‘That is hardly a cause for wonderment. Have the doctors named the poison?’
‘Oh, yes. It was aconitine. They asked about liniment ABC, but there was none in the house. My mother told them that the household had never had any use for it.’
‘I believe you keep horses.’
‘There are three. The groom, Mattie Lunn, could tell you about them.’
‘Aconitine is a deadly poison for which there is no specific antidote. The only treatment is gastric lavage and that should be done without delay.’
‘Unfortunately there was delay, fatal delay. There is no doctor in the village and my grandmother’s own man lives in St Austell. By the time Lunn came back with him grandmother was dead. According to what my mother has told me, grandmother’s symptoms came on during the meal.’
‘Yes, aconitine is a poison which acts quickly.’
‘Yes. In a few minutes after eating her plate of beef with a very liberal helping of the horseradish sauce, she complained of tingling and numbness in her mouth and a constricted throat. They thought and said that Mrs Plack must have over-stressed the mustard in the mixture, but the other and more dreadful symptoms, stomach pains, vomiting and a sort of horrible frothy dribbling followed rapidly. Her breathing became difficult and she found she could not move her limbs and, as I said, she died, before her doctor could get here, in a state of total collapse.’
‘Yes. Will you take me to see the cook?’
Mrs Plack was in her kitchen superintending the kitchenmaid’s preparations for lunch.
‘For touch another bit of food in this house except what I gets for myself and my own eating, I will not,’ she said, rising from her chair as the visitors came in.
‘Very reasonable,’ said Dame Beatrice in her beautiful voice. ‘We must get this whole matter cleared up as soon as we can, so that the household may resume normal working. I expect you are tired of talking to the police—’
‘Sick and silly of ’em.’
‘So I wonder whether you would do me a favour? I am attached to the Home Office. I am also a medical practitioner. This story about the horseradish is a strange one and will probably become a classic case of aconitine poisoning. It interests me very much and I should like to write it up for publication. This I cannot do without your expert help.’
From the cook’s red-rimmed eyes and blotched countenance and the reserved air of the kitchenmaid, Dame Beatrice deduced that the latest fit of hysterics was just over.
Mrs Plack, who had resumed her seat at the kitchen table, sniffed in a suspicious manner and said: ‘I’ve talked till I’m sick and silly of talking. Police, doctors, Mrs Porthcawl, Mr and Mrs Bosse-Leyden, and now you and Mrs Leek. I’m sick and silly of it all, I tell you.’
‘You realise, I suppose,’ said Dame Beatrice, changing her tone and speaking sternly, ‘that for your own sake—no, no more tantrums, I beg of you—that for your own sake you had better give the authorities every scrap of assistance in clearing up this dreadful business. I shall not harass you or keep you for more than a few minutes, but you must co-operate with me.’
Mrs Plack pushed back a lock of hair which, escaping from her cap, had been adding to the disoriented and raffish nature of her appearance and, cowed by the sharp black eyes and even sharper tones of the masterful invader, said weakly that she would be glad to do what she could.
‘Although I’m telling you, madam,’ she began.
‘That you’re sick and silly of the whole business,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I know and I sympathise. Let us take all that for granted. Now, Mrs Plack, all I want from you at present is exact information on two points. How do you prepare your horseradish sauce and when was this particular consignment put into your stock-cupboard? I believe that a properly-constituted horseradish sauce will keep for some days.’
‘That’s right. It’s the vinegar in it, I suppose,’ said Mrs Plack. ‘Well, I don’t mind giving you my recipe. It’s in the cook book, anyway, so it isn’t no secret.’
‘Splendid. I will write it down. We shall soon have you cleared of suspicion.’
‘Suspicion? But I never—’
‘Of course you didn’t, but we have to prove it. Come, your recipe.’
Cowed by her visitor’s uncompromising attitude, the cook said:
Grated horseradish, four tablespoons
Sugar, one teaspoon and salt ditto
Pepper, half-teaspoon
Mustard, ready made up, two teaspoons
Vinegar, that’s guesswork for quantity
Double cream, not whipped, three tablespoons.
‘Thank you,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Where does the horseradish come from?’
‘I orders it where I orders my garlic when I uses garlic. It’s the village greengrocer brings it, but it depends whether he’s got any or not. If he hadn’t got none, the mistress had to have mustard with her beef like everybody else, or the ready-made horseradish from the shop.’
‘Did you often cook joints of beef?’
‘It were the usual Sunday dinner unless we had chicken for a change, but most Sundays it was beef.’
‘And when did you make the last lot of horseradish sauce?’
‘Also, as usual, on the Friday, soon as the greengrocer called, mine being, like I say, a regular weekly order most weeks.’
‘Who usually grated the horseradish root?’
‘That be kitchenmaid’s work.’
The kitchenmaid, who was now busying herself at the sink, looked round. ‘That’s right,’ she said.
‘Are you familiar with the appearance and texture of horseradish?’
‘Never seen it until I come here. Only ever seen it in a jar in the supermarket.’
‘And how long have you been here?’
‘Three weeks.’
‘My last kitchenmaid,’ said Mrs Plack, ‘had words with Ruby and had to go.’
‘Miss Ruby would sound more in keeping, cook,’ said Bluebell in a tone of gentle remonstrance. Mrs Plack glared at her.
‘Forgetting my place for the moment, Mrs Leek,’ she said with ponderous dignity, ‘but call that jumped-up bit of preciousness Miss I cannot bring myself to do. She was only give the name Pabbay because the orphanage lady had just come back from a holiday in Scotland when Ruby was admitted. Ah, and there’s things I could tell you about that, if I’d a mind. I could put a name on her—’
‘Well, I beg that you won’t,’ said Bluebell hastily. ‘Ruby is beside the point.’
‘Not if she was the reason for the last kitchenmaid’s having left her employment here,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘What is your name child?’ she added to the girl at the sink.
‘Sonia, madam.’
‘Well, Sonia, tell me a little more about the horseradish. Where was it put when the greengrocer left it on the Friday?’
‘In the vegetable rack with the turnips and carrots and taters and such.’
‘And you took it out and grated it?’
‘I took it out and give it her to grate,’ said Mrs Plack. ‘I ain’t going to have the girl blamed, not if it was ever so.’
‘That is a very handsome observation, cook. So you handed Sonia the roots, she grated them for you and then—’
‘Then I made the sauce same according to the recipe I just give you.’
‘There’s one thing you haven’t said, cook,’ said the kitchenmaid deferentially.
‘Oh, and what’s that, then?’ demanded Mrs Plack.
‘You haven’t said as when the sauce was all finished and ready you tried it yourself to see was it what you called “up to sample,” cook.’
‘How much of it did you eat?’ asked Dame Beatrice,
‘Does it matter? A cook’s entitled—’
‘Yes, of course she is. This is important in quite a different way. How much?’
‘Oh, well—’
‘It was a heaping great tablespoonful on a piece of bread,’ said the kitchenmaid, ‘cook being partial to the cream, like what we all might be, given the chance.’