She also went to look at the even more interesting and important Cotehele, another Tudor house, but of earlier date than Trerice, some of its walls dating from the middle of the fourteenth century, the rest added by the Edgcumbes during the reigns of Henry VII and his son.
She walked the cliff path from the Dodman and, although she did not know it at the time, passed almost under the walls of Romula Leyden’s house before she reached Nare Head, that other vast expanse of turf and sea-views, before going on to Portholland where her chauffeur George was waiting with the car.
She went to Tregony, Grampound, St Austell, Veryan with its five round houses, St Mawes and Truro and she paid a nostalgic visit to the church of St Just-in-Roseland, pausing at the lychgate near which she had left the car and taking in the luxuriantly flowering hillside with its June roses, its rhododendrons, its varied trees and its wealth of plants both cultivated and wild. Below her, at the very foot of the slope, was the church on its little creek and she made her way slowly, by narrow, steep paths, down the hill to where, as the tide was almost out, a red and white cabin cruiser was marooned on the shore. It was perfectly reflected in the shining gleam of shoal water which also reflected the church and the pines until the making tide would float the boat again and break up the still and perfect images in the restlessness of the oncoming sea.
The days passed, Laura and her companions returned to The Smugglers’ Inn, spent a couple of nights there and then, finding Dame Beatrice well and happy, Kitty and Alice returned to their homes and Laura went to London to spend a week with her husband who was on leave from New Scotland Yard.
His examinations over and his refusal to consider returning to school apparently irrevocable, Gamaliel went with Bluebell and her brother to London in Dame Beatrice’s car and, at Dame Beatrice’s expense, as she had promised, equipped himself with the gear his soul desired.
He turned up at the hotel on his return home and said, ‘Could I change in your bedroom?’ He received permission and, Dame Beatrice having been bidden to wait outside the door, he opened it when he was ready and invited her in.
When she had sufficiently admired the result of his purchases he said: ‘I must not stay long. We have had strange news, bad news. My great grandmother, my mother’s grandmother, has died and there is going to be a lot of trouble. She ate something she should not have eaten and the doctor thinks she has been poisoned. There is to be all sorts of fuss. We did not know about it until after we got back from London. We spent the night at Exeter, as you said we should, and it happened at Sunday lunchtime. There are police asking questions and there is to be an inquest. It is all very sad and very alarming.’
‘Oh, dear!’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘It is indeed.’
‘I will change back again now, if you will kindly go away. I am needed at home. Everybody is very much upset and bewildered. My aunt and uncle, Diana and Rupert, are there and Ruby has been sent for from London. Nobody is allowed to leave my great grandmother’s house until the police give permission. She was very rich. Do you think one of us poisoned her to get a share of the money more quickly?’
‘I don’t think I would mention that, if I were you,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘Oh, well, nobody can blame my mother and Garnie and me.’
The news was soon all over the hotel. George, calling, as usual, for the orders of the day next morning, reported that it was all over the village, too, and that it had been the previous evening’s only topic of conversation at the pub where he was staying.
‘A very wealthy old lady, it appears, madam,’ said George. ‘Owned a big house right out between the two headlands. Had a host of relatives by the sound of it, so no doubt some of them will come in for something pretty substantial.’
‘How did it happen?’ asked Dame Beatrice, hoping for a check on Gamaliel’s story.
‘Beyond she took poison, nobody seems to know, madam. The county police are there and there’s talk of handing the case over to New Scotland Yard as having more experience than the Cornwall men.’
‘That sounds as though a case of accident has been ruled out, otherwise the local doctor and the county police could manage. She took poison, you say. Are there any details?’
‘Nothing except that the inquest is fixed for tomorrow morning at ten, madam, and is to be held at the house itself, the village having no available accommodation otherwise.’
‘I should like to attend it. I am acquainted with certain members of the family.’
‘I will come in good time to take you to the house, madam. Where would you wish to go this morning?’
Dame Beatrice was about to reply when Trev came out from his office which was just inside the entrance. ‘A telephone call for you, Dame Beatrice.’
She went with him into his office and found that the call was from the house she and George had been discussing.
‘Speaking from Headlands,’ said the voice from the other end. ‘This is Bluebell Leek, Dame Beatrice. I am here with my mother. You will have heard, I expect, that we are in terrible trouble. Could you—would you—come here and advise us? Fiona has told us of your great reputation. It would be so good of you. The police have just left, but I am sure they will be back again with more questions about my grandmother’s death. Everything is so horrible and there is to be an inquest here tomorrow. I expect you will hate me for asking, but please, please come.’
Dame Beatrice promised, put down the telephone and went out to her car. ‘Can you find your way to that house, George?’ she asked.
‘Yes, madam. I made full enquiries before I started out this morning, just in case.’
Bluebell was awaiting the visitor at the end of the trackway which led up to the big, solitary house. ‘This is so awfully good of you,’ said she, her plain, good-tempered face flushing and tears coming into her eyes. ‘I shall not ask you to stay to lunch. You would probably suspect poison in every mouthful.’
‘Is the poison—has it been identified?’
‘Oh, yes. There doesn’t seem to be any doubt. Cook, our temperamental Mrs Plack, has given in her notice, but of course she can’t leave until the police are satisfied.’
‘Your relative died of food poisoning, I gather. No wonder your cook is upset.’
‘It was the horseradish sauce, you see, or so the analyst says. The whole thing is a complete mystery. Mrs Plack has been making it for years and there has never been anything wrong with it before.’
‘Did nobody else experience any ill-effects?’
‘That is what has made the police and the doctors so suspicious.’ Bluebell led the way into the house and they took chairs in a small sitting-room from which a very young woman edged out as soon as they had entered. ‘That was Ruby Pabbay, an orphan who was my grandmother’s protégée,’ Bluebell explained. ‘She was in London studying to become a singer when grandmother died, but, of course, we sent for her.’
‘You were about to tell me what makes the police and the doctors—one of them is the police surgeon and the other the family’s medical adviser, I imagine—so suspicious.’
‘Yes. It puts a very bad complexion on things. You see, grandmother was the only person who liked horseradish sauce. Nobody else ever touched it. This was known to the whole household.’
‘Did the servants not partake of it either?’
‘No. It was Mrs Plack’s contention that the recipe she used was much too good for the servants’ hall. It was more than a servant’s life was worth to touch grandmother’s jar. Either they took mustard with their beef or they paid for a manufactured pot of horseradish out of their own money.’
‘I wonder whether I might have a word with Mrs Plack?’
‘She is rather hysterical, I’m afraid.’