Hodges thought for a moment. “When I came back from my holiday for the inquest, the whisky decanter in Mr. Sackville’s bedroom was gone.”
“Did you look for it?”
“I asked Mrs. Cornish. She said she’d looked all over the house and couldn’t find it.”
Whisky would have been a good means of administering arsenic. In fact, anything would have been a good means of administering arsenic. It was not for nothing that arsenic had been a favorite weapon in the poisoner’s arsenal. The powder was odorless and tasteless, easy to disguise in food and beverage. Not to mention, the symptoms of arsenic poisoning closely matched those of cholera—and in places where the water supply was not in question, could be blamed on gastric attacks.
“I might as well let you know, Mr. Hodges, that arsenic was found in Mr. Sackville’s body.”
Hodges’s hands closed into fists. He exhaled heavily a few times. “The tricks with the strychnine were ghastly enough. Arsenic, too?”
“Arsenic, too. How frequently did Mr. Sackville take his whisky?”
“Almost—” Hodges blew out another shaky breath. “Almost every day, but he never took more than a thimbleful or two.”
“On what occasions did he not take it?”
“When the weather was warm, he might ask to have a glass of wine instead. The cellar keeps the wine cool.”
“I believe I’ve asked you this before, but let me ask you again, Mr. Hodges. Do you know of anyone—specifically, anyone in this house—who might have wished Mr. Sackville dead?”
A muscle leaped at the corner of Hodges’s jaw, but his answer was firm. “No.”
“Do you know of anyone who might have wanted him to suffer?”
The gastric attacks Mr. Sackville had endured in recent months were most likely not gastric attacks at all, but the effects of arsenic.
Hodges unclenched and clenched his hands again. “No, Inspector. We don’t have that sort of lowlife in this house.”
Tommy Dunn echoed that opinion. “Ain’t no master more generous than Mr. Sackville. And a new master mayn’t even want us to work for him. Why would anyone hurt him?”
He made a valid point. For a servant to poison the master of the house was for him to endanger his own livelihood, especially in a hired house like this, with no one coming to inherit the property. The next tenant might very well bring a full complement of retainers.
Treadles asked Dunn about Mr. Hodges leaving the servants’ hall while Mrs. Meek and someone else discussed the merits of the house and of the master.
“Was that you or was that Becky Birtle?”
“Must have been Becky. Don’t remember nothing like that.”
“Weren’t you there?”
“No. Went back to me own room after supper.”
“I understand you didn’t get on with Becky Birtle.”
Hostility darkened Tommy Dunn’s face. “She thinks too much of herself, that girl.”
There was an excess of antagonism in his expression; a high opinion of herself couldn’t be the only thing that bothered him about Becky Birtle.
“Did you feel a sense of affection for her before your sentiments turned?”
The young man snorted. “What? You asking if I fancied her?”
“Yes.”
“Never. She’s a scrawny girl—bony like a goat. Didn’t do a thing for me.”
“Then why did you come to dislike her?”
Dunn shrugged, but his jaw was held so tight a vein bulged on his neck. “Like I said, she gave herself airs.”
Something had happened to derail a once friendly enough association, but Treadles was not going to get it from Dunn.
“Do you know anything about a whisky decanter that’s gone missing?
“Caught Mrs. Cornish in my room looking for it. She said she didn’t think I took it, but someone might have hid it under my bed or something. Can’t say I believe her.”
Treadles did not enjoy this aspect of his work. A murder investigation unearthed not only deeply held, obsessively nursed grievances, but a plethora of everyday resentments. The undercurrents that would have otherwise remained beneath the surface for the foreseeable future.
One didn’t need to be naive to enjoy the idea of a harmonious household, where the master was gentlemanly and considerate and the servants dutiful to their employer and kind to one another. To not believe in the possibility was to become the kind of cynic who suspected every ordinary establishment of seething with acrimony and discontent.
And Robert Treadles had been such a fortunate man—he owed it to himself not to go down the all-too-easy route of skepticism and disenchantment.
As there was nothing to be gained by interviewing Jenny Price again, Treadles called in Mrs. Meek, who arrived in a high state.
“Is it true, Inspector, that Mr. Sackville had been poisoned with arsenic?”
Treadles had expected that the news would have spread. “I’d like to know who came to you with the information.”