“No, I haven’t. That’s why I’m asking you if you know why she’s been snubbed.”
“Lady Purfleet has not said that Mrs Manning is snubbed and if you were to ask her outright, she’d deny it. Can’t you see how manipulative she is? By her manner and her subtlety she has conveyed what she wants to convey, for whatever purpose, and you have swallowed it but in a way that can cast no aspersions back onto Lady Purfleet.” Grace’s voice was rising. “I cannot stand the woman but she is like a snake – an oiled snake! One can never get a firm grip on her.”
Robert stepped in to prevent it descending into an argument and returned the conversation to its original topic. He said, patiently, “This William Wiseman is a very solid, decent sort of man. He’s an art dealer too but he’s not quite as successful as Nettles. I would say – I think most people say, actually – that this is because Wiseman is honourable, upright and honest whereas Nettles has a more flexible approach to morality, as I’ve made quite plain to you.”
“I see. And there is no love lost between these men?” Adelia asked.
“Absolutely none.”
“But all the papers are saying the other man at the house was William Wiseman and they had been actually dining together.”
“Was it Wiseman that we saw last night?” Theodore asked. “The man who staggered out, ill?”
“Now that it is suggested to me, yes, perhaps it was. I did not recognise him then because I was not expecting to see him, of course, and there was quite a distance between us, and an awful lot of other things going on. But yet. The slightly ruffled hair, the whiskers around his face like a grumpy old dog, the portliness – I believe it probably was Wiseman. Do the papers say what actually happened?”
Charlotte had her finger hovering over the print, trying to avoid getting the ink on her skin. “The men were dining and Nettles was taken suddenly and violently ill. He rose to his feet but immediately collapsed. Mr Wiseman called for help and the servants flooded into the room – well, that’s strange. Why were there no servants in the room to help serve at the meal?”
“Strange indeed. They must have been having a very private conversation. Or the reporter is not entirely accurate. It has been known.”
“It goes on. As help was arranged for Mr Nettles, Mr Wiseman began to feel ill. He experienced stomach cramps, nausea and palpitations. He became very hot and felt as if he were going to faint. There is a lot of description here but I don’t imagine they are his own words. The journalist has got rather flowery. Anyway, the upshot is that Mr Nettles was taken off to the mortuary and Mr Wiseman off to the hospital, and the police are investigating the food at the meal.”
“Poisoning!” said Theodore, clapping his hands together with glee.
Adelia shot him a dark look. “Darling, no. Is it not more likely that they have both consumed rotten food?”
“That’s a possibility,” Theodore said. “You know, the milk I put in my tea yesterday was decidedly iffy. I’ll wager half of it had never been near a cow.”
“And that is why I put lemon in my tea if I can get it, not milk,” Adelia replied with disdain. But he had a point about the milk. City food was certainly different to what they were able to get in the country. She’d caught him earlier with the blade of his penknife in some water, checking for the presence of copper. She knew exactly where the water came from and didn’t think that copper impurities were the contaminants that he ought to be worried about.
Robert was glancing at some of the newspapers. He said, “So we don’t think that Mr Wiseman has tried to poison Mr Nettles?”
“It’s a possibility, if as you say they were great enemies. But the fact they were dining together suggests they might have been planning a truce or even a partnership, and they must have been discussing secret matters to have dismissed the servants from waiting upon them.” Theodore paced the room, and Adelia could almost see his mind working. “And if Wiseman wanted to make it appear to be an accidental poisoning then naturally he would ingest just a little of the contaminated food himself. But that is terribly risky. I wonder what they ate? Nettles is a widower, is he not?”
“He is,” said Grace. “His wife was a lovely thing, but terribly frail. Wasted on him. Yes, I knew the chap myself at a distance, but didn’t care for him one bit. Far too strident. He had views, and one doesn’t do to have views too loudly. They had no children. Well, they had about seven but all of them died and the last one took her with it. So that was the end of that and he’s been on his own ever since.”
“Marvellous,” said Theodore, making them all wince with his obliviousness to the insensitive remark. “That means the house is empty right now.”
“Hardly,” said Adelia with a repressed roll of her eyes. “It will be full of servants.”
“In that case,” Theodore replied, “I should be grateful if you’d come with me.”
“And do what?”
“Be a wonderful distraction,” he said, grinning. “It is something you do very well.”
Charlotte wrinkled her nose in distaste and Robert bent his head, but Adelia was sure he hid a smile.
She accepted her husband’s hand and with a mixture of misgiving and excitement, they went to dress in suitable clothes for a wintry walk out to the house of the late Mr Digby Nettles.
“WE ARE NOT THE ONLY ones come to stare,” Adelia said as they got near to the house. The day was cool but not bitterly so, due to the low cloud and hints of fog in the air. Everything smelled of coal fires with the
