‘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.’
‘I have enjoyed our little chat, Mrs Plack,’ said Dame Beatrice, observing that the cook was about to become loquacious, ‘and I am grateful for your co-operation.’ She wondered whether to suggest that ‘Dame Beatrice’ was, in the present instance, a preferable nominative of address to ‘Your ladyship’, but felt that this correction would damage Mrs Plack’s amour propre without serving any useful purpose, so she took graceful leave of the cook, went back to the mistress of the house to thank her and then returned to her car and so to The Smugglers’ Inn.
‘Any luck?’ enquired Laura.
‘I forgot to tell you that while I was in London I checked Miss Aysgarth’s alibi. The cook at Headlands, although she is not aware of the fact, confirmed it.’
‘How come?’
‘Only one pot of horseradish sauce was made at a time, so a person who has an alibi for the Friday to the Sunday morning of the murder cannot be a suspect, since the switching of the jars would have had to be done between those times and, in Miss Aysgarth’s case, those times are accounted for by a number of unbiased London witnesses.’
‘Oh, well, I suppose it’s a help to get even one person removed from the list. It still leaves far too many on it, though, wouldn’t you say? I mean, if you take this music student out, you’re still left with Mrs Porthcawl, Miss Bute, the Lunns and the cook and the present kitchenmaid, apart from the families at Seawards and Campions. We’ve got to find a way of narrowing it down, it seems to me. You know, heretical though this may sound, I reckon the police may have got the right pig by the ear, after all.’
‘Stranger things have happened than that the police should have acted with acumen,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but we have to remember the cross-currents in this affair. Neither Campions nor Seawards seem to have visited Headlands without a definite invitation, but our researches have established that there was a liaison between Miss Bute and Mr Bosse-Leyden, and another between Mr Garnet Porthcawl and Mrs Bosse-Leyden. As for Miss Aysgarth, I have no doubt that she was in the habit of visiting both houses. She had a horse at her disposal whenever she was at home. Gossip and an exchange of news and views are inevitable under such circumstances and little would go on at any of the three houses of which the inhabitants of the other two had no knowledge.’
‘Including that Margaret Denham had been sacked for insolence?’
‘Including that, yes.’
Chapter 15
A List of Suspects
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‘Yes,’ Dame Beatrice went on, ‘neither Miss Aysgarth nor Miss Bute needed to ask for the use of Mrs Leyden’s car and chauffeur when either of them wanted to visit the other members of Mrs Leyden’s family. I think it is possible, as there is a third horse, that Mattie Lunn may have accompanied Miss Aysgarth occasionally, but I do not imagine that Miss Bute ever welcomed an escort of that kind.’
‘Class distinctions rearing their ugly head?’
‘Not altogether.’
‘Oh, of course Fiona Bute would have ridden over to see Rupert Bosse-Leyden when his wife wasn’t likely to be at home.’
‘Far more likely that she rode over to his office, I think, or met him by previous arrangement on his walks.’
‘What happened in bad weather, then? She’d have needed the car when it was wet.’
‘Or else she did not go.’
‘Don’t you think she ever went to visit the Porthcawl man and the Leeks, then?’