Heirs and Graces (A Royal Spyness Mystery) (28 page)

I think we were all relieved when the luncheon gong sounded. It provided a moment of normality in an Alice-in-Wonderland world. Edwina had not been with us in the morning room, but she joined us as we made our way to the dining room. I approached her. “Did you want your grandchildren to join us for luncheon today?” I asked.

She reacted as if she had just come out of a trance. “What? Oh, yes. Please. By all means. If you’d be good enough to escort them down. I can see this nightmare has overexcited them. Not good for them to be alone too much.”

I nodded and went up the stairs to the nursery. As I opened the door, the twins and Nanny looked up at me, openmouthed.

“Oh, your ladyship,” Nanny said. “I’m so glad to see you. It was awful. The children should never have been put through something like that.”

“Like what?” I asked.

Nicholas and Katherine rushed over to me. “The police came and took away Mr. Carter,” Nick exclaimed, his eyes as wide as saucers. “They found his fingerprints on the bottle of cyanide in Uncle Cedric’s darkroom.”

“He made an awful fuss,” Katherine added. “He told the police he had helped Uncle Cedric with his photo developing, so of course his fingerprints would be on the bottles in there.”

“He started crying!” Nick exclaimed delightedly. “Can you imagine? A man, crying. Papa would have been disgusted.”

“He was shell-shocked in the war,” I said. “You have to make allowances for men who were in the trenches.”

“That would explain it, then,” Nanny said. “His mind has gone. He’s not responsible for his actions, poor soul. I always found him a nice enough man—pleasant and polite, and so patient with the children, who aren’t the easiest, let me say.”

“Us? We’re angels, Nanny,” Nick said.

“Well, I’ve come to bring you angels down to luncheon,” I said.

“Good-oh,” Nick said. “I’m awfully bored with nursery food.”

“What about Sissy?” I asked. “Is she in her room?”

“She is, poor thing,” Nanny said. “Very upset about Mr. Carter. I don’t think she’d want to be taken downstairs. Could you ask for her luncheon to be sent up on a tray?”

“Of course. And tell her I’ll come up and see her,” I said. “Come on, you two angels.”

They ran ahead of me along the hall and then down the stairs. Nick swung himself off the banister post; Kat didn’t. She was rather quiet for her. I suspected that the arrest of Mr. Carter had upset her more than her brother. Perhaps she was secretly fond of him.

By the time we entered the dining room, the news of Mr. Carter had obviously reached the rest of the household.

“Sit down, children,” Edwina said. “I understand that your tutor is being questioned by the police. Remember, in this country a man is innocent until proven guilty. You are not to come to judgment.”

“No, Grandmama,” the children muttered as they sat down, their eyes already on the food.

“See, what did I tell you?” Princess Charlotte said. “The spirits were correct all along. It wasn’t Castor, it was Carter. One of us clearly pushed the planchette to the
S
rather than the
R
. So easy to do with many fingers on it.”

“But I don’t understand,” Virginia said. “Surely the man was a tutor. Hired help. What could he possibly have to do with Cedric? He was nothing to our family.”

Edwina cleared her throat. “Actually, he was connected to us in a way,” she said stiffly. “He was at Oxford with Johnnie. Johnnie brought him here once during the holidays. He was very bright, I gathered. I rather suspect he helped Johnnie with his papers.”

“But that hardly constitutes a family connection,” Virginia said.

“He enlisted in the same regiment as Johnnie during the war,” Edwina said. “From what I’ve been told, he completely lost his nerve in the trenches. Refused to go over the top with the rest of them. Johnnie was going to have him shot for cowardice, but then Johnnie was killed that day. Then a mortar landed in the trench where Carter was being held. Apparently he was rather brave in taking care of the wounded and dying, and Johnnie was dead, so the charges against him were dropped. But maybe he felt betrayed by a man who had been his friend.”

“Still, that wouldn’t make him want to kill Cedric, surely?” Irene said frostily.

“He came to Cedric after the war—asking for help—a job, a recommendation. His nerves were completely in shreds, and Cedric couldn’t or wouldn’t help him. Then when the children needed a tutor, I remembered him and offered him the post.”

“And he repaid you by killing your son,” Charlotte snapped. “That’s gratitude for you.”

“I think we have to be charitable and believe that he was not entirely responsible for his actions,” Edwina said.

After luncheon, I took the children back to their nursery. Jack and Darcy came with me.

“Do you think Mr. Carter will be hanged?” Nick asked.

“If he is proven not to have been of sound mind, he will be committed to an insane asylum,” Darcy said.

“How awful for him.” Kat sounded near to tears, and I realized that my hunch was correct: she did have a soft spot for her tutor.

We recounted to Sissy everything that had happened, and then Jack and Darcy took the twins out to play ball. I sat with Sissy in her room, watching the four of them laughing as they chased a ball.

“I shall miss Mr. Carter,” Sissy said. “He was kind to me and he didn’t treat me as if I was soft in the head because my legs won’t work.”

“It’s very unfortunate,” I agreed. “I suppose we can’t know what goes on in the head of someone who has been badly shell-shocked.”

“I’m so glad it wasn’t Jack.” Sissy’s eyes were on him, his blonde hair blowing in the breeze as he ran ahead of Nick and Kat. “I never believed he could do a thing like that.”

“I’m glad too,” I agreed.

We sat and talked together for a while. Sissy looked up at the crunch of tires on gravel below us. “Look, Georgie,” she said. “Mr. Carter has come back.” And indeed he was being escorted back into the house by a policeman. From Nanny we learned that he was still under suspicion and was being held in his room until he was formally charged. He had requested the presence of a lawyer. When I went downstairs for tea, I noticed that the mood had improved considerably. It wasn’t one of them after all. It was a stranger, an interloper. Life could go back to normal. Even Edwina ate two cream cakes.

It was a cold, blustery evening and we pulled up chairs around the fire. Edwina brought out embroidery. As we were a household in mourning, neither cards nor music were acceptable, so we sat, watching the flames dancing up the chimney. Suddenly there was the sound of running feet upstairs. Doors slamming. Raised voices. We all looked up as a young policeman came into the room.

“We’ve called for an ambulance, Your Grace,” he said. “Mr. Carter has tried to kill himself.”

Chapter 32

Darcy was on his feet immediately and followed the constable out of the room. Edwina stood too, as if unsure whether to follow them. I wished that Darcy hadn’t gone because a disturbing thought had crept into my mind. What if Carter had not tried to kill himself? What if he was innocent and the true killer had tried to silence him?

We heard the bell as the ambulance arrived, the tramp of booted feet as Carter was carried out. Still Darcy didn’t come. Then one of the maids came up to Irene. “If you please, my lady,” she said, “but your daughter isn’t feeling well. I thought you should know.”

“My daughter?” Irene looked up. “Elisabeth is not well?”

“No, my lady. Katherine. She is vomiting, if you’ll pardon the expression, and she looks awful pale. I think you should get the doctor to her.”

“Oh, God.” Irene stood up.

“Don’t upset yourself, Irene.” Edwina reached out to her daughter. “The child has probably got herself into a state over what happened to her tutor.”

“No, Your Grace. She seems really ill,” the maid said. “Nanny is that worried.”

“Have Huxstep call the doctor immediately,” Irene said. She rushed from the room. Edwina followed her. I’d like to have gone too, but I wasn’t a family member and had no excuse to go with them. I couldn’t believe that Kat had just “got herself into a state.” It had to be more serious than that. Poor little Kat, so inquisitive, so keen to play detective. Had she found out the vital clue that pointed to the killer?

The rest of us sat there, not knowing what to do.

“The child obviously ate some food that was too rich for her,” Princess Charlotte said. “I told Edwina I thought it was a stupid idea to have the children present at the adult’s luncheon. In my day, children ate bread and milk and lightly boiled eggs for their midday meal.”

I found I was holding my breath, waiting for doom to fall. My gaze went around the room, watching the others, wondering.

I noticed that only two of the Starlings were in the room: Julian and Adrian. Simon was missing. I realized I knew nothing about him. Did he, like Carter, have connections to the family that none of us knew about? I should find Darcy. I should find Chief Inspector Fairbotham. I got up and left the Long Gallery. I stood all alone in the great, marble foyer wondering what to do first. Had they summoned a doctor? Was Fairbotham still on the premises? Where was Huxstep? I decided to go up to the nursery. They should know what I now suspected. As I made my way up the grand staircase, I was conscious of those nymphs and satyrs and Greek gods laughing down serenely at me. Suddenly they looked menacing—the fates mocking us. And then I stood, rooted to the spot. I had to grab the banister or I would have fallen down the stairs.

Greek gods. I remembered the book I had had in my nursery and the picture of Castor and Pollux, the heavenly twins, children of Zeus, in Greek mythology. Princess Charlotte and her spirits had been right after all. And I realized something else . . . Charlotte had dreamed of the cuckoo, coming into Kingsdowne, and she had dreamed of the dangerous panther among us. The black cat.

I started to run now—up the stairs, up to the second flight and along the hall to the nursery. I opened the door. Kat was lying in bed, her eyes closed, looking deathly pale. Nick was perched at the end of the bed, looking terrified. Sissy was in her chair in the corner. There was no sign of the grown-ups. Nick’s gaze fastened on me as I came in.

“She nearly died,” he said. “She was puking and puking. It was horrible.”

Kat opened her eyes. “I feel awful,” she said. “I want a drink of water.”

“Nanny’s gone to get you some barley water,” Nick said.

“What do you think happened, Katherine?” I asked. “Did you eat or drink something bad?”

“I think someone tried to poison me,” she said. “Someone mixed poison with my tea.”

“Or did you take a sip of the potion you made—the one you gave to Mr. Carter? The one you gave to your uncle Cedric?”

“Katherine!” Sissy gasped. “You didn’t. Please say it’s not true.”

“It was only an experiment.” Katherine tried to sit up. “We didn’t expect it to work. We just mixed up a drop of everything deadly that we could find and then we brushed it onto an envelope on Uncle Cedric’s desk.”

“It was Kat’s idea,” Nick said. “We never thought. . . .”

“Uncle Cedric was being so beastly to us,” Kat said. “He wouldn’t give Mummy any money. He didn’t want us in the house. He wouldn’t let us go to school, or let Sissy’s legs get better. Mummy kept crying.”

“We never wanted to kill anyone,” Nick said.

“What about Mr. Carter? You didn’t try to kill him?”

“No. I swear it wasn’t us,” Nick said. “We didn’t go anywhere near him.”

“Then he must have made the ultimate sacrifice for you,” I said. “He realized what you had done and he drank your potion.”

“I know.” Kat was crying now. “I don’t want him to die.”

“He’s gone off in an ambulance. They may be able to save him,” I said. “But it will mean that you two have to tell the truth to the police.”

“Will we go to prison?” Nick asked in a quavering little voice. “Will they hang us?”

“I’m sure they’ll take your age into account,” I said, “and the fact that you didn’t really intend to kill anybody.”

“What’s this?” Irene stood in the doorway with a glass of barley water in her hands.

“We made a potion and put it on Uncle Cedric’s envelope, Mummy. We thought he’d lick it and feel ill. We didn’t think it would kill anybody. And then when Uncle Cedric died, we were so frightened. We decided to keep quiet about it and they’d never think it was us. But Georgie worked it out . . . she’s really clever.”

Irene put down the glass, shut the door behind her and came into the room. “Who else have you told about this?”

“Nobody,” I said. And as I said it, a cold shiver went down my spine. I remembered what she had said, that time in the Long Gallery: she was the mother lion, ready to fight to protect her cubs.

“Where is this potion?” Irene asked calmly.

“In the schoolroom. It’s labeled copper sulfate. At the back of the shelf.”

“Go and get it, Nicholas.”

“But Mummy . . .”

“Do it.”

She was cold and frightening, and she was standing between me and the door.

“I’m sure any judge would understand that the children didn’t realize what they were doing,” I said.

“If they believe the children acted alone.”

The penny dropped. “You were the one who stabbed Cedric. You wanted everyone to suspect Jack.”

“Nasty, common, Australian brat,” she snapped. “How can he possibly be the rightful heir? Cedric should have adopted Nicholas. He’d be a proper heir . . . not an Australian, and certainly not a French servant.”

“But you were sound asleep. They couldn’t wake you,” I said, and then I added, “Oh, I see. You stabbed Cedric and then you took your sleeping draft that morning. No wonder you were so deeply asleep. You’d only just taken it.”

“I made up my mind to go up to town early and see our solicitor before Cedric could get in touch with him,” she said. “I wanted to find out whether he could really go ahead with this stupid adoption and how we could stop him. But I didn’t want anyone to know. I told my maid I had a migraine and she was not to wake me. I slipped out through the secret passage we used to use as children.”

“Mummy, there really is a secret passage, then!” Nick exclaimed. “We’ve been looking and looking.”

“It comes out into the folly,” I said. “Right above the glen. You saw Cedric lying there, did you?”

“He was dead,” she said. “He had a letter clutched in his hand. A letter to our solicitor. I took it. It was hard to prize it out of his dead hand. Horrible. I was going to go for help. I started back toward the house. Then I realized what a chance this was. I crept back through the bushes up to the tack room, took the knife and went back to him. But I wasn’t strong enough to stab him through that jacket, so I had to take it off. I thought everyone would believe that Jack did it.” She took the bottle that Nick was holding. “Hold her hands, children.”

“What are you going to do?” Nick asked.

“Make her drink it, of course. We’ll tell everyone that she tried to poison you. We caught her and she drank it herself.”

“No, Mummy,” Nick said.

“Don’t be stupid. This is the end of everything, don’t you see? They’ll send me to prison. They’ll take you away to some awful institution. Is that what you want? Grab her hands.”

“Let go of me,” I shouted and shook myself free. Irene was still between me and the door.

“You are not leaving this room alive,” Irene said. She looked almost insane, with eyes bulging and face distorted. “No one is going to take my children from me.” She came at me with the bottle. I backed away. Suddenly she buckled and slumped to the floor.

Sissy had thrown the clock at her head. She looked stunned at what she had done.

“I haven’t killed her, have I?” she asked.