing in the way of proof.’

‘Do you want me to come with you when you go to see Mrs Porthcawl? Do you want notes to be taken?’

‘I think not. What you can do, if you will, is to talk to Mattie Lunn. She has three horses in her care, and you like horses.’

‘You think she might let me ride one of them if I did a bit of palmistry?’

‘I think it not unlikely. At any rate, the negotiations might provide a talking-point.’

‘What is it that you particularly want to know?’

‘Whether she saw anybody arrive at Headlands on the Friday or Saturday morning, anybody whom she was somewhat surprised to see.’

‘You are leaving the Sunday out of it?’

‘Yes. Mrs Leyden died at the luncheon table on Sunday. Both Mrs Plack and her kitchenmaid would have been in the kitchen until well after Sunday lunch was served. Nobody from outside would have dared to attempt to change over the jars of horseradish sauce in the presence of both of them.’

‘Oh, no, of course not. Right. I’ll get over there right away, shall I?’

‘George can take us both and drop you at the stables.’

‘Of course there are the Lunns to be considered, aren’t there? Both had easy access to the kitchen and knew how to choose their time to sneak into it, if necessary, without being spotted.’

‘Yes, and Mattie, we have to remember, was smarting under a sense of grievance owing to her somewhat summary dismissal from her employment as groom.’

‘Wonder whether I can get her to talk about that? In some ways, you know, she could be suspect Number One, don’t you think?’

‘As a possible candidate for that undesirable position, certainly she qualifies.’

Redruth and Mattie Lunn were cleaning the Headlands car. Dame Beatrice left Laura with them while she herself walked up to the house. Maria and Fiona were sitting in a room whose bay window looked out over the sea. They were sorting out skeins of embroidery silk. Maria looked sullen, Fiona bored. Both brightened up when Dame Beatrice was announced. They pushed their work aside and Maria came forward to greet her. Maria was in black and her grey hair was severely strained back from her face; Fiona wore black trousers, a white silk shirt and a flowing black tie and looked extremely attractive.

Maria seated the visitor and rang for refreshment. She then sat down and said: ‘Life at the moment is inexpressibly tiresome. Until this hateful trial is over and a verdict given, we’re stuck here literally like birds in the wilderness.’

‘But surely,’ said Dame Beatrice, glancing out of the window at grass and rocks and headlands, at sunlight, sea and sky, ‘the wilderness is paradise now?’

‘We want to go away,’ said Fiona, ‘to somewhere where the grass, metaphorically, is greener, although, in prosaic and actual terms, it may be scorched and brown. We are for sunny Spain and on to Sicily and Greece as soon as it’s possible to leave.’

‘Surely the police would not prevent your going?’

‘Oh, no. It’s just that, well—’ she glanced at Maria, who nodded and looked sombre again—‘well, naturally we’ve talked and talked about madre’s death, and we simply can’t believe that that poor wretched girl is guilty.’

‘You see,’ said Maria, ‘we argue that, if Margaret wanted to be revenged on anybody, it would have been on young Pabbay—I mean young Aysgarth. She was the one who complained and got the girl dismissed.’

‘Besides,’ said Fiona, ‘it all seems so elaborate and, well, really, rather deviously clever. The method chosen, I mean. Perhaps you don’t know this, Dame Beatrice, but madre used to take chances on cliff-paths and the sort of scrambling about that wasn’t at all the kind of thing one would advise a woman of seventy-five to do. What is more, she claimed that, not so long ago, somebody gave her a push over the edge of the cliff.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Maria. ‘Anybody who really meant business would have pushed a lot harder. I don’t think she really believed it herself, because she didn’t give up the walks. Still, even if she only stumbled and lost her footing, it proved that the walks weren’t suitable for her.’

‘The point is,’ said Fiona, ‘that, to our way of thinking, the vile plan which was used to kill madre was too subtle and elaborate for the girl to have thought up. It was also a plan no kitchenmaid would have dared to carry out.’

‘Because of your cook?’

‘Exactly. Mrs Plack can be quite kindhearted, but she can also be a dragon to her kitchenmaids, and if she thought one of them had monkeyed about with her sacred horseradish sauce the girl’s life wouldn’t have been worth living.’

‘Of course, the girl was not actually under Mrs Plack’s domination at the time, but it is a point which ought to be considered,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘By the way, I notice that you, Miss Bute, always refer to Mrs Leyden as madre. She wasn’t a Spaniard, was she?’

‘Oh, no. You see, I was very fond of her because she had always been so good to me, but I didn’t feel I could call her mother, as Maria, of course, was entitled to do, so I chose the Spanish equivalent. She was so pleased with it that when Antonia was given what one might call family status, Mrs Leyden liked to be called the abuela, the grandmother. Her Christian name actually was Romula. Her father had wanted a boy to be called Romulus, after the founder of Rome, so when a daughter turned up he altered the name as little as he could.’

‘That is most interesting,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘So many of your family’s names are both interesting and picturesque.’ She tried them over, as though to herself. ‘Romula, Maria, Fiona, Diana, Rupert, Bluebell, Parsifal,