Mingled With Venom

including the fresh cream for the horseradish sauce, to Headlands and whether he also supplies Campions and Seawards.’

‘Ah!’ said Laura, looking thoughtful. ‘Clotted cream not suitable for Mrs Plack’s recipe, eh? So the murderer had to get—’

‘Exactly.’

‘I had never thought about the murder from that angle. Of course there had to be fresh, unwhipped cream for the killer to use and, unless Mrs Plack or the kitchenmaid Sonia or Mrs Porthcawl or Miss Bute is the guilty party, the fresh cream which was used for the poisoned horseradish sauce was never delivered at Headlands.’

‘I have written off the four people you mention, so give some attention to the delivery of fresh cream to the other two houses.’

‘I suppose,’ said Rupert to his wife, ‘you know it was I who pushed you over the clifff?’

‘I could hardly help knowing. Nobody else had any reason to do a thing like that. I don’t hold it against you. It was not a very vicious attack and it was done only because I happened to be there on the spot while you were doing the field-work for your book. I think it was done on impulse, wasn’t it? Besides, I had just given your grandmother a similar push. I did not intend to kill her, any more than I believe you intended to kill me.’

‘I don’t think I did intend it. I had a sudden fit of exasperation, I suppose. Did you really give Grandma Romula a shove?’

‘She has always exasperated me, the same way you and I always seem to exasperate one another. Why should you be blamed for your illegitimate birth? It has happened to the best of people, and you told me about it before we married.’

‘All the same, Diana, I did not kill her, and I didn’t intend to kill you.’

‘We both know who did kill her, don’t we?’

‘That’s only speculation, isn’t it?’

‘What can we do but speculate? I wish they had not arrested that wretched girl. She didn’t do it.’

‘It is not up to us to say anything of our suspicions. We haven’t a shred of proof.’

‘I know, but that terrifying old lady who is staying at The Smugglers’ Inn knows something, I think. I shall speak to her.’

‘Look, the family is the family, isn’t it? Do you want a convicted murderer as a member of it? Think of our children!’

‘I have thought of them. They are the only reason that we are remaining together.’

‘So we say nothing of our suspicions—for they are nothing more than that. Agreed?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well, ask yourself what proof anybody can have. Unless the guilty party chooses to confess, nobody is ever going to know the truth.’

‘Don’t be too sure of that. The truth has a diabolical way of coming to the surface. Drowned bodies do, sooner or later, and the truth has the same disconcerting habit.’

‘Well, let us help it by confessing our misdeeds, if you think fit. If we confess to pushing people over cliffs it may save us from the major charge of murder by poison.’

‘I don’t see why. How do you make that out?’

‘Well, people who would do the one would not be likely to do the other. Dame Beatrice is a psychiatrist. She will understand that.’

‘Confession is supposed to be good for the soul, so let us clear our consciences, then, if you think fit.’

When Laura reached the Lunn’s cottage, Mattie was hanging out the washing on a line rigged up behind the stables so that it could not be seen from the windows of the big house. She greeted Laura warmly and in her own fashion.

‘My, my! Look who’s here!’ she said. ‘Come for a gallop, have we? You can have what you fancy this morning, so long as it’s Emperor.’

‘You can have any colour you like, so long as it’s black,’ countered Laura in happy quotation. ‘Later on, Mattie, if I may, but first to business of another kind. I am on an errand for Dame Beatrice. She wants to know whether you spotted any visitors who came to the house, particularly to the side door, on either the Friday or the Saturday before Mrs Leyden died on the Sunday.’

‘I been asked that, time and again.’

‘So what’s the answer?’

Mattie delivered a forceful unladylike expectoration into a small gorse bush.

‘Search me,’ she said. ‘So far as I’m concerned, there ent one. I could do you Thursday, but not Friday or Saturday, the reason being that I wasn’t here neither of them days. The Friday I was in the pub from twelve till closing time and stopped on until four to give a hand with the chores, that being my way of a Friday while the landlord’s wife be carrying their first, and on the Saturday, being as I was no longer in Mrs Leyden’s service, her having sacked me because she said as Redruth could do all that needed to be done in the stables, which, of course, he can’t and never will, I took myself off to the races at Brighton. Me and my darts mates hired a couple of cars and off us went and had a good day of it out on Brighton Downs. Great it was, and I come back with a profit of six pounds fifty in me kick.’

‘Well done! Look, Mattie, would it be of any use for me to call again when your brother is at home? I know he was out with the car on one of the afternoons in question, but—’