‘Hold your tongue, girl! None of your business,’ said Mrs Plack sharply.
‘It is the business of all of us,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Surely you have wit enough, as this intelligent child obviously has, to realise that if you ate a heaped tablespoonful of your horseradish sauce and took no harm, it was not your horseradish sauce which caused Mrs Leyden’s death.’
The cook stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment; then she flung her apron over her head and rocked herself to and fro to the accompaniment and almost (Dame Beatrice thought) to the rhythm of hysterical sobbing.
Encouraged, apparently, by Dame Beatrice’s approbation, the kitchenmaid, having regarded the cook with something which looked like an air of resignation, said calmly, ‘I don’t know if I should mention it, madam, but it’s quite a wonder as it wasn’t cook herself as was poisoned, instead of the missus, ain’t it?’
At this, Mrs Plack lowered her apron and stared round-eyed at her fellow servant.’
‘Why,’ she said, ‘that’s right, too an’ all. It could have been me, if I’d a-taken a taste of it when I usually do.’
‘You tasted your mixture as soon as you had made it, did you not?’
‘For the very first time, your ladyship, it being my custom, as Sonia knows, for all she’s been here for only three roast beef dinners, not to try the horseradish until I ladles it into a dish to go to table. I only tastes it then to make sure as the cream has kept.’
‘Why did you not do the same last Sunday?’
‘Well, we’d run out of honey on the Friday, me preferring it to the jam as does very well for the gals, so I puts the horseradish on a bit of bread as a relish for myself, Sonia and the housemaids and the parlourmaid making do with jam for their elevenses, as usual. On the Sunday we was a bit late with lunch, so missus rung down very, very peremptory, so while I dishes up I says to Sonia to spoon out the horseradish all quick, as there seems to be a tiger in missus, and to hurry up about it so as the lunch could be tooken in and missus pacified.’
‘So, if Mrs Leyden had not been so peremptory, I suppose you would have tasted the condiment again?’
‘To see if it was still all right, the day being unusual hot, yes, I’m sure I would have.’ She looked at Dame Beatrice and then buried her head in her apron once more.
‘Well,’ said Bluebell, as she and Dame Beatrice left the kitchen, ‘Mrs Plack undoubtedly had a lucky escape, but I’m very glad that a release from tension does not take me like that. But why on earth didn’t she tell the police that she had sampled the horseradish sauce?’
‘On her own confession, the home-made variety was taboo to the servants. I am surprised, but very glad, that she allowed the kitchenmaid to see her helping herself to it so lavishly.’
‘Of course, it doesn’t help in one way,’ said Bluebell. ‘ll it wasn’t Mrs Plack’s horseradish sauce which killed grandmother, it was somebody else’s, and that’s going to look very bad indeed for the rest of us. We all knew that she was the only one who liked it.’
Chapter 10
Unexpected Ending to an Inquest
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As she and her escort reached the door which led from the servants’ quarters to the rest of the house, Dame Beatrice stopped. ‘I must return to the kitchen for a moment,’ she said, ‘and I will go alone.’
‘You mean that now we know that a substitution for the horseradish must have been made, I can no longer be in your confidence?’
‘Let us not think of it quite like that. I may be able to explain later and there may not be anything to explain at all. There is a small matter which I overlooked just now.’ She returned to the kitchen to find Mrs Plack wiping her eyes and Sonia peeling potatoes. ‘Mrs Plack,’ she said, ‘you took the roots of horseradish out of the vegetable rack so that Sonia could grate them. Was the whole consignment grated, or were one or two roots left over?’
‘Oh, no, nothing was left, ma’am. Sonia grated all that there was.’
‘I wonder whether you would be good enough to make quite sure?’
‘I be quite sure,’ said the kitchenmaid, turning round, ‘because I says to cook as there didn’t seem hardly enough to make the four tablespoons cook wanted, so us both had another look in the rack and there wasn’t no more, not mixed up with the other veg nor nothing.’
‘I wonder, all the same, whether you would look again?’
The two servants looked at one another and then went over to the rack.
‘Nothing in the nature of horseradish here, my lady, Dame Beatrice,’ said Mrs Plack, when she and Sonia had emptied the rack and then replaced the vegetables. ‘Can’t be too careful, though, can you?’
‘Indeed not. If the poisonous root which formed the foundation of the last condiment of which your mistress partook could be mistaken once for horseradish, the same mistake might be made again.’
‘Oh, my lady, what a dreadful thought!’
‘What are the chances of anybody else entering this kitchen without being detected?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘Oh, anybody could pop in here either from inside the house or outside it,’ said Mrs Plack. ‘I have my afternoon rest when lunch is cleared away and Sonia, she closes the door between kitchen and scullery while her does the dishes, on account she likes a fag while she’s a-washing up and I can’t have my kitchen stinking of cigarette smoke in case missus or Mrs Porthcawl come in, so kitchen’s empty about twenty minutes to a half-hour. Then Sonia makes a nice cuppa tea and brings it upstairs.’
‘What about outsiders?’
‘Mattie Lunn and Redruth Lunn, they’d use the side door by the pantry if they wanted anything, but they wouldn’t, knowing as I was having my afternoon rest.’
‘Did they often come into the kitchen?’
‘On and off in the morning, specially if it was my baking day. Jam tarts and such and my home-made biscuits, or perhaps a scone or two, was what they’d fancy. Wasn’t ever missed because Missus, God rest her, not being one as checked on the left-overs. Quite liberal she was, I will say that for her, and never one to ask where the rest of the pudden or the last couple of bits of cake had got to. Sonia’s put on nigh a stone since she came here, haven’t you, gal?’
‘So, not only the Lunns, but anybody else could have used the side door to come into the kitchen while you were upstairs and Sonia was in the scullery? Neither of you would have been aware of the fact?’
‘Not with me clattering the dishes and perhaps singing when I hadn’t got me fag on,’ said Sonia. ‘But who ud want to come in all secret-like?’
‘Whoever changed Mrs Plack’s horseradish condiment for a jar containing the poison.’
‘Oh, yes, of course, mum.’
‘Sonia,’ said Mrs Plack, ‘before you’re a day older, my gal, you throws out all them veg on to the bumby heap and you scrubs out that veg rack like as you have never scrubbed out nothing else in your life!’
‘The poison roots were never in your vegetable rack,’ said Dame Beatrice. She left them to it and re-joined Bluebell, who was waiting for her.
‘You’ll come and meet the others, won’t you?’ said Bluebell. ‘They will be together in the drawing-room. We rather tend to cluster at present.’
‘It would have to be like that, unless you were so suspicious of one another that you deemed it advisable to remain apart.’
‘Did you get what you wanted from Mrs Plack and Sonia?’
‘Yes, more than I expected. I will not meet the rest of your family today. The time to do that will be after we get the Coroner’s verdict.’
‘Is there any chance that the jury will decide upon—will decide that the death was accidental?’
‘But it was not accidental, was it?’
‘There is only one of us who is capable of wilful murder and that person is the only one of us who could be certain that she had nothing to gain—in fact, who might have everything to lose by my grandmother’s death.’