A Pocket Full of Rye

Chapter 8
"I've got what I could, sir." So Sergeant Hay reporting. "The marmalade, bit of the ham. Samples of tea, coffee and sugar, for what they're worth. Actual brews have been thrown out by now, of course, but there's one point. There was a good lot of coffee left over and they had it in the servants' hall at elevenses - that's important, I should say."

"Yes, that's important. Shows that if he took it in his coffee, it must have been slipped into the actual cup."

"By one of those present. Exactly. I've inquired, cautious like, about this yew stuff - berries or leaves - there's been none of it seen about the house. Nobody seems to know anything about the cereal in his pocket, either... It just seems daft to them. Seems daft to me, too. He doesn't seem to have been one of those food faddists who'll eat any mortal thing so long as it isn't cooked. My sister's husband's like that. Raw carrots, raw peas, raw turnips. But even he doesn't eat raw grain. Why, I should say it would swell up in your inside something awful."

The telephone rang and on a nod from the Inspector, Sergeant Hay sprinted off to answer it. Following him, Neele found that it was headquarters on the line. Contact had been made with Mr Percival Fortescue, who was returning to London immediately.

As the Inspector replaced the telephone, a car drew up at the front door. Crump went to the door and opened it. The woman who stood there had her arms full of parcels. Crump took them from her.

"Thanks, Crump. Pay the taxi, will you? I'll have tea now. Is Mrs Fortescue or Miss Elaine in?"

The butler hesitated, looking back over his shoulder.

"We've had bad news, ma'am," he said. "About the master."

"About Mr Fortescue?"

Neele came forward. Crump said: "This is Mrs Percival, sir."

"What is it? What's happened? An accident?"

The Inspector looked her over as he replied. Mrs Percival Fortescue was a plump woman with a discontented mouth. Her age he judged to be about thirty. Her questions came with a kind of eagerness. The thought flashed across his mind that she must be very bored.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you that Mr Fortescue was taken to St Jude's Hospital this morning seriously ill and has since died."

"Died? You mean he's dead?" The news was clearly even more sensational than she had hoped for. "Dear me - this is a surprise. My husband's away. You'll have to get in touch with him. He's in the North somewhere. I dare say they'll know at the office. He'll have to see to everything. Things always happen at the most awkward moment, don't they."

She paused for a moment, turning things over in her mind.

"It all depends, I suppose," she said, "where they'll have the funeral. Down here, I suppose. Or will it be in London?"

"That will be for the family to say."

"Of course. I only just wondered." For the first time she took direct cognisance of the man who was speaking to her.

"Are you from the office?" she asked. "You're not a doctor, are you?"

"I'm a police officer. Mr Fortescue's death was very sudden and -"

She interrupted him.

"Do you mean he was murdered?"

It was the first time that word had been spoken. Neele surveyed her eager questioning face carefully.

"Now why should you think that, madam?"

"Well, people are sometimes. You said sudden. And you're police. Have you seen her about it? What did she say?"

"I don't quite understand to whom you are referring?"

"Adele, of course. I always told Val his father was crazy to go marrying a woman years younger than himself. There's no fool like an old fool. Besotted about that awful creature, he was. And now look what comes of it... A nice mess we're all in. Pictures in the paper and reporters coming round."

She paused, obviously visualising the future in a series of crude highly-coloured pictures. He thought that the prospect was still not wholly unpleasing. She turned back to him.

"What was it? Arsenic?"

In a repressive voice Inspector Neele said:

"The cause of death has yet to be ascertained. There will be an autopsy and an inquest."

"But you know already, don't you? Or you wouldn't come down here."

There was a sudden shrewdness in her plump rather foolish face.

"You've been asking about what he ate and drank, I suppose? Dinner last night. Breakfast this morning. And all the drinks, of course."

He could see her mind ranging vividly over all the possibilities. He said, with caution:

"It seems possible that Mr Fortescue's illness resulted from something he ate at breakfast."

"Breakfast?" She seemed surprised. "That's difficult. I don't see how..."

She paused and shook her head.

"I don't see how she could have done it, then... unless she slipped something into the coffee - when Elaine and I weren't looking..."

A quiet voice spoke softly beside them:

"Your tea is all ready in the library, Mrs Val."

Mrs Val jumped.

"Oh thank you. Miss Dove. Yes, I could do with a cup of tea. Really, I feel quite bowled over. What about you, Mr - Inspector -"

"Thank you, not just now."

The plump figure hesitated and then went slowly away.

As she disappeared through a doorway, Mary Dove murmured softly:

"I don't think she's ever heard of the term slander."

Inspector Neele did not reply.

Mary Dove went on:

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Where can I find the housemaid, Ellen?"

"I will take you to her. She's just gone upstairs."

II

Ellen proved to be grim but unafraid. Her sour old face looked triumphantly at the Inspector.

"It's a shocking business, sir. And I never thought I'd live to find myself in a house where that sort of thing has been going on. But in a way I can't say that it surprises me. I ought to have given my notice in long ago and that's a fact. I don't like the language that's used in this house, and I don't like the amount of drink that's taken, and I don't approve of the goings on there've been. I've nothing against Mrs Crump, but Crump and that girl Gladys just don't know what proper service is. But it's the goings on that I mind about most."

"What goings on do you mean exactly?"

"You'll soon hear about them if you don't know already. It's common talk all over the place. They've been seen here there and everywhere. All this pretending to play golf - or tennis - And I've seen things - with my own eyes - in this house. The library door was open and there they were, kissing and canoodling."

The venom of the spinster was deadly. Neele really felt it unnecessary to say "Whom do you mean?" but he said it nevertheless.

"Who should I mean? The mistress - and that man. No shame about it, they hadn't. But if you ask me, the master had got wise to it. Put someone on to watch them, he had. Divorce, that's what it would have come to. Instead, it's come to this."

"When you say this, you mean -"

"You've been asking questions, sir, about what the master ate and drank and who gave it to him. They're in it together, sir, that's what I'd say. He got the stuff from somewhere and she gave it to the master, that was the way of it, I've no doubt."

"Have you ever seen any yew berries in the house - or thrown away anywhere."

The small eyes glinted curiously.

"Yew? Nasty poisonous stuff. Never you touch those berries, my mother said to me when I was a child. Was that what was used, sir?"

"We don't know yet what was used."

"I've never seen her fiddling about with yew." Ellen sounded disappointed. "No, I can't say I've seen anything of that kind."

Neele questioned her about the grain found in Fortescue's pocket but here again he drew a blank.

"No, sir. I know nothing about that."

He went on to further questions, but with no gainful result. Finally he asked if he could see Miss Ramsbottom.

Ellen looked doubtful.

"I could ask her, but it's not everyone she'll see. She's a very old lady, you know, and she's a bit odd."

The Inspector pressed his demand, and rather unwillingly Ellen led him along a passage and up a short flight of stairs to what he thought had probably been designed as a nursery suite.

He glanced out of a passage window as he followed her and saw Sergeant Hay standing by the yew tree talking to a man who was evidently a gardener.

Ellen tapped on a door, and when she received an answer, opened it and said:

"There's a police gentleman here who would like to speak to you, miss."

The answer was apparently in the affirmative for she drew back and motioned Neele to go in.

The room he entered was almost fantastically over-furnished. The Inspector felt rather as though he had taken a step backward into not merely Edwardian but Victorian times. At a table drawn up to a gas fire an old lady was sitting laying out a patience. She wore a maroon-coloured dress and her sparse grey hair was slicked down each side other face.

Without looking up or discontinuing her game she said impatiently:

"Well, come in, come in. Sit down if you like."

The invitation was not easy to accept as every chair appeared to be covered with tracts or publications of a religious nature.

As he moved them slightly aside on the sofa Miss Ramsbottom asked sharply:

"Interested in mission work?"

"Well, I'm afraid I'm not very, ma'am."

"Wrong. You should be. That's where the Christian spirit is nowadays. Darkest Africa. Had a young clergyman here last week. Black as your hat. But a true Christian."

Inspector Neele found it a little difficult to know what to say.

The old lady further disconcerted him by snapping:

"I haven't got a wireless."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Oh I thought perhaps you came about a wireless licence. Or one of these silly forms. Well, man, what is it?"

"I'm sorry to have to tell you. Miss Ramsbottom, that your brother-in-law, Mr Fortescue, was taken suddenly ill and died this morning."

Miss Ramsbottom continued with her patience without any sign of perturbation, merely remarking in a conversational way:

"Struck down at last in his arrogance and sinful pride. Well, it had to come."

"I hope it's not a shock to you?"

It obviously wasn't but the Inspector wanted to hear what she would say.

Miss Ramsbottom gave him a sharp glance over the top of her spectacles and said:

"If you mean I am not distressed, that is quite right. Rex Fortescue was always a sinful man and I never liked him."

"His death was very sudden -"

"As befits the ungodly," said the old lady with satisfaction.

"It seems possible that he may have been poisoned -"

The Inspector paused to observe the effect he had made.

He did not seem to have made any. Miss Ramsbottom merely murmured, "Red seven on black eight. Now I can move up the King."

Struck apparently by the Inspector's silence, she stopped with a card poised in her hand and said sharply:

"Well, what did you expect me to say? I didn't poison him if that's what you want to know."

"Have you any idea who might have done so?"

"That's a very improper question," said the old lady sharply. "Living in this house are two of my dead sister's children. I decline to believe that anybody with Ramsbottom blood in them could be guilty of murder. Because it's murder you're meaning, isn't it?"

"I didn't say so, madam."

"Of course it's murder. Plenty of people have wanted to murder Rex in their time. A very unscrupulous man. And old sins have long shadows, as the saying goes."

"Have you anyone in particular in mind?"

Miss Ramsbottom swept up the cards and rose to her feet. She was a tall woman.

"I think you'd better go now," she said.

She spoke without anger but with a kind of cold finality.

"If you want my opinion," she went on, "it was probably one of the servants. That butler looks to me a bit of a rascal, and that parlourmaid is definitely subnormal. Good evening."

Inspector Neele found himself meekly walking out. Certainly a remarkable old lady. Nothing to be got out of her.

He came down the stairs into the square hall to find himself suddenly face to face with a tall dark girl. She was wearing a damp mackintosh and she stared into his face with a curious blankness.

"I've just come back," she said. "And they told me - about Father - that he's dead."

"I'm afraid that's true."

She pushed out a hand behind her as though blindly seeking for support. She touched an oak chest and slowly, stiffly, she sat down on it.

"Oh no," she said. "No..."

Slowly two tears rolled down her cheeks.

"It's awful," she said. "I didn't think that I even liked him... I thought I hated him... But that can't be so, or I wouldn't mind. I do mind."

She sat there, staring in front of her and again tears forced themselves from her eyes and down her cheeks.

Presently she spoke again, rather breathlessly.

"The awful thing is that it makes everything come right. I mean, Gerald and I can get married now. I can do everything that I want to do. But I hate it happening this way. I don't want Father to be dead... Oh I don't. Oh Daddy - Daddy..."

For the first time since he had come to Yewtree Lodge, Inspector Neele was startled by what seemed to be genuine grief for the dead man.