Murder at Teatime (12 page)

Wes drove a few feet down the road, and stopped. “Hey Howard,” he shouted, looking back out the window. “When’s that meetin’?”

“Sunday night, eight o’clock,” replied Tracey. “Town Hall.”

Gilley waved goodbye and drove off.

Tracey explained that the Board of Selectmen would be holding a public hearing on the proposal to grant the Chartwell Corporation a tax abatement for the Gilley Island development. The town would vote on the issue at a special town meeting the following week.

Tracey was saying goodbye to Charlotte outside of the Saunders’ house when he was hailed by Kitty. “The police station called,” she said. “They want you to call back right away.”

A minute later he was calling the station from the Saunders’ telephone. After listening for a few minutes, he hung up the phone with a worried frown.

“Dr. Thornhill’s passed away,” he said.

7

Thornhill’s death was a shock, but not a sudden one. Both Fran and Marion had been at his bedside. In the end, death had come as a relief. He had not gone gently into that good night. His final hours had been accompanied by convulsions, hallucinations, and finally coma.

The funeral arrangements were still uncertain, although a memorial service had been tentatively scheduled for Saturday. Fran and Marion were awaiting the arrival of Thornhill’s brother, a Boston banker, to make the final plans. The body would be cremated as Thornhill had requested, and a modest memorial, which was Marion’s idea, constructed on his beloved Ledges. Kitty had spent the previous evening helping Fran and Marion notify friends, relatives, and colleagues of the death, and was now helping Grace prepare food for the gathering that would be held at Ledge House following the service.

Charlotte sat on a stool in Stan’s studio, looking out at the cove, which shone a pale green in the morning sun, the waves lapping against the shingled beach. Her thoughts dwelled vaguely on Thornhill’s death: it was hard to believe he was gone, she mused as she watched the gulls wheel and turn and dive for crabs and periwinkles with raucous, excited cries. He had seemed so full of vitality despite his heart condition. How many of her friends and acquaintances had slipped away just as quickly? The older she got, the more tenuous the thread of life seemed to become.

By contrast with the peacefulness of the cove outside, the sea in the large canvas to which Stan was applying the finishing touches was roiled and angry. The painting depicted a big gray-green wave about to break on a cluster of jagged rocks surrounded by a swirl of white foam.

“I’ve never understood how you paint a wave,” Charlotte said. “It’s not as if a wave will stand still for you like a landscape.”

“Exactly,” replied Stan, adding a dab of brown to the tip of a gull’s wing. “Trying to copy a small detail of a wave is the biggest failing of beginners. Before they can get it down, it’s moved. The trick is to think of the detail as part of a bigger body of water.”

“Yes, but how do you teach that?” she asked, referring to the classes Stan taught in seascape painting.

“Actually, I have a new technique. John Lewis, Daria’s boyfriend, is taking photographs for me of waves breaking at different stages. The students sketch from the photographs until they they have a sense of the action. Then I try them out on the real thing.”

He handed her a stack of student sketches, which showed the stages of a breaking wave outlined in blue pigment. Charlotte leafed through them, stopping at an unusual sketch of a bizarrely shaped rock.

“Crap,” growled Stan, who was hanging over her shoulder.

“Why?”

“The whole point of a marine painting is to show the drama of the conflict between land and sea, not to show an unusual rock formation or a scenic shoreline. The viewer should have the idea that the painting could be anywhere, anytime. Universal, not specific.”

“But Stan,” she protested, “isn’t that a matter of opinion? Perhaps some people
like
paintings of scenic shorelines.”

“Now you sound just like Daria,” he complained.

“What does she say?”

“It’s not what she says, it’s what she does,” he replied, sorting through a stack of canvases leaning against a wall. “Here I am, trying to teach her how to capture the elemental battle between land and sea, and she insists on painting the sea barse-ackwards, to use the local expression.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that,” he said. “Instead of painting the land in the foreground and the sea in the background, she wants to go out in a boat and paint the sea in the foreground and the land in the background. There,” he announced, lifting a large canvas onto the easel.

It was an oil painting of the channel with the path of the Ledges, crowned by the gazebo, rising in the distance. Unlike Stan’s dark, somber paintings, Daria’s was light and airy, with subtle, abstract shapes that captured the magical enchantment Charlotte had felt upon first seeing the Ledges.

“Oh, Stan, I love it,” she said quietly.

“You women are all alike,” he groused. He stepped away from the easel. “Actually, it’s not bad,” he said, which coming from him was a compliment. “But as far as I’m concerned, it’s not marine painting, that’s all.”

Removing the painting from the easel, he carried it back to its place. “Now she wants to paint the same scene by moonlight. The next thing you know, she’ll be putting a goddam gondola in the foreground.” Returning to the easel, he paused to rotate his shoulder.

“I doubt that,” said Charlotte. “What’s wrong with your shoulder? Is your rheumatism bothering you again?”

“It’s lifting these canvases—it’s a hard angle for me. I’ll have to get Kitty to give me another dose of that monkshood.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘I’ll have to get Kitty to give me another dose of that monkshood,’” replied Stan with a puzzled look. “Why?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, sliding off her stool. “I’ve got to go up to Ledge House. You just gave me an idea.”

The door at Ledge House was answered by Marion. Charlotte remembered that Thornhill’s wife had been French, and concluded that Marion must take after her. Tall and slim, she had the long-necked elegance of a Nefertiti, with a high forehead, graceful brow, and large, Gallic nose. The prominent nose, which might have marred a face whose features were less well-proportioned, endowed Marion with an air of intelligence and authority. Her thick, wavy dark hair was cut very short and brushed stylishly away from her face. She might have been beautiful, but even allowing for the circumstances, her pale, drawn face lacked the animation that her generous features seemed to call for.

Introducing herself, Charlotte offered her condolences and her help, to which Marion responded graciously that Fran, Grace, and Kitty were providing all the help she needed. She spoke in a deep voice, made husky, Charlotte suspected, by too many cigarettes.

But Charlotte’s wasn’t purely a condolence call, as she tactfully explained. She wanted to use the library, she said, for a purpose that she would rather not take the time to explain at the moment.

Her mind too preoccupied with other matters to be curious, Marion showed her to the library and retired to the kitchen.

As Charlotte entered the library her mind was whirling.
What can kill, can cure
, Kitty had said. Stan’s comment had reminded her of the engraving of the violet-blue flower in the herbal she had looked at in the bindery. Monkshood: the plant Kitty was using to treat Stan’s rheumatism was the same plant she had seen growing in the black witches’ section of the witches’ garden. The same plant whose roots had been dug up. The same plant that had made her fingers numb.

She didn’t know what she was looking for. It was only a hunch. And an image: the body of a yellow dog floating above the glowing coals at the bottom of an iron cauldron.

She scanned the brass markers—agriculture, horticulture, landscape architecture, plant exploration, history of gardening, systematic botany, trees and fruits—until she found what she was looking for: herbs and herbals. There it was—the linen-covered box Daria had made with the title,
A Complete Herbal by Thomas Grenville
, stamped in gold on the spine. Removing it from the shelf, she leafed through the pages. The book fell open to the page with the hand-colored engraving of the tall plant with the violet-blue flowers.

She started reading: “Monkshood—also known as friar’s cap, helmet flower, grannie’s nightcap, and wolfsbane—is a native of the mountains and woods of Germany, France, and Switzerland, but since the time of Gerard, it has been cultivated for ornament.” She skipped ahead. “Many cases have been cited in which rheumatism that could not be helped by any other medication was cured with monkshood.” Which would explain Kitty’s success in treating Stan’s shoulder. She read on. And there it was—the words seeming to leap off the page:
Monkshood is the most virulent of all plant poisons
.

She sank into a chair, stunned. Laying the book down on the table, she lit a cigarette with shaking hands. After a minute, she picked it up again, her eyes skipping over the text:
The variety that is the most poisonous is the common garden variety
, Aconitum napellus.…
The chief active ingredient is the alkaloid, aconitine.… The root is the most poisonous part
. She remembered some lines from
Henry IV:
“Venom … as pure as aconitum,” the king says to the Duke of Clarence. As if there was none purer. Leaning her head back, she stared out at Jesse’s grave in the rose garden.

So her hunch had a basis in fact. Jesse might have been poisoned. Maybe by accident, maybe not. The same went for Thornhill. But by whom? Kitty immediately popped to mind, but suspecting her was absurd. She sighed. In life, one never knew what to expect: treasured friends become suspect, if only for a second, as murderers; cultured, well-mannered gentlemen (except for the cigar ashes) become suspect as thieves. It was different in the theatre: there everything was ordered, logical, continuous. Which was why she was an actress. Then again, maybe she was imagining it all. What to do now? she wondered. Talk to Kitty. Kitty could tell her more about monkshood. So could Fran, but the fewer people who knew about her suspicions, the better. Putting out her cigarette, she headed out to the kitchen.

A few minutes later, Kitty was sitting with her in the library, her eager face overflowing with curiosity.

“Kitty, do you remember telling me about treating Stan’s rheumatism with an herbal preparation? The herb was monkshood, right?”

Kitty nodded. “A tincture of the dried root.”

“Where did you get it?”

“From Fran. She keeps a stock of dried herbs on hand. Why?”

Charlotte explained about seeing the roots lying around on the ground when Kitty gave her the tour of the herb garden.

“That’s right. They were, weren’t they?”

“Do you have any idea why?”

Kitty shook her head.

“Kitty, I think Jesse might have been poisoned with monkshood.” She showed Kitty the herbal. “It says here that it’s the most virulent of plant poisons. Maybe it was an accident, maybe not.”

A frown creased Kitty’s perfect brow.

“There’s something else. Maybe I’m way off base, but I’m beginning to wonder about Thornhill. He experienced hallucinations and convulsions. I don’t think hallucinations and convulsions are normal in a death from heart disease. Maybe they are.” She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Kitty’s eyes widened. She leaned forward and gripped Charlotte’s arm. “Charlotte, Fran said he had the sensation of flying.”

“What does that mean?”

“Monkshood is the chief ingredient in the flying ointment I was telling you about. Fran talks about it in her witch lecture. The ointment causes an irregular heart rhythm; it also has hallucinatory properties. Scientists say it’s the combination of the two that produces the sensation of flying.”

“It sounds as if someone’s actually tried it,” said Charlotte.

“They have. One of the first scientists to experiment with it died of poisoning. He didn’t have the proportions right. None of the recipes in the old herbals gives instructions on proportions. The exact composition was a secret that the witches passed on from one to another.”

Charlotte sighed. This was all getting very strange. “Maybe we should find out more about monkshood poisoning,” she said. She looked up at the bookshelves. “Some of these books must have information on it.”

“I know just the one,” said Kitty. She got up and went over to the bookshelf. Picking out a thick volume, she returned with it to the table. “It’s a reference book on plant poisons,” she explained. She looked up monkshood, and began to read: “‘One of the outstanding symptoms of aconite poisoning is a feeling of severe oppression in the chest. The blood pressure is low; the respiration is slow and labored; the pulse is slow, feeble, and irregular; and extreme irregularities of the heart rhythm may be observed.’”

“That would explain why the doctors thought Thornhill was having a heart attack,” said Charlotte.

They were interrupted by a knock. Tracey peeked around the corner of the door, his baseball cap in his hand.

“Stan said I’d find you here,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Do you have a minute?”

“Of course,” said Charlotte, gesturing to a chair on the opposite side of the table. “New developments?”

Tracey said hello to Kitty and sat down. “I’d say so,” he said. “The county medical examiner is going to do a post-mortem on Dr. Thornhill. He doesn’t think the cause of death was a heart attack.” He paused, nervously twisting his cap in his hands, and then continued: “He thinks it was poison.”

“I know,” said Charlotte.

“You
know
!” Tracey stared at her.

Charlotte nodded.

“By Godfrey, news travels like greased lightning around here,” he said indignantly. He slapped his thigh with his cap, as angry as a state department official who’s been informed of a news leak. “Would you mind telling me how you found out so jeezly dad-blamed fast?”

“I didn’t find out,” said Charlotte, repressing a smile.

“Now what in the name of Sam Hill do you mean by that?”