Mingled With Venom

‘Even if he hadn’t a-been, it would be a waste of time to expect that one to notice anything. When he ent out with the car he’s got his head stuck inside the bonnet saying his prayers to the engine. He wouldn’t notice the Archangel Gabriel unless the Archangel Gabriel stuck a flaming sword into his petrol tank. It’s no good depending on him to tell you anything.’

‘Come and introduce me to the kitchen staff,’ said Laura. ‘I want to talk to the cook.’

In the kitchen the elevenses were over and the bread and jam for the maids and Mrs Plack’s private pot of honey had been cleared away and the plates and cups washed up. Laura, introduced by Mattie as ‘the lady who goes with Dame Beatrice’, was received with cautious respect and offered a chair. Mattie, at a nod from Laura, retired, and Laura stated her errand.

‘Who delivers the cream for my horseradish?’ said Mrs Plack, her air of dignity increasing. ‘If you mean what I think you mean, madam, there’s no reason to suppose as there was anything wrong with the cream. It comes along with the milk of a Friday morning and comes from Trewiddick in Polyarn, as has been passed down from father to son in three generations, to my certain knowledge.’

‘I’m sure there was nothing wrong with the cream. I just wondered where it came from, that’s all.’

‘Likewise the milk’, went on Mrs Plack, determined to make her point clear. ‘All the years I been here, never a complaint against Trewiddick’s never a one. Every afternoon Sonia makes a nice cup of tea and brings it up to my room and we has it together, me being democratic and my kitchenmaids being more like my daughters, if you follow me, and then Sonia reads me off to sleep with a nice book without it’s her afternoon off, which is a Thursday.’

‘A Thursday?’

‘That’s right, a Thursday. As for the others, the parlourmaid, as ranks next to me, she retires to her own room likewise. The housemaids, being sisters, shares a room and either goes along to it to put their feet up, as they are entitled to do, having worked hard and faithful all morning, or else they takes the air and has a bit of a walk. Drawing-room tea is at half-past four, tooken in by the parlourmaid if it ent her afternoon off, and our own tea is at five, ready to clear the table in the drawing-room at half-past five, and never no complaints about the milk.’

‘So if somebody slipped into your kitchen on a Thursday, it would be just as easy to do so undetected as it seems to have been on the Friday, when your freshly-made horseradish sauce was exchanged for the poisoned jar.’

‘I don’t see what Thursday has to do with it, madam.’

‘Neither do I, except that Mattie Lunn mentioned it.’

She returned to Mattie.

‘What about that Thursday?’ she demanded. ‘You said you could tell me nothing about the Friday and Saturday, and you gave your reasons. What made you think of the Thursday?’

‘Because somebody, though not exactly a stranger, come over that day, as I remember telling the police. Not but what he’d a perfect right to visit here, being family.’

‘Did he sneak in by the side door?’

‘Course not. A gentleman wouldn’t do that. He goed up bold to the front door, Mr Leek did, as was usual with him now and again.’

‘Mr Leek? Was he alone?’

‘Being as his wife and her brother and the young blackamoor was off to London in your old lady’s car (or so my mates at the pub told me) of course he was alone. He come up to me and asks if anybody was at home, as he was on his own and at a loose end. I telled him I think as Mrs Leyden and Mrs Porthcawl are in, to the best of my knowledge, so up he goes to the front door and in he’s tooken and must have had tea with ’em, I reckon, because it was near enough half-past five when he come out. Looked very pleased with himself, too, I thought, for all that he’d got a seven-mile tramp to get back to Seawards and spend the night on his own. But there! He’s always odd man out over to Seawards.’

‘Looked pleased with himself, did he?’

‘As usual, when he come away with some of the old lady’s money, which I reckon he did, because young Pabbay once told me that was the way of it.’

‘This wasn’t his first visit on his own, then?’

‘Oh, he didn’t come very often. Missus wouldn’t have stood for that. But servants hear a good bit, one way and another, and Redruth hears things in the car, there not being any screen between him and the passengers, and the old mistress not always guarded in her words when she talked to Mrs Porthcawl or Miss Fiona. The parlourmaid used to hear bits, too. Seemed that Mr Leek used to come cap in hand when the rates or the electricity or sommat expensive was due, and the old lady—she liked to play bountiful at times—she’d give him enough to foot the bill, whatever it was, and tell him it was to keep the wolf from Mrs Leek’s door and not for any love of him.’

‘So Mr Leek had reason to be grateful to Mrs Leyden?’

‘If anybody’s really grateful for charity,’ said Mattie. ‘It wouldn’t be my way, I can tell you, but, then, I wouldn’t ask for charity in the first place. Cap in hand never did fit in with my ideas.’

‘And he always came alone on these errands?’

‘Oh, yes. Mrs Leek would be far too proud to have any truck with such goings-on.’

‘She must have known he came here, though.’

‘I don’t reckon she did. Always at her painting and kind of innocent, if you know what I mean. I don’t reckon she either knew or cared what Mr Leek got up to, most of the time. He was the dreamy, wandering, helpless sort, you know. A real rabbit of a fellow he is. You’d hardly call him a man.’

‘So there’s one person who certainly did not have a grudge against Mrs Leyden,’ said Laura. ‘Anyway, for what it’s worth, the name of the dairyman who supplied milk and cream to Headlands is Trewiddick of Polyarn.’

‘You might look up his telephone number for me. We can readily establish whether he also delivers to the other two houses.’