The Pigeon Pie Mystery (42 page)

As soon as the ladies left the gentlemen to their cigars, Pilgrim Senior, already incensed that the pheasant had tasted of game, turned to his son, his palms outstretched, and demanded, “What about the anchovies?” Cornelius B. Pilgrim had now seen an escape route from a life devoted to a briny relish, and fought off his father’s entreaties to stay with the firm. The port went round several times until it was clear that no capitulation would be brokered. When finally the embattled host suggested they join the ladies in the drawing room, his son immediately sat by the Englishwoman who had opened his eyes to a world of possibilities. They stopped talking only when each was given a candle to
take upstairs to bed, silenced by the sudden realisation that they would be parted until morning.

Their conversation resumed at breakfast, when they both chose boiled eggs in the belief that they ran the least risk of contamination. They glanced at each other on discovering that the brackish taste had invaded the shell, and from then on all decorum was lost. While attempting to muffle her laughter, the Englishwoman snorted, which set off Cornelius B. Pilgrim. There was no stopping their uproar. Pilgrim Senior, already irascible from lack of sleep, immediately tried to put a stop to the racket. But his indignation only inflamed their mirth. The Englishman, affronted by his daughter’s lack of manners, banished her from the table, and promptly ate five of the offending eggs in a bid to calm the turbulent waters. The visitors left that morning, a day earlier than expected, without a chance for the young couple to say goodbye. With a lump in his throat, Cornelius B. Pilgrim stood at the study window, watching the carriage leave. It was only when he shut himself in his bedroom to hide his unexpected tear that he discovered her note. On it was drawn a picture of Hawkins’s Iguanodon at the Crystal Palace, and he smiled when he spotted the tiny anchovy caught in its prehistoric mouth.

It was he who sent the first letter. Unable to wait for a reply, he sent another, and then a third. When that too remained unanswered, he sent a fourth and then a fifth, until his father asked why he had permanently ink-stained fingers. He loitered about at home, waiting for the numerous appearances of the postman. But still nothing arrived for him bearing the mark of England. It was four months later that the reply finally came, written in the swirling script of the love-possessed. Her father had hidden his letters, she explained, and she had only just discovered them in his desk drawer. She begged him to continue writing, and, as she waited for his reply, she returned each day to re-read those he had already
sent. But her father noticed the opened envelopes, their fingered edges worn out by desire, and burnt them. Each time he left the house, she hunted for more of the notes that made her tremble. But after months of finding nothing, she assumed the American’s affection had died, and she accepted the first offer of marriage that came along, her heart forever torn.

Six years ago, when Pilgrim Senior heard of the death of his English supplier, he invited the couple to stay in memory of the man who had helped make his fortune. Cornelius B. Pilgrim, who had remained a bachelor during the eleven years that had passed since he had seen her, knew none of his love had faded the instant he saw her again. He chose the menu, replicating precisely the famous dinner Hawkins had held inside the mould of his Iguanodon. But despite the mock turtle soup, the
currie de lapereau au riz
, the woodcocks, and the Madeira jelly, Mrs. Bagshot made no mention of prehistory at the dining table, and left the conversation to her husband, who spoke only of himself. When, the following morning, Cornelius B. Pilgrim chose boiled eggs for breakfast, and muttered that they tasted of seamen’s combinations, her eyes remained on her cutlets.

It wasn’t until the visitors’ luggage was being loaded that the pair finally found themselves alone in the library. Gazing out the window across the grounds, Mrs. Bagshot revealed that she had only just read his second batch of letters, having found them hidden in a cigar box on her father’s death. She had taken them into the garden to read, where only the blackbirds heard the wretched sound of her sobbing. “I had assumed you’d stopped loving me when I never heard from you again.” She then turned from the window and they looked at each other in silence, imagining the life they could have shared. When her eyes began to fill, she walked out to the carriage, and he stood alone, choked by the words that could never be spoken.

When he arrived in England to investigate the ghosts, and
found, much to his dismay, that she had already left for Egypt, he went on a pilgrimage to the Crystal Palace. He eventually found the Iguanodon, instantly recognisable from the tattered picture he carried in his pocket, except for the tiny anchovy in its mouth.

“And you never fell in love again?” Mink asked, after a pause.

“I couldn’t,” he replied, his head bowed.

“So your efforts to try and get to the bottom of the General’s death were an attempt to help win her back?”

“Yes. But we’ve barely spoken since her return.”

“Forgive me, Mr. Pilgrim, but if I were a police inspector I would come to the conclusion that his death rather clears the way for you.”

He paused. “I suppose it does,” he replied. Announcing he had to collect the phonograph, he stood up and left the room without waiting to be shown out.

AFTER HELPING HERSELF TO A
cigarette from the tortoiseshell box on the mantelpiece, the Princess returned to her father’s armchair. She sat back, staring at the floor as she smoked. She was still no nearer to knowing who had killed the General. Was it the Countess, who had only just got over her husband’s death when he informed her that her love was alive and well and living with his new family? Did she fear that he would expose her humiliating secret, and that she would lose her home as a result of still being married? What about Lady Montfort Bebb, who resented his snipes about her piano playing, as it stirred her guilt at having survived the First Afghan War? Had he pushed her over the edge by sending all those tradespeople to her door for a joke? Or was it Lady Beatrice who blamed him for killing her doves, a wedding present from a man whose love she could never enjoy in public? Had General Bagshot discovered her marriage, and did she realise that he knew? Not only would she be ostracised by society if he
exposed her, but she too would forfeit her apartments. But how could Mink suspect the three women whom she considered to be her friends?

Perhaps it was William Sheepshanks, who blamed the General for his mother’s death? Or could it be the vine keeper, whose secret marriage the dead man may well have uncovered? Was Thomas Trout trying to protect the woman he loved from public exposure and losing the type of home he could never provide for her? Surely he would have some arsenic around the place to protect the vine against rats. Or had the American simply made up the story of their arguing to deflect attention away from himself, having killed the General in order to have Mrs. Bagshot for himself? And then there was Alice Cockle, who had lost her position as a parlour maid after he accused her of stealing.

Maybe it was someone else altogether. But who? She thought again of being parted from Pooki, the nearest thing she had had to a mother since losing her own. She should have hired a private investigator, she suddenly realised, and sold her grandmother’s emerald earrings to pay for it. Why she hadn’t thought of it before was beyond her. At that moment Pooki came in to change the flowers, but Mink kept her eyes on the floor, unable to look at her. The maid glanced uneasily at her mistress, silently picked up the vase, and shut the door behind her.

There was something that Cornelius B. Pilgrim had said that niggled Mink. Why, so soon after her husband’s death, was Mrs. Bagshot redecorating her apartments, when she had never got round to it before, despite being a woman of such taste? Then it occurred to her. The Princess stubbed out the cigarette, fled from the house, and caught up with Cornelius B. Pilgrim outside the royal tennis court. “If Mrs. Bagshot is redecorating her husband’s bedroom, would you mind terribly fetching me a tiny piece of the wallpaper?” she asked. “It’s one of my favourite designs, and I’d like to find something that matches it. Wilderness House is in
need of some cheer. I wouldn’t want to bother Mrs. Bagshot over such a trivial matter.”

“No problem,” he replied, and they walked together to Fountain Court. Mink waited in the cloisters until he came back down, wondering whether she was right. “You’re in luck,” he said, handing her a blue-and-silver scrap he had found on the floor. “The decorators haven’t swept up yet.” Returning home, she lit one of the candles on the drawing room mantelpiece and held the paper into the flame. She blew it out, and there was no mistaking the smell of garlic. In that instant she knew.

She was out of the house within minutes, calling to Pooki to lock the front door behind her, and on no account to open it to anyone. She strode along Moat Lane, drawing the visitors’ eyes away from their guidebooks. While she knew how the General had died, she now needed to find out why. Heaving open the door leading to Fish Court, she headed down the narrow redbrick passage to the Countess’s apartments. Alice answered the door, tucking away a strand of hair that had worked its way loose from her bun.

“I wonder if I may have a word,” said Mink.

“Her Ladyship is still in bed with a headache after last night’s ball, Your Highness,” she replied.

“It’s you I wish to speak to, Alice. In private.”

The maid’s smile disappeared, and she pulled the door shut behind her. Glancing up at the windows of the other apartments, she led the way along the worn flagstones to the end of the courtyard, and went out onto Tennis Court Lane. Mink followed her through yet another door, and found herself in the abandoned Tudor kitchens, which had become a repository for bats.

“Not many people come in here,” said the maid, wiping the top of an oak table with a rag and sitting on it. Suddenly she sneezed.

“This can’t be the most hygienic place for you to be in, Alice, considering your condition,” said the Princess.

The maid looked at her.

Mink raised her eyebrows. “I presume you are in the family way, Alice. It would explain why you happened to have a bottle of arsenic in your room.”

A silent tear slipped down the girl’s face.

Mink offered her a handkerchief and put her hand on her arm. “You’re not the first domestic servant to have tried getting rid of an unwanted baby.”

When her tears had receded enough for her to speak, the maid blew her nose and said she thought her world had ended when she learned of her condition. Following her father’s death on the railway, she had given half her salary to her mother, who still had her three sisters and brother at home. Fearing she and her mother would end up in the workhouse if she lost her position, she had asked Dr. Henderson to help her get rid of the baby. But it turned out that the prescription he had given her was for dandelion tea. One morning, she was in Lady Beatrice’s kitchen borrowing some arrowroot, when the cook went upstairs to answer the drawing room bell. She looked around for something to eat and spotted a bottle of arsenic, which she slipped into her pocket. “I never used it, ma’am,” she said, shaking her head. “I would have rotted in hell.”

Mink walked over to the neglected spit, almost white with dust, and looked at it. “It must have been quite a comedown for you to have gone from being a parlour maid to a maid-of-all-work,” she said. “I expect you had your sights on becoming a lady’s-maid.”

The servant wiped her nose. “I would have made it too, if the General hadn’t accused me of stealing and dismissed me. I was lucky the Countess took me on. She got me cheap, mind.”

Mink looked at the teenager. “Were you still in their employment when Mrs. Bagshot lost her baby?” she asked.

Alice immediately looked up. “Oh, ma’am. It was terrible.”

From out of her mouth tumbled the story that she had kept to
herself all this time. The day Mrs. Bagshot gave birth, the female upper servants gathered outside her bedroom in the hope of hearing a cry. When, finally, the baby wailed, it was their turn to weep, for none of Mrs. Bagshot’s babies had ever survived. Rushing down to the kitchen, they told the others the wonderful news, and it was the only time the butler saw fit to take a bottle of his master’s champagne to celebrate.

Several months later, Alice had just finished cleaning and trimming the lamps when she opened the drawing room door and saw Dr. Barnstable striding down the hall carrying the baby. With her mistress not at home, and the nurse on an errand, she wondered what he was doing. She stood at the window, watching him hurry down Fish Court, and heard Isabella whimper. She looked for General Bagshot and found him in the library, his head in his hands. Still clutching her cloths and scissors, she asked him why the doctor had taken the baby. He started, then told her that Isabella had suddenly taken ill. Dr. Barnstable had done his best, but he had been unable to save her. She told him that the baby must have come round with the fresh air, because she heard her cry as the general practitioner was leaving. But the General insisted that she was mistaken, as the man had just signed the death certificate. Standing up, he instructed her never to mention it again if she had any feelings for Mrs. Bagshot, as such nonsensical imaginings would make her fit for the asylum and she was fragile enough as it was.