A Study In Scarlet Women (23 page)

A
very different-looking Curry House greeted Inspector Treadles upon his return. A fog had rolled in. The house drifted in and out of billows of vapor, a pale, ghostly vessel in a sea of mist.

The character of the interior had changed, too. With the beauty of the coast obscured, it did not have the same airiness and sparkle. Instead Treadles felt an intense isolation, made only more stark by the unrelenting prettiness of the décor.

Before Treadles's arrival, Sergeant MacDonald, with two local constables in tow, had made a search of the entire property. Two sources of arsenic had been found. One, located in the kitchen, had been dyed red—as required by law to prevent accidental misuse. The other, a box of white arsenic kept for killing mice, was in the storeroom.

This was more or less normal for a household of this scale and provided no immediate clues as to who might have used it. Not to mention, even though one had to sign for the purchase of white arsenic, with forethought, a would-be poisoner could always find an unscrupulous chemist some distance away and make the transaction untraceable.

For this
was
a poisoner with forethought. No arsenic had been
found in the contents of the dead man's stomach, but it had seeped into his hair and nails, indicating a long-term poisoner at work.

Then what happened? Why did the poisoner change tactics? What made it imperative that Mr. Sackville must die immediately, rather than at an indeterminate future date?

And did it have something to do with Becky Birtle having been a rather impertinent girl?

“Can you tell me something of the traffic into and out of the storeroom, Mrs. Cornish?”

They were again in her office, but the housekeeper didn't radiate as much command over her fiefdom as she had the previous time—knowing that Mr. Sackville had been murdered couldn't possibly be easy on anyone at Curry House. “The storeroom is usually locked,” she said, with determined self-possession. “Cake and biscuits are kept inside and we don't want Jenny Price getting into them. But Mr. Hodges has a key—he took cocoa and sugar for making Mr. Sackville's morning cup. Mrs. Meek, too, when she wanted a nice tureen for soup.

“And sometimes I give Tommy Dunn my key. The staff receive three meals a day and tea besides. But it's hard work he does. I don't mind him taking a few extra biscuits for himself.”

“So everyone, other than Jenny Price, goes in and out of that room.” This wasn't helpful to Treadles's investigation at all.

“That's right. There's no wine or beer in it—those are in a locked cellar. No silver either. And no one has ever taken anything they oughtn't from the storeroom. But Inspector, why are you interested in who can pinch arsenic when Mr. Sackville died of too much chloral?”

Treadles glanced down at his notes. “You didn't mention Becky Birtle. Did she have access to the storeroom?”

“From time to time I asked her to fetch something for me. But surely you can't suspect a child?”

Treadles didn't answer this question either. “The morning of Mr. Sackville's death, when you went into his room, had the curtains been opened yet?”

Mrs. Cornish blinked. “I'm sure I don't remember. There was Mr. Sackville so cold and all. I paid no mind to the curtains.”

“Had the curtains been closed, you would have needed to open them to see.”

“I don't remember anything about the curtains—they must have been open.”

She exuded respectability. It demanded nothing of Treadles's imagination to envisage her picture gracing the cover of
The Experienced English Housekeeper.
Would she lie?

And more importantly, if she lied, what was the reason? What would impel her to spare him the impression that the housemaid might have been up to no good?

“I would like to see a photograph of Becky Birtle.”

The abrupt change of subject had Mrs. Cornish reaching for her teacup. “She didn't leave behind any.”

“Tell me something of her character then.”

Mrs. Cornish added what appeared to Treadles an excessive amount of sugar to her tea. “Becky is at a . . . trying age. She thinks she's a woman full-grown and doesn't care to be told different. But she has a good heart. In a few years she ought to turn out a fine young woman.”

“When do you expect her to return to Curry House?”

“Oh, I can't tell you, Inspector. Now that her parents know Mr. Sackville was murdered, I dare say they wouldn't like for her to come back at all.”

Did Treadles hear a note of relief in Mrs. Cornish's voice? She
had reasons to be concerned for her own respectability—it would not reflect well on her, as head of the staff, if it became known that Becky Birtle had conducted herself in a questionable manner. But was that Mrs. Cornish's only worry?

“You asked earlier, Mrs. Cornish, why I'm inquiring after arsenic when Mr. Sackville died from an overdose of chloral. The answer is we have found arsenic in Mr. Sackville, indicating that someone has been poisoning him.”

Mrs. Cornish started violently. “No!”

Treadles went on. “That someone most likely had frequent access to him. Since Mr. Sackville was more or less a recluse, that limits the suspects to members of the household.”

“But—but what a horrible thought.”

“Unfortunately that is the case.”

“But he died of chloral. And no one in this house knows how to burgle two different doctors' places.”

That was the puzzling part. But Treadles had learned, in his years as a detective, that those in service were a far more diverse lot than commonly presumed. It was not unheard of for the servant hall to harbor a few who had known the shadier side of life.

“It is what every housekeeper supposes—and hopes for—that those who serve under her are a meticulously law-abiding lot. But you do not know the background of everyone here, do you?”

Reluctantly Mrs. Cornish shook her head.

“Who in this household would wish Mr. Sackville harm?”

“No one!”

“You know that is not true: Someone under this roof very much wished the master harm. You are responsible for the running of the place. You should know of any domestic tension that had the potential to mutate and fester.”

Mrs. Cornish gripped her teacup with both hands. “Sir, you
mustn't think this house was a hotbed of ill will. It was nothing of the sort.”

“It would be a thoughtless poisoner who makes his hatred widely known. Have you observed subtler signs of discontent and resentment?”

“I've never had any complaints against Mr. Sackville. Becky thought him a fine gentleman. Jenny Price adored him. Mrs. Meek is new here and she's anyway the cheerful sort, always a good word for everything and everyone.”

This did not sound to Treadles like a compliment, more the politeness of someone who could do with a bit less of that determined agreeableness.

“Tommy Dunn thought the sun rose and set on Mr. Sackville's shoulders. And Mr. Hodges . . . Mr. Hodges holds his cards close to his chest.”

Treadles raised a brow but only waited.

Mrs. Cornish took a large gulp of her tea. “I used to think that he and Mr. Sackville rubbed along just fine. But last Christmas, when Tommy Dunn had the fob from the master and couldn't stop taking out his watch to check the time, Mr. Hodges looked at him as if he were an idiot. I thought maybe he was a little jealous—Tommy Dunn had no reason to receive a gift almost as fine as the one he himself got.

“When Mrs. Meek came, she was impressed with everything. Mr. Hodges would have this stony look on his face when she and Tommy Dunn agreed on how fine the house was and what a grand gentleman the master was. One time he even got up and left the servants' hall.”

Hodges, when called in to the drawing room to answer questions, immediately repudiated Mrs. Cornish's claims. “Maybe I did roll my eyes at Tommy Dunn a few times, but only because it was bordering on unseemly, how often he showed off that watch fob. A grown man ought to know better. I left the servants' hall that day after supper
because it was about to rain and I remembered I'd left my window open a crack—I was back five minutes later. And it wasn't Tommy Dunn Mrs. Meek was talking to at that time, it was Becky Birtle.”

A thought came to Treadles. “You are sure it wasn't Miss Birtle speaking with Mr. Dunn?”

“As far as I could tell, those two had nothing to say to each other.”

This was odd. In a household full of older people, they were the only two youngsters. “Has it always been like that?”

“Not always. When Becky first arrived, she talked a good deal to Tommy Dunn. And he was helpful to her. But then it all changed. He used to stay after supper to hear us talk—never said much himself but wanted to listen, especially if we brought up places we'd been and sights we'd seen. Not long after Becky came, he stopped. Just left at the end of supper and went back to his own room.”

This fit with the supposition that Tommy Dunn had perhaps been sweet on Becky Birtle—and disappointed in his affection.

“Is there anything else you can tell us, Mr. Hodges, that might help us in our investigation?”

Hodges thought for a moment. “When I came back from my holiday for the inquest, the whisky decanter in Mr. Sackville's bedroom was gone.”

“Did you look for it?”

“I asked Mrs. Cornish. She said she'd looked all over the house and couldn't find it.”

Whisky would have been a good means of administering arsenic. In fact, anything would have been a good means of administering arsenic. It was not for nothing that arsenic had been a favorite weapon in the poisoner's arsenal. The powder was odorless and tasteless, easy to disguise in food and beverage. Not to mention, the symptoms of arsenic poisoning closely matched those of cholera—and in places where the water supply was not in question, could be blamed on gastric attacks.

“I might as well let you know, Mr. Hodges, that arsenic was found in Mr. Sackville's body.”

Hodges's hands closed into fists. He exhaled heavily a few times. “The tricks with the strychnine were ghastly enough. Arsenic, too?”

“Arsenic, too. How frequently did Mr. Sackville take his whisky?”

“Almost—” Hodges blew out another shaky breath. “Almost every day, but he never took more than a thimbleful or two.”

“On what occasions did he not take it?”

“When the weather was warm, he might ask to have a glass of wine instead. The cellar keeps the wine cool.”

“I believe I've asked you this before, but let me ask you again, Mr. Hodges. Do you know of anyone—specifically, anyone in this house—who might have wished Mr. Sackville dead?”

A muscle leaped at the corner of Hodges's jaw, but his answer was firm. “No.”

“Do you know of anyone who might have wanted him to
suffer
?”

The gastric attacks Mr. Sackville had endured in recent months were most likely not gastric attacks at all, but the effects of arsenic.

Hodges unclenched and clenched his hands again. “No, Inspector. We don't have that sort of lowlife in this house.”

Tommy Dunn echoed that opinion. “Ain't no master more generous than Mr. Sackville. And a new master mayn't even want us to work for him. Why would anyone hurt him?”

He made a valid point. For a servant to poison the master of the house was for him to endanger his own livelihood, especially in a hired house like this, with no one coming to inherit the property. The next tenant might very well bring a full complement of retainers.

Treadles asked Dunn about Mr. Hodges leaving the servants' hall while Mrs. Meek and someone else discussed the merits of the house and of the master.

“Was that you or was that Becky Birtle?”

“Must have been Becky. Don't remember nothing like that.”

“Weren't you there?”

“No. Went back to me own room after supper.”

“I understand you didn't get on with Becky Birtle.”