C S Lewis and the Country House Murders (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 2) (6 page)

A crimson flush of outrage swept over her face, like pink icing on a bun, as she said, ‘If I can help you, sir, I certainly will. That man, or woman, or whoever it was, must be made to pay for using my cake—my beautiful cake—to kill somebody.’ Then she added so quietly that it was almost under her breath, ‘Even Mrs Worth.’

‘She was not very popular, was she?’ asked Jack, his acute hearing having picked up the last three words.’

‘Mrs Worth, you mean? No, not what you might call popular. At least not with the servants.’

Jack encouraged her to tell us more, so she continued, ‘Well . . . she was . . . there was a word I read the other day in one of them romantic novels by Rosie M. Banks. And when I read it I said myself, “Gladys,” I said, “that sums up that Mrs Worth exactly.” Now what was it? Ah yes, I remember—imperious.’

She said the word slowly, sounding out the syllables.

‘Rosie M. Banks used it to describe a cavalry officer who was always ordering people about. I had to look it up in the little dictionary I keep on my bedside table. And it describes exactly how Mrs Worth was. She spoke to servants like a master of hounds giving orders to his pack of dogs. She thought she was so far above us. But what I’ve heard is she came from quite a modest family. The only money she had she’d married. At least that’s what I’d been told.’

Jack put his hands behind his back and paced slowly around the big working table that filled the middle of that huge kitchen.

‘Now,’ he said as he paced, ‘the practical question: just how did the poison get into the slice of cake eaten by Mrs Worth? And only that one slice of cake, without a trace in any in the rest of the cake?’

Mrs Buckingham folded her arms across her ample chest and drew herself up to her full diminutive height as she replied, ‘That did not happen in this kitchen, sir.’

‘Are you quite sure?’ I asked.

‘Positively certain,’ said the cook firmly. ‘I prepared it. I put it in the oven. I took it out myself. No one else even so much as touched it.’

‘None of the family or guests?’ asked Jack.

‘None of them even came into the kitchen that afternoon.’

At that moment a young woman in a maid’s uniform entered. When she saw us in conversation, she turned and was about to leave, but Mrs Buckingham called to her. ‘Jane . . . Jane, come over here a minute. Now, Mr Lewis, this is Jane—she worked with me that afternoon and she took the cake out to the terrace, didn’t you, Jane?’

‘Yes, cook,’ she said. Jane was a pert and pretty young village girl, still, I would have guessed, in her teens.

‘Where did you first see the cake?’ Jack asked.

‘Right here on this table,’ Jane replied. ‘I was here when cook brought it out of the oven and stood it on the table to cool. And a lovely smell it had too. I remember thinking to myself that if any of that cake came back from the afternoon tea on the terrace I would sneak a bit for myself. I’m sorry, cook, but I did.’

‘That’s all right, dearie,’ said Mrs Buckingham. ‘Everyone loves my cake.’

‘So who, apart from you and Mrs B,’ I asked, ‘touched the cake?’

‘No one,’ Jane insisted. ‘I put it on a cake plate and carried it outside and laid it on the table on the terrace. The first person to touch it was Lady Pamela when she started to cut it. I stayed out there for a little while, just in case I were needed like. And in all that time Lady Pamela was the only one who touched the cake.’

‘It’s impossible!’ I said, turning to Jack. ‘There’s no way a fatal dose of poison could have got into one slice of cake leaving all the rest without a trace. It can’t be done. Unless Lady Pamela is the killer?’

Jack rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Now, Jane,’ he said turning back to the housemaid, ‘tell us about the members of the household.’

‘They’re nice enough, I suppose. Uncle Teddy is daft. Will is a cheeky boy. Douglas and his girlfriend think they’re very high and mighty.’

‘What about the master and mistress?’

‘Lady Pamela’s all right . . . once you get used to her manner.’

‘And Sir William?’

‘We don’t see a lot of him. He’s often away at the factory.’

She stopped abruptly. Jack prompted her, suggesting that she was about to add something to her description of Sir William.

‘Well . . .’ she said with an expression on her face I couldn’t quite read. ‘Well . . . he is a bit of a flirt.’

‘He’s worse than that,’ said a voice from the doorway. ‘He’s a letch. He’s almost a dirty old man.’ The speaker was another young woman in a maid’s uniform.

‘Lizzie Havershot!’ cried Mrs Buckingham. ‘How dare you speak of the master like that!’

‘I will,’ said the maid defiantly, ‘and I don’t care who hears me. I still think the reason poor Ruth was sacked was because Lady Pamela caught Sir William carrying on with her.’

Mrs Buckingham threw her hands in the air in disgust. ‘These girls today. They get ideas in their heads, and they insist on speaking their minds. It wouldn’t have happened when I was young, I can tell you that for nothing.’

‘It’s not just an idea in my head,’ said Lizzie stubbornly. ‘I knows what I knows.’

Jack and I were chased out of the kitchen by Mrs Buckingham on the excuse that she had to start on the dinner. But I had the feeling she was more concerned to stop the maids from telling us anything more.

As we made our way out of the house and into the sprawling grounds, Jack asked, ‘Would there be any cyanide on the property, Morris? Is there any use for cyanide other than poisoning unwanted guests?’

Yes, I thought to myself, cyanide did have some common uses, but what were they? Not far from where we were standing was the wall that enclosed the kitchen garden, beyond which was an orchard. Thinking of the garden and the orchard started a train of thought.

‘Wasps,’ I said. ‘Cyanide is sometimes used to poison wasps’ nests.’

‘Meaning,’ said Jack, ‘that any supplies of cyanide close at hand will be found in the gardener’s shed. Where might we find the gardener?’

‘We could start with his shed.’

‘That’s what I had in mind, Morris, or was I being too subtle?’

We both grinned. Jack’s working life as an Oxford tutor tended to make his conversations into a battle of wits—a gentle and well-intentioned battle of wits, but a battle nonetheless.

I led the way around what had once been the stable block and was now a garage for the cars and the home of Uncle Teddy’s ‘laboratory’ towards the back of the kitchen garden. There stood the garden shed, and sitting on a wooden bench in front it, smoking a foul-looking pipe, was Franklin the gardener.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Franklin,’ I said as we approached.

‘Afternoon, young Tom,’ he said with a grin, displaying an alarming lack of teeth in his mouth, and the few that were there were stained a deep brown—roughly the colour of aged oak. Clearly the dentist who had been waiting for Franklin’s patronage had long since hung up the ‘Bankrupt—gone fishing’ sign.

‘You’ve not been arrested yet I see,’ he muttered through pursed lips that held tightly to his old pipe.

‘Are you expecting me to be?’

‘It’s only you that Inspector Hyde ever asks me about. He has his eye on you, young Tom.’

Ignoring this leering banter, I said, ‘Mr Franklin, may I introduce a friend of mine, my old Oxford tutor, C. S. Lewis.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Lewis. You here to help Tom escape the hangman?’

‘Something like that. Can I ask you about cyanide, Mr Franklin?’

‘You can—and you’d not be the first.’

‘That weasel-faced Hyde,’ I grumbled. ‘That odious rodent has been asking you about cyanide?’

Franklin gave a big grin, displaying his three remaining teeth in all their glory, and nodded cheerfully.

‘Now you can’t have it both ways, Morris,’ boomed Jack. ‘Inspector Hyde is either a weasel or a rodent, but he can hardly be both. The weasel, I believe, is a member of the mustelid family and is not related to rodents.’

‘Poetic licence,’ I muttered with a foolish grin.

‘The Department of Licensing will withdraw your poetic licence unless you exercise it more carefully,’ lectured Jack with mock severity. ‘Now, Mr Franklin, may we see your supply of cyanide?’

Franklin rose from his bench, tapped out his pipe on the heel of his boot and invited us to follow him.

He led us into a dark, and surprisingly cavernous, garden shed. Stacked against one wall were the cane chairs we had been using on the day of the murder. The gardener wended his way through a tangle of mowers, rakes and other equipment to the back wall. Here, on a high shelf, was a locked metal box—the sort often used as a cash box. This was a rather battered and ancient example of its kind. He dug deep into one pocket of his grimy cardigan and produced a key.

‘Behold, gentlemen,’ he said with the air of a showman presenting his star attraction, ‘my current supply of cyanide.’

He unlocked the box and flipped open the lid. Inside was a very small brown paper bag, tightly rolled up and held in place with a rubber band.

‘That’s my total supply of cyanide. That’s the amount I had at the end of last summer when the wasps were bad, and none of it’s gone missing. That’s what I told the inspector, and that’s what I’m telling you.’

After a dramatic pause, filled only with his loud wheezing, he continued.

‘And let me add,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose to indicate that he was about to impart a deeper truth (probably the sort of gesture Socrates used every day as he enlightened his students in ancient Athens), ‘this here is the only key, and I always has it about my person. And the box has not been forced open—anyone can see that.’

‘Then the cyanide that killed Connie didn’t come from here?’ I said quietly.

‘Ah hah!’ cried Franklin. ‘With your lightning fast Oxford- educated brain, young sir, you’ve reached exactly the same conclusion as the rather slower official brain of Inspector Hyde.’

Jack and I thanked Franklin and wandered slowly away from the garden shed speculating on where the cyanide might have come from if not from the gardener’s supplies.

Jack asked if Franklin might be part of the murder plot—might have agreed to supply cyanide to the killer. But knowing the household as I did, I could see no motive for him to act as poison dispenser to anyone at any time. He was a cantankerous old man, I explained, very jealous of his privileges as head gardener and inclined, out of habit, to be as unhelpful as possible to all people at all times.

Rounding the corner of the old stable block we saw Uncle Teddy heading towards his laboratory.

‘Uncle Teddy,’ boomed Jack.

In response the old duffer turned around quickly, startled by the salutation. He stood still blinking in our direction as if trying to work out exactly who we were. The furrowed look on his brow suggested he had deep doubts about us. Then the mental wheels clicked into place, he recognised us and his brow cleared.

‘Oh, ah, yes . . . young Tom . . . and Tom’s friend.’

‘I wonder if you might like to give us a guided tour of your laboratory, Uncle Teddy?’ Jack asked.

The old man’s moustache quivered with pleasure as he broke into a broad grin. He waved us towards the building. ‘Come on, come on . . . let me show you what I’m working on . . .’

He urged us ahead, following behind like a sheepdog rounding up a few strays. Perhaps he wanted to get us into his workroom before we lost interest.

We passed the Daimler and the Rover sitting in the large, open garage, nodded to the chauffer who had the bonnet of the Daimler open and was wiping his hands on an oily rag, and reached the door set into the walled-off end of the old stable block. Uncle Teddy patted all of his pockets in turn, several times, until he located a large, rusty key. With this he unlocked the door, stepped inside, turned on the electric light switch and ushered us in.

It was a high-ceilinged room, painted white, with cupboards along one wall and a long bench around most of the remaining three. Scattered randomly over this bench were assorted pieces of laboratory equipment—test tubes in racks, retorts, Bunsen burners, Petri dishes and pieces of rubber hosing. Most were covered in dust. Incongruously, there were also cooking trays, mixers and various cooking utensils mingled in with the chemistry set.

‘Oh, ah, yes . . . ,’ said Teddy, looking around the room as if trying work out what sort of commentary should accompany this guided tour. ‘Food, you see, food is . . . organic chemistry. It’s all organic chemistry. If you . . . oh, ah . . . get the chemistry right, you get the food production right.’

Sitting on one end of the bench was a pile of old copies of
Boy’s Own Paper
—some of them open. These, I suspected, occupied more of Uncle Teddy’s time than any experiments he might ever succeed in conducting.

‘So, you have chemicals on hand then?’ asked Jack.

‘Ah, yes, yes . . . quite so. But in food chemistry we call them . . . “ingredients”.’

‘Any dangerous chemicals?’

Teddy shook his head as if making a sad admission. ‘No dangerous chemicals. My nephew won’t trust me with anything . . . says I’m too absent minded . . . everything here is edible.’

‘So then,’ said Jack, fixing Uncle Teddy with a penetrating stare, ‘if someone wanted to include cyanide as an ingredient in a cake mix, this is the last place they’d come?’