On a Desert Shore (13 page)

Part Two

“'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself…”

—John Keats, “To the Nile,” 1818

“‘
The transitions of fortune
!' repeated he, stamping his foot with vehemence on the ground, ‘say, rather, the hellish machinations, the sordid avarice of perfidious fiends of malice!—Oh, Olivia, amiable, revered Olivia! how may you regret the day when you left your native island!—better to have been landed on a savage shore of barbarians, than to have found, as you have done, your bitterest enemies, in uncle, brother, husband! 
those
names which in the
common
lot of human life, are associated with all that is affectionate and tender!'”

—Anonymous,
The Woman of Colour: A Tale,
1808

Chapter Thirteen

On the morning after Garrod's death, the atmosphere in the hothouse was sweltering. As John Chase stood on the dais listening to the under-gardener's story, he wiped his face with his handkerchief and contemplated the withered blooms of the night-blooming cereus. In the harsh sunlight pouring through the glass ceiling, it was an ugly plant, parched and commonplace. Its rangy limbs and green-yellow stems lined with black spines spread in a zigzag pattern over the trellis.

“Show me where you found the beads,” Chase said.

The under-gardener, an old man in corduroy breeches, gaiters, and a slouched hat, displayed the glumness shared by all of Garrod's servants today, but the smile lines around his eyes and mouth suggested he was ordinarily good-humored. This man, whose name was Higgins, led Chase out a side door and around the back of the building. Opening the wooden doors, Higgins preceded him down the stairs into a space about ten by ten feet. This must be the apparatus Garrod had shown to Penelope and Lewis, thought Chase, examining the furnace, boiler, and cistern with interest.

Higgins reached a work-roughened hand toward the coal bin to the right of the furnace, but when the gardener got down on his haunches to paw at the dust on the floor, Chase snapped, “Don't touch it.” The man stared up at him, amazed.

“There may be additional evidence,” Chase explained. He knew his temper got shorter by the hour and resolved to tamp it down. He'd always believed that bullying tactics were to be used only when absolutely necessary and for limited purposes, and he had no patience for certain of the other Runners who relied on them habitually. To Chase's mind, only a stupid person needed to act the brute.

Higgins' brow cleared at this milder tone. “I take your meaning, sir.”

Chase's patient exploration of the stone floor—pacing from corner to corner, working his fingers around the sides of the boiler and cistern and methodically poking a stick through the coals—revealed nothing beyond a jumble of footprints and the fold of paper containing three red-black beads with a hole bored in each, one half-crushed bead of the same type, and about a teaspoon of loose powder, presumably derived from the crushed bead.

“You found the fold of paper next to the coal bin?”

The gardener looked down at his boots. “Aye, this morning I was tending to the plants, making sure everything was in prime condition, just what Mr. Garrod would want, poor fellow. Little dusty, says I, so I poked around in a few pots to see if the roots was wet. They rot, you know, if you water too much, so I sprinkle a dab here and there. While I was doing that, I was told to check the mechanism. Seems it hadn't been right, but not a thing the matter with it. That's when I found them beads.”

“How often do the gardeners come down here?”

“Not so often in summer. Once a day to feed the stove, maybe. More when the boiler's in use. We've been keeping it fired up hot for all the guests. Mr. Garrod did like 'em to admire the steam.” He pointed upward. “See that window there? We can check the water in the cistern from there.”

“You recognize the beads?”

“I surely do. Same as the seeds from our Jamaican wild licorice, except that these have holes.
Abrus precatorius
. We plunge them seeds into the hotbed until they take. When they grow bigger, we keep ‘em in the stove like the other tender plants. But as to how these ones got here, that I can't tell you.”

“Hotbed?”

“Let me show you, sir,” said Higgins.

Chase stored the paper and its contents in his waistcoat pocket and followed the gardener back into the hothouse. Higgins halted by a frame of tanner's bark in which seedlings grew under a glazed surface. Next he took Chase to a corner of the hothouse, where a more mature variety flourished.
Abrus precatorius
was a twining shrub that smelled of licorice and had branches rising about ten feet. Spiky purple-pink blooms studded the branches from which clusters of pods depended like so many green hands.

The gardener took a cutting tool from a pouch he wore at his waist and cut open one of the pods to reveal the now familiar red and black seeds. “See here—jequirity seeds. Pretty, ain't they, sir? The natives make them into necklaces. But they're dangerous.”

“How do you know that, Higgins?”

“Why, Mr. Garrod told me, God rest his soul, and I soon saw for myself. The seeds take too long to sprout 'less you soak them in water. We did that, but Mr. Amos—he's head gardener here—he must've had a cut on his finger when he handled the beans. Finger swelled up, then his whole hand. It was a fortnight before he could use that hand again. You don't want to be messing with this plant.”

“I've seen a bracelet made of these beads. It doesn't seem to harm the wearer.”

“You mean Miss Marina's gewgaw, don't you, sir? Safe enough, unless she smashes it and eats the powder, I warrant.”

“Where did she get it?”

“From her father, maybe.”

Chase doubted Hugo Garrod would have given his daughter an ornament that linked her to her Jamaican heritage, and his spirits sank as he digested the gardener's information. He would have to report it to Mr. Tallboys in his capacity as magistrate.

“Did you see anyone lurking around the hothouse, either before or after the party, Higgins? Someone where he shouldn't have been?”

“No, sir, I didn't.”

“Was Miss Garrod in the hothouse on the day of the party or yesterday?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Who then?”

Higgins shook his head in perplexity. “Lots of people. The ladies checking the arrangements for the party. Mr. Garrod and his guests what are staying at the house. Mr. Amos. The maids from the village. The party guests. Could have been more. I was in and out myself.”

“You saw no one interfering with the tea caddy? No one showing an interest in it?” This too Higgins denied. No help, thought Chase. If he were right that the tampering had occurred during the period when Garrod's key had gone missing, the mischief could have been accomplished quickly and easily by anyone with the key and a minute or two to act unobserved. And without a witness, bringing the crime home to the murderer would be difficult.

Chase fell silent, tapping his fingers on the edge of the tub. The beads were identical to those Penelope had collected while following Marina; they had come from the broken necklace. Who had hidden them—and when? Had this person used the boiler room as a secret place to prepare the poison? He knew what would be said. Who better to have carried out this plot than an emotionally disturbed young woman with access to the poisonous seeds? But it was the obviousness, even clumsiness, of this maneuver that made him doubt this possibility. Marina Garrod was highly intelligent. Unless there was some purpose he could not discern, or she played the kind of deep game her father had enjoyed, Chase couldn't imagine why she would leave behind evidence that was bound to be discovered when the boiler room was serviced. Finally, he said, “Could the powder from these seeds have poisoned Mr. Garrod and the others?”

“Stands to reason it could. The plant ain't so well-known to English folk. I imagine the person who left them seeds was the same as laid all those gentry-folk low.” Higgins leaned forward, his watery eyes challenging Chase, and dropped his voice. “I heard tell the master's woman in Jamaica is someone who might know a thing or two about heathen poisons. We've all been wondering, see. We knew Miss Marina's mother had been a slave, but we didn't know much else, her father not liking to speak of the matter. Still, there were…rumors.”

“What rumors?”

Higgins shrugged. “Ah, well. Like mother, like daughter, maybe? It was one of the reports that do get around. I can't rightly recall where I heard it.”

“Malicious gossip. Keep your mouth shut on that subject.”

“Oh, yes, sir. Anything to oblige.” He paused before adding irrepressibly, “It's a strange thing, though. Our young lady seems mighty interested in learning about how things grow. Full of questions, that one. Drives Mr. Amos to distraction, he wishing he could tell her to take herself off, but of course he can't. And look what she done to the roses last night. A crime, that.”

“You know about the sleepwalking?”

“I saw the damage with my own eyes. Mr. Amos was that angry about it, though the girl apologized. Said she wasn't herself and imagined she was supposed to be weeding the garden.” Higgins sniffed to show his opinion of the excuse, then added, “There was the business with Daisy too. Don't forget about that.”

“Daisy?”

“One of the kitchen maids, sir. You'd best ask her. I've no call nor wish to say an unkind word against my betters.”

Chase stroked his chin and regarded the man. “You don't much like Miss Garrod, do you? You and the rest of the servants, eh? Tell me why.”

This question appeared to mystify him. “Well,” he said in his slow, measuring way, “I suppose I like her fine. But who is she when all's said and done? I expect she'll be our mistress now, unless that's to be Mr. Honeycutt.”

It was obvious which outcome the gardener would prefer. After he had shuffled back to his work, watering can in hand, Chase sought out the kitchen maid called Daisy, a buxom young woman, about thirty years old. She wore a faded stuff gown and had a black armband tied around her upper arm, a token of respect for her master. She willingly left her work peeling potatoes to follow Chase into the kitchen yard. Arms folded, she waited, watchful eyes fixed on his face.

“I mind the day you speak of,” she said. “Miss Marina and I had words when she come down to the kitchen for a bite of gingerbread, not but what we'd have fetched it to her in the drawing room.”

“Repeat this conversation, if you would, miss.”

“You think it important? I was that upset at the time, but it's a while back. I shouldn't like to get the young lady in trouble. That would be making a noise about less than nothing.”

“You can trust me not to do that.”

She stole a glance at him from under sandy eyelashes. “You would know best, Mr. Chase, and that's a fact,” she said with faint sarcasm.

Daisy described an encounter that had begun with what was to her an innocent question or two about Marina's history. She'd merely wanted to show the girl the cordiality that Daisy felt had been denied her by the other servants, so she'd asked Marina about what it had been like to be born and live her early years on a plantation. Daisy had felt she was humoring a child, Marina seeming little more than that to her.

“What did she say to you?”

“I suppose I got what I deserved for speaking out of turn to a lady. Miss Garrod wanted me to know that the folk on that plantation had been afraid of her mother. Afraid she'd curse them, or some such rubbish. I laughed, Mr. Chase. It seemed so ridiculous to hear her talking like that in our respectable English kitchen. I think I said something of the sort, and then—” Daisy broke off, looking a little stricken, but went on after a moment without further prompting. “Why then, sir, she came right up close to me. I'll never forget what she said, all my days.
Don't be so sure it can't happen here
. That's what she said.”

Chase stared at her, appalled. That sounded like a threat. Could he be wrong, after all? What if Marina Garrod's heart had turned bitter beyond endurance and a thirst for revenge had grown in her, a revenge that had been fed by her fragile mental state and her delusions? He remembered Hugo Garrod's description of these delusions on the day he'd been hired, but the implication had been that Marina feared some kind of menace turned on her, not the other way around.

With a heavy heart, he went into the house and up the grand staircase. In the corridor, he found Aurelius Caldwell, who had called to check on his two recovering patients and assure himself that all was in readiness for Hugo Garrod's autopsy.

“A question for you, Caldwell,” Chase said. “If I meant to murder someone and wished to allay suspicion, might it be worth my while to imbibe some of the poison myself?”

“Risky, that.”

“But what if I was careful to take very little, just enough to bring on a reaction that would probably not be fatal?”

He stroked his chin. “I catch your drift, Mr. Chase, and I'll tell you that a determined or desperate person might take such a chance. After all, one could control how much was consumed and exaggerate the effects afterward. It would be hard even for a medical man to tell for certain unless the shamming were obvious. Have you a reason to lean that way?”

Choosing not to answer this question, Chase produced the unused bottle of medicine the constables had found in the rubbish, which he'd stowed in his pocket this morning. “Any idea what this is?”

“Ah,” said Caldwell, a spark of enthusiasm brightening his gaze, “if you'll allow me, I'll add it to my samples. We've a very good chemical gentleman who has a villa nearby. A friend of mine, in fact.”

He examined the bottle. Made of cylindrical green glass, it held about four ounces of liquid. Though most of the printer's label had been removed, the remnants of a decorative panel in gold, as well as the image of an urn with a sprig of greenery protruding, were still intact. A few letters of the original handwritten identification could also be seen. The surgeon uncorked the bottle and poured some of the solution from the narrow mouth into his palm.

He dabbed at the liquid with the finger of his other hand and tasted it. “Some sort of restorative tonic,” he pronounced. “Mainly ginger and Peruvian bark.” He peered again at the fragment of label. “The label ends in ‘vous.' I'll warrant it said:
Tonic for the Nervous
. No harm in that. Do you still wish me to have it tested?”

“Yes, I'll give you a sample and try to trace the purchase myself. It's not from a local druggist? You can see at the bottom part of an address for the printer who made the label.”