Gillespie and I (24 page)

This was puzzling news, indeed. Only three of us had suffered stomach pains and biliousness: Annie, Peden, and myself. Annie had sampled almost everything on the table, not during the party—although she had nibbled at a few savouries—but while she had been cooking. The only items that she had overlooked were the black bun and the cake that I had brought as a gift for the family. I myself had eaten only three things: a single vol-au-vent, a dark sliver of black bun, and a slice of the cake. Thus, between us, we had partaken of every dish, but neither of us had eaten exactly the same thing. It made sense, therefore (as I told Annie, the next day, when she called at my lodgings to see how I fared), to rule out the food, and turn our attention, instead, to the drinks.

‘I tried some hot ale,' I told her. ‘Perhaps the eggs were bad? But then Ned would have been ill. I had a glass of punch. And we had a cup of tea, didn't we, just before Elspeth arrived?'

Annie was pale, and anxious, but otherwise seemed unscathed by her night of retching. ‘I had more tea, later,' she said. ‘Apart from that, all I had was punch.'

I thought for a moment. ‘Well, it can't be the tea.'

‘Walter drank the punch—in fact, that was all he drank.'

We looked at each other.

‘And the oranges?' I asked. ‘How did they look when you cut them up?'

‘They looked fine,' said Annie, perhaps a little tetchy.

‘Where did you get them?'

‘McLure, the grocer, but there was nothing wrong with them.'

‘Do you think it could have been the cinnamon?'

‘It looked perfectly fine to me.'

In fact, as we were soon to discover, the contamination had come neither from the oranges, nor from the spices—and nor was it accidental.

When Annie returned to Stanley Street, a little later, at about midday, she found Jessie still engaged in tidying and cleaning. Due to the chaos resulting from our outbreak of illness, most of the housework had been left overnight. Jessie had finished washing the dishes, and was attempting, once more, to scrub out the stains from the parlour rug. Annie retrieved the wine-soaked oranges and spices from the rubbish, but although she turned them over with a spoon, and peered at them, she did not really know what she was looking for and, detecting no visible signs of rot or mould, concluded that whatever had caused us to be ill must be invisible to the naked eye. Thereafter (as she told me, later), she went upstairs. The children had gone across the road to number 14, with Ned, and she had decided to take advantage of their absence by tidying their bedrooms, a task that was always much better accomplished when they were not there to interrupt.

She began with Rose's room and then moved across the landing to Sibyl's, and it was here that she made an unfortunate discovery. Amongst the clothing that lay scattered around the floor, she found Sibyl's apron, which usually hung in the kitchen. Sibyl had worn this garment the previous day. As Annie picked it up, she noticed a slight bulge in the front pocket. The first thought that crossed her mind was that Sibyl had, yet again, stolen the kitchen matches, something that always filled her with a mixture of irritation and woe. Sighing, she reached inside the apron and pulled out—not the expected ‘Bryant & May's' but a crumpled ball of card. When smoothed out, this was revealed to be a small packet of stuff that was, in those days, often sold for the purpose of killing rats and mice. The packet was empty, with only a small amount of blue-black poison dust caught in the creases. Here and there, mysterious dark blotches stained the cardboard and label.

According to Annie, her initial reaction was one of confusion because, in the first place, she never bought such products. The apartments in number 11, along with the rest of the buildings in the area, did suffer from an infestation of mice, a particular breed of tiny, dark-furred creatures, most of them no bigger than a puff of sooty thistledown; if one sat very quietly, these little rodents could sometimes be seen darting about the floor and pouncing at crumbs. Annie was of the opinion that it was pointless to try to eliminate them, because they would only return in their dozens, and her policy, by and large, was one of peaceful co-existence. Thus, she found herself wondering where the empty packet might have come from, before remembering that, on the previous afternoon, the children had spent some time at Mrs Calthrop's. Convinced that this must have been where it came into Sibyl's possession, Annie made her way downstairs, intending to call on her neighbour and make enquiries.

Passing through the hall, she noticed the clean punch bowl sitting on a chair, where Jessie must have left it. Annie made a mental note to tidy the bowl away and, by her account, it was only at this precise moment—as her gaze returned to the crumpled packet in her hand—that a terrible thought occurred to her, and she stopped short. So busy had she been, speculating where Sibyl might have acquired the rodent poison, that she had not even made any connection between its presence in the child's pocket and the events of the previous evening.

Of a sudden, Annie realised that her legs were trembling, weak as straw, so much so that she had to step into the parlour and sit down. For a moment, she remained there, in a stunned silence, glancing around the room. On the walls, in several places, were lighter patches on the paper, where she had scrubbed away those nasty little drawings. There, in a corner, was Rose's toy horse, which the child had refused to play with, ever since it had been scorched, so mysteriously. Atop the piano, lay some embroidery that Annie had been obliged to begin again from scratch, after her first efforts had been discovered, ripped to shreds. All this, she took in, with a kind of sick, dull aching in her chest, before staring again at the empty packet in her lap. Later, she told me that she knew then, beyond question, what had made us so ill on the previous night, and who, exactly, was to blame.

Poor Annie! To come to such a realisation, as a mother, must have been horrible indeed. I believe that she may have shed a few tears, albeit quietly, since Jessie was within earshot. (Of course, since I was not present that afternoon, I cannot claim to know exactly what Annie did or thought or felt, but she told me about it, subsequently, in great detail, and I hope to give here a fair and accurate representation of what took place.) Eventually, she dried her eyes, and instead of calling on Mrs Calthrop, she donned her coat, slipped the empty packet into her pocket, and hurried across the road to number 14, the home of her mother-in-law.

There, Elspeth's maid Jean answered the door. The mistress, apparently, had gone on a prison visit to Duke Street, but Ned and the children were in the parlour, with Mabel. Typically, Sibyl was in a sulk, and only scowled at her mother when she appeared at the threshold. Annie called to Jean, who was about to return to the kitchen, and asked her to watch over the girls, for a while, downstairs. Sibyl and Rose liked to play in the basement, which had much to explore, since it contained several intriguing cupboards and presses, the larder and kitchen, and bedrooms: not only Jean's, but that of Mabel and the departed Kenneth. Rose trotted off happily, holding the maid's hand, while Sibyl slipped out of the room in their wake, looking shifty and miserable. Once they had gone, Annie closed the parlour door and, taking the poison from her pocket, she showed it to Ned and his sister, explaining where she had found it, and what she thought it meant.

Her husband's initial reaction was, of course, one of disbelief. He told Annie that she was talking ‘damned rot', that such a thing was unthinkable. He poked the packet, which she had set down on the sewing table.

‘She must have found it outside,' he insisted. ‘Out in the back court or somewhere. She probably realised it was dangerous, and put it in her pocket, to stop the other children getting it.'

Up until this point, Mabel had remained silent, but now she picked up the cardboard packet and, giving it one glance, remarked: ‘This is our poison.'

‘What?' said Ned, startled.

‘I bought it myself, last summer,' Mabel continued. ‘D'you not remember? The mice were worse than ever, so Jean and I mixed this stuff with molasses, and spread it on bread, and put it down all over the basement where they'd eat it. But we kept finding dead mice in the bedroom jugs—poison makes them thirsty—and Jean had a heart attack every time she found another one bobbing around in the sink. In the end, we gave up, but we kept the packet in the press, next to the kitchen. At least, that's where it was last time I saw it. There was only a wee drop of powder left in it.'

‘That stuff could be anybody's,' said Ned. ‘They sell it everywhere.'

Mabel gave one of her scoffing little laughs. ‘They do indeed, but I know this packet well. Those stains are where Jean kept dropping the molasses. And the label was ripped in the exact same place. It's our poison, Ned, no doubt about it.'

‘So—' said Annie, hesitantly. ‘Perhaps Sibyl, at some point, in the past few days, put this in her pocket, and brought it over to our house … and then…?'

‘What?' Ned laughed. ‘Poured it in the punch—to murder us?'

Mabel looked doubtful. ‘Mind you, I think I saw it in the press a few days ago, and I'm not sure Sibyl's been over here since then.'

‘But all of us that had that punch got sick,' said Annie. ‘Now this turns up in Sibyl's apron. You know what she's like, Ned…'

‘That's enough,' he said. ‘I don't want this mentioned again, and not to Sibyl. We can't blame her—she's done nothing wrong. Throw that packet out, and let's speak of it no more. There must have been something the matter with the damned wine, that's all. It's gut-rot anyway: I don't know how you drink it.'

His wife bristled. ‘I used a very good wine.'

Ned got to his feet, glancing at the clock. ‘Well, I should be getting back…'

Annie felt a twinge of irritation: this was typical, that he would leave the room rather than discuss something that he had no desire to face.

Mabel piped up: ‘You must admit, it is rather a coincidence.' She widened her eyes at her brother, to drive home her point.

However, he simply ignored her and turned to his wife. ‘Are you coming?'

Annie exchanged a final, despairing glance with her sister-in-law, and then, slipping the poison back into her pocket, she followed Ned into the hall. He called to the children, who came running upstairs, and they all trooped back across the street, with Ned striding out in front, so that it was impossible to have a conversation.

The 1st of January is, traditionally, a day of rest in Scotland, and families tend to spend it visiting relatives and friends, or passing the time together, companionably, at home. Annie was hurt, therefore, upon their return, when Ned went straight up to his studio, announcing his intention to put in a few hours of work before dark. This left her alone, with the children, since Jessie had the afternoon off, to visit her family.

Given her suspicions, Annie could not help but feel wary of Sibyl, whose sulky mood had not abated. The child moped around the place, squabbling with Rose and, from time to time, casting doleful looks at her mother. In due course, by way of experiment, Annie waited until the girls had run next door to the dining room, and then, with trembling fingers, she placed the packet of poison in the middle of the parlour floor. When the children returned, Annie pretended to hem a frock, whilst watching out of the corner of her eye, but Sibyl went straight to her doll, failing to notice the poison. Instead, Rose saw it, and would have grabbed it, had Annie not snatched the box out of reach. Only then did Sibyl's interest perk up.

‘What's that?' she asked.

Annie peered, with ostentatious bewilderment, at the cardboard packet.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘What do you think it is, dear?'

The child lowered her chin, and made a face, one that she pulled with increasing frequency, a look that Annie interpreted to me, in words, as: ‘You may think I'm stupid, mother—but, in fact, it is you who are the stupid one.'

‘How am I supposed to know?' said Sibyl.

She peered at the packet, her eyes gleaming. Annie—frightened of the few grains of poison that it still contained—threw it onto the fire, and was relieved to see it blacken at the edges, then curl up and burst into flames. She wondered what to make of Sibyl's reaction: the child had not seemed to recognise the poison, but was this just another instance of her mendacity?

Of course, it was not long before Ned's mother heard about what Annie had found in Sibyl's apron pocket: Mabel told her the story as soon as she returned home, that evening. Evidently, Elspeth had no problem in believing that her granddaughter was capable of putting something nasty in the punch. When I met her and Mabel, a few days later, at Godenzi's, the widow Gillespie was all of a twitteration, adamant that Sibyl must be ‘dealt with', once and for all.

‘Something must be done!' she kept saying. ‘First, my newsletters, then Ned's painting—now this! Heavens—we won't be able to drink a cup of tea without worrying whether it might be our lest!'

Mabel's opinion was that a physician should be brought in to look at Sibyl.

‘If she did poison that punch then our lives could be in danger, Harriet. What we need is some professional man who deals with this sort of thing—Dr Oswald, for instance.' As it happened, Oswald worked at the Royal Lunatic Asylum in Kelvinside, and his wife had long been a member of the congregation of Elspeth's church. ‘He seems a reasonable man,' Mabel continued. ‘I'm sure he could take an informal look at Sibyl, and give us his opinion.'

I must say, I tended to agree with her, but Ned's mother simply shifted about in her seat, looking irritable, and when I asked her what she thought should be done, she gave a shrug of her shoulders, and muttered something about ‘more drastic measures' being required. Assuming that she merely meant some form of punishment for the child, I gave little thought to what she had said, until a week or so later, when I learned, from Mabel, that her mother and Annie had fallen out. Apparently, the Reverend Johnson had heard of Sibyl's latest exploit, and had offered to perform an exorcism upon the child. Although Elspeth's church did not condone such practices—sensibly viewing them as questionable and unorthodox—Elspeth had advised Annie to consider the suggestion, since the pastor was very experienced in such matters, having conducted several exorcisms in America.