Mingled With Venom

another short talk with your cook?’

‘In your official capacity, do you mean?’ asked Maria. ‘I know what that is, of course, from your card.’

‘In fairness to the accused girl, the Home Office may call for a psychiatric opinion.’

‘Oh, Margaret Denham isn’t out of her mind.’

‘All murderers are out of their minds, although not necessarily in the legal sense, and it is in the legal sense that I am interested.’

‘Oh, of course. If your findings are positive, I suppose a second opinion would be called for?’

‘By “positive” I take it that you mean if I find that the girl is unfit to plead. I visited her in prison yesterday and I feel that you are right and that a defence of insanity is unlikely to be put forward.’

‘Oh, well, one wants to be fair to the girl, of course. Will you see Mrs Plack in here?’

‘She will feel more relaxed in her own surroundings, I think.’

‘Very well.’ Maria rang the bell. ‘Ask Mrs Plack to postpone what she is doing, and then come back and escort Dame Beatrice to the kitchen.’

‘Very good, madam.’ The parlourmaid returned very shortly and Dame Beatrice was soon confronting Mrs Plack, who appeared to be flustered.

‘Honoured, I’m sure, my lady,’ she said. ‘Would your ladyship take a seat? Sonia, you go over and take them bits out to the dogs and don’t come back till you see me come to the side door. Now, my lady, what can I do for you?’

‘Perhaps you will sit down, too, Mrs. Plack. I promise not to keep you long. I have come to ask you one or two more questions about this unfortunate girl Margaret Denham.’

‘As good a kitchenmaid as ever I had. Miles above that stuck-up Miss as the old mistress took up and spoilt and, of course, though Sonia’s a good girl, she hasn’t had the experience yet, though I must say she’s a willing learner and quite quick at picking up my ways.’

‘You were quite satisfied with Margaret’s work, then?’

‘Well, there’s always room for improvement in all of us, my lady, and where Margaret made her mistake was in bandying words.’

‘Perhaps she had provocation.’

‘My lady, she wasn’t the only one. You should have seen the airs and graces that jumped-up young madam tried to put on with me! But, of course, I kept my dignity, knowing my place and her being took up with by the missus. Margaret, as had been to school with her and not being an orphan as had to accept charity, she flared up and spoke out of turn.’

‘Was she a quick-tempered girl as a general rule?’

‘Not by no means. Sweet-natured and biddable I would have called her. And as to thinking she poisoned the missus, well, that you’ll never get me to believe.’

‘I have visited Margaret in prison and I was favourably impressed by her. Was this diatribe against Miss Aysgarth her only outburst of the kind?’

‘So far as I’m aware, and I’m aware of most things as goes on in my kitchen.’

‘I am sure you are, and rightly so.’

‘And if anybody says as Margaret changed over my jar for one that was full of nasty poison, well, that her didn’t, and I’ll take my oath on it.’

‘Did you make only enough to fill one jar?’

‘That’s right, a biggish jar as you could get a good-sized spoon into. Missus liked it made fresh each week, but that depended on whether I could get the horseradish. Sometimes you can’t, though I had a regular order, like I told you before. If it didn’t turn up any Friday, well, I always sent Lunn off to pick up a jar from the shop, and I used to spoon out a dollop from it and then mix in some cream. I had to buy from the shop sometimes, like I say, but when I’d jiggered it up a bit the old missus never seemed to spot the difference. That’s the beauty of something as comes a bit sharp on the tongue.’

‘So anybody could have got hold of the kind of jar you used. Did you always make your horseradish sauce on Fridays?’

‘That’s right. You has to have routine in a kitchen, else you’d be up the pole in no time.’

‘I can well believe it. Would this particular routine of the Sunday joint of beef have been generally known?’

‘That the mistress always had it? Oh, yes, anybody could have known. They all use the same butcher round here—Drago of Porthcullis it is. I don’t say everybody did know as we had beef most Sundays, but they could have knowed. That’s my meaning.’

‘And the horseradish roots?’

‘Come from Chown in the village when he got any. Anybody could have knowed that, too.’

‘And your recipe, was that a well-kept secret?’

‘Not so far as the ingreeds went, but what I always say, your ladyship, is as the secret lays in the hand which doos the mixing. Same with cakes and Christmas puddens. It’s the mixing which does it.’

‘I expect you are right. I always think the making of a pot of tea is open to similar comment. Two persons using identical blends, an equal quantity of boiling water, a warmed teapot and allowing exactly the same length of time for infusion, will produce results widely dissimilar, often to the extent that one is drinkable, the other not.’

‘Well, that would be the way of it with my horseradish sauce, your ladyship.’