The Gabriel Hounds (33 page)

‘You!’ The blazing contempt in her voice made it an expletive in its own right. ‘I do not listen to you! All this talk of police and governments and laws. You are only
a stupid woman, too stupid to get a man! Who are you?’ And she spat on the floor at my feet.

It was all it needed. My head cleared miraculously, as the adrenalin came coursing out of the booster pumps. I laughed.

‘As a matter of fact I have got a man. I’ve had one for twenty-two years. And as for who I am, I’m the great-niece and relative by blood of the Lady Harriet, your mistress. I’m also probably at the moment owner or part owner of this palace and its contents. So for a start, my nasty little Arab maiden – because in spite of your efforts I wouldn’t back John Lethman ever to have got past first base – you can hand over my great-aunt’s ring. And I may warn you that your precious Dr Grafton will make you give it up even if I can’t. Hand it over, poppet.’

It was obvious that Grafton had already spoken to her. Her face darkened, and for a moment I saw her hand clench and hide itself in a fold of her silk robe. Then with a gesture she drew the ring off.

‘Take it. Only because I wish. It is nothing. Take it, daughter of a bitch.’

And she threw it at me with the gesture of an empress flinging a groat to a beggar. It landed with an accuracy she could never voluntarily have achieved in a dozen years, slap in the bowl of soup.

‘Well,’ I said cheerfully, ‘that should sterilise it. Or should it? I’ve never see the kitchens here, but when I was a guest I had to take them on trust. Now I’m only a prisoner I don’t need to eat what I don’t fancy, do I?’

I leaned over and picked up the fork from the tray, fished Great-Aunt Harriet’s ruby out of the soup,
dunked it in the glass of water, and dried it on the napkin provided. Then I noticed the silence. I looked up.

When she spoke I knew something had put her out considerably. ‘You do not wish the meal?’

‘Oh, I’m quite glad of something, and it’s a wise gaolbird that let’s nothing slip. I’ll eat the bread and cheese. Thanks for the ring.’ And I slipped it on to my finger.

‘Not the soup? The ring was clean … it …’

‘I’m sure it was. I wouldn’t have been rude about it if you, my proud beauty, had not just called me the daughter of a bitch. Not that I mind, I like dogs, but Mummy might be a bit narked. No, Halide, not the soup.’

She had obviously not followed anything except the first and last statements. ‘Then let me bring you more – please.’

I looked at her in surprise, then the surprise slid into a stare. To being with it had only seemed odd that she had offered to oblige me at all, but the last request had carried an urgent, almost pleading note.

‘Of course I will bring more. It is no trouble. Any minute now they will come to start loading the boxes and you will be taken out of here and put with the man, so you must eat while you can. Please allow me!’ There was an abject quality in the eagerness, the automatic bending of the shoulders and thrusting of the chin and opening of the hands, palms up, that suddenly spoke more clearly than any documentary could have done, of generations of slavery and the whip.

‘It’s good of you, but there’s not the slightest need.’ My own reaction, I noticed with sour self-contempt, was also predictable. While she was insolent I was angry and unpleasant; as soon as she crept into her place, I could afford a cold civility. I made an effort. ‘I don’t want the soup, thank you. The bread and cheese will do very well.’

‘I will take it back, then, just in case—’

‘No, no, don’t bother. But I’d be glad if you’d go straight to Dr Grafton—’

I never finished the sentence. We had both reached forward together, she to lift the bowl from the tray, and I to stop her, and for a moment, inches apart, our eyes met.

Then I shot out a hand and took hold of her wrist before she could take the bowl. Her expression, and the tiny intake of breathe, told me that – incredibly – I had been right.

‘What’s in it?’ I demanded.

‘Let me go!’

‘What’s in it?’

‘Nothing! It is good soup, I made it myself …’

‘I’m dead sure you did. What did you put in it? More of your
cannabis indica
to keep me quiet, or something worse?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about! I put nothing in it, I tell you! Chicken and herbs and vegetables and a little
zafaran
and—’

‘And a drop or two of poison to top it up?’

She drew back sharply, and I let her go and stood up. We were much of a height, but I felt inches the taller of
the two, and ice-cold with contemptuous rage. There is something infuriating, rather than frightening, about this kind of attack. That one is there to react to it at all means that the attempt has failed and the danger is over, and I suppose one’s very relief at that failure explodes in contempt for the poisoner and blazing anger at the filthy method used.

‘Well?’ I said, quite softly.

‘No, it was not! No! How can you be so foolish as to think so? Poison? Where would I find poison?’

The words were bitten off with a gasp as Henry Grafton said from the doorway behind her:

‘What’s this? Who’s talking about poison?’

She swung round to face him, hands out as if to ward him off, her body still curved in that lovely windblown bow that one sees in the carved ivory ladies of Japan. Her mouth opened, and her tongue licked across her lips, but she said nothing. His eyes went past her to me.

‘I was,’ I said. ‘The sweet creature seems to have put something in my soup that she doesn’t care to talk about. Would this by any chance be by your orders?’

‘Don’t be a fool.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Dope, yes, but poison, never? You and your Hypocritic Oath … Perhaps she’ll tell you what it is, and why? Or would you like to take it away and analyse it in your little lab next door?’

He stared at me only briefly, then his eyes went to the tray.

‘Did you take any of the soup?’ he asked eventually.

‘No, or I’ve no doubt I’d be writhing on the floor.’

‘Then how do you know there’s anything wrong with it?’

‘I don’t, it’s an inspired guess. But she was too anxious by half for me to drink it, and she hasn’t cared terribly for my welfare up till now. She threw the ring into it by mistake, and when I said I didn’t want it after that she was upset. Then I knew. Don’t ask me how, but I’d take a twenty to one bet on it now, and don’t tell me you don’t think the same. Look at her. And as for where she got it, hasn’t she got a whole roomful at her disposal, all that stuff of Great-Aunt Harriet’s? Ask her.’ I nodded at the silent girl, ‘ask little Miss Borgia here. Perhaps she’ll admit it to you.’

Long before I had finished speaking his attention had switched back to Halide, the black eyes bright and deadly as an oil-slick. I had a moment’s sharp relief that under this night’s various pressures he should take time to handle this so seriously; it must only mean that he intended no real harm to Charles or myself. But the expression in his eyes as he looked at her, and the girl’s obvious terror, surprised me. Her hands were tightly clasped at the base of her throat, clutching the lovely silk of the robe together as if for warmth.

‘Is this true?’

She shook her head, then found her voice. ‘It’s all lies, lies. Why should I poison her? There is nothing in the soup – only the meat, and the herbs, and onions and
zafaran
…’

‘Then,’ said Henry Grafton, ‘you wouldn’t object to drinking it yourself?’

And before I knew what he was about, he had whipped the bowl up from the tray, and was advancing on the girl with it held up to the level of her mouth.

I think I gave a gasp, and then said weakly: ‘Oh, no!’ It was somehow too much, so absurdly the stock situation from a thousand and one Arabian Nights, an Eastern melodrama come ludicrously to life. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ I said, ‘why not just call in the dogs and try it on them? That’s the form, isn’t it? For pity’s sake call the scene off, I withdraw the complaint!’

Then I stopped as I realised, not amused any more that the melodrama was taking Dr Grafton away from the door of the room as the girl backed in front of him … and there was a gun on the wall above the Prince’s bed, if I could grab it before they got me …

Neither of them took the slightest notice of me. She had retreated until she was backed right up against a stack of crates beyond the bed, and her hands came up in front of her to push the bowl away. He drew back quickly to prevent its being spilled.

‘Well, why don’t you? Am I to believe this nonsense is true?’

‘No, no, of course it isn’t true! She only says this because she hates me! I swear it! I will swear it if you like on my father’s head! Where would I get poison?’

‘Considering my great-aunt’s room is like remnant day at the chemist’s,’ I said dryly, ‘I’d have thought one could lay hands on almost anything.’

He didn’t look round when I spoke, all his attention was fixed on the girl, who stared back at him like a mesmerised rabbit which might at any minute burrow
its way backwards through the stacked boxes. I edged a bit nearer the doorway.

‘Why don’t you call her bluff?’ I asked.

I didn’t see a movement, but she must have sensed that he was planning to do just that, for she gave in suddenly. ‘All right, if you won’t believe me! I did put something in it, and I did want her to drink it, but it is not a poison, it is only a purge, to give her pains and make her sick. She’s a bitch and the daughter of a bitch, and you have made me give back the ring when she is rich already, and of course I do not try to kill her, but I hate her and I put the oil in the soup only to make her suffer a little … just a little …’ Her voice faltered and seemed to strangle itself for a moment, defeated somehow by the heavy musty silence of the underground room.

‘Charming, my God, charming!’ I was within two jumps of the door now. ‘Then you lock me in with Charles and leave me to it?’

Neither of them took the slightest notice of me. She finished in a rush: ‘And if I must drink it I will, to prove to you that it is true … but tonight you will need me to help you, you and John so we will give it to a dog, or to Jassim, or to someone who does not matter, so that you will see …’

Grafton’s face was suffused, and that ugly vein was beating again. Neither of them was concerned with me any more; whatever was between them shut me out completely, and I stood rooted there watching, afraid to move and direct that raging concentration back to myself.

‘Where did you get it?’ He spoke quite evenly.

‘I forget. From her room, perhaps … I’ve had it a long time … all those bottles …’

‘There were no purges in her room, I know that. Don’t give me that, you never got it from there. I saw to it that there was nothing harmful lying about, and after she’d had her sick turns I checked to see if she’d been dosing herself. Come on, what was it? Did you get it from the village, or was it some filthy brew you made yourself?’

‘No … I tell you it was nothing. It was something John had. I took it from his room.’

‘From John? Why should he have that kind of thing? You said “oil”. Do you mean castor oil?’

‘No, no, no, I tell you I don’t know what it was! It was a black bottle. Why don’t you ask John? He will tell you it was harmless! He said it tasted strong, so I used to put in extra herbs, and pepper—’

‘When did you see it first? The time I was away near Chiba?’

‘Yes, yes, but why do you look like that? It was nothing, a drop or two, and then a little sickness – the pain was not bad – and afterwards she was always so quiet and good …’

I wouldn’t have moved now for worlds, open door or not. The bowl had begun to shake in his hands, and his voice had that stretched, even thinness of a wire about to snap, but the girl didn’t seem to recognise the signals. She had ceased to look alarmed, and had dropped her hands to twist them in the skirt of her dress, glowering back at him, sullen and defiant. I don’t
know just at what point through the swift, unemphatic exchange I had realised that they were no longer talking about me, but about Great-Aunt Harriet.

‘Quiet and good!’ He repeated the words with no expression at all. ‘I see. My God, I wondered. Now I begin to see … Did this happen whenever I went away?’

‘Not always. Sometimes when she’d been too difficult. Oh, why the fuss, it did her no harm! You know how well I nursed her! You know how I had worked and cared for all those months, and how she would ring her bell night and day, and never must we be tired, always ready to run for this thing and that thing, and cook special food … But I wouldn’t have harmed her, you know that! Only one or two drops I gave her, and then I would nurse her through it, and afterwards there would be peace for a few days.’

‘And then she would be grateful. Yes, of course. Clever girl, Halide. Is that when she gave you the ring? Yes? What else did she give you?’

‘Many things! And she meant me to have them! She said so! She gave me these things herself because I had cared for her! You shall not take them from me … indeed you dare not, because I gave them to my father and brother who will keep them! And then when I become an English lady—’

He spoke between his teeth. ‘You killed the old woman. Do you not realise that even now, you stupid black bitch?’

‘I did not!’ Her voice was shrill with rage. ‘How can you say this? It was only medicine, I tell you, and I took
it from the chest that John keeps in his room – you know the old medicine box that the Lady’s husband took on his expeditions—’

‘That prehistoric collection? God knows what was in it! Do you mean to tell me John knew about this?’

‘No, I tell you I took it! But I asked him what it was before I used it. I would not have used it unless I knew it was safe! It was not poison! He said it was a purge, made from the seed of some plant … yes, a spurge plant – I remember that because the words were the same, and—’

He had been sniffing at the bowl he held. Now he gave a great gasp as though he needed air. ‘So that’s it! Spurge plant, my God! It’s croton oil, and I doubt if even old Boyd used the stuff in the last fifty years except for the camels! “One or two drops”, indeed! Twenty drops and you’d kill a healthy horse! And you gave that stuff to an old woman, a sick woman—’