The Clue is in the Pudding (5 page)

“But—”

Gertie crossed her arms. “You don’t say nothing about this to
nobody
. Not even Samuel. Got it?”

Pansy sighed. “All right. Not even Samuel.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, I promise.”

“Swear on your mother’s grave.”

Pansy looked mournful. “I don’t have no mother.”

“You did sometime. Somewhere.”

“How do I know she’s in a grave?”

“Why else would you end up in an orphanage?”

Pansy stared hard at the saucer. “I don’t know.”

Sorry she’d brought up the subject, Gertie put an arm around her. “Never mind, luv. You’ve got me, and madam, and Mrs. Chubb. We’re your family now.”

Pansy managed a wobbly smile. “Yeah. The best family I could have, too.”

The door swung open just then and Beatrice swept in, her face red and her eyes blazing. “Are you two still here? You should have been up in the dining room ages ago. I thought I told you to put more coals in the stove. What’s the matter with you? Are you deaf or just stupid?”

Gertie turned, her mouth already forming the torrent of words to fling at the housekeeper. Just in time, she caught sight of Pansy’s expression. Her friend looked terrified. It occurred to Gertie then that it might be better not to get the old bat riled up at her. Pansy was right. Tucker the Terrible might be tempted to put poison in everyone’s tea.

Instead, she wiped her hands on her apron and went over to the coal scuttle. It was half-empty, and she chucked the rest of the coals into the stove and closed the door. “I’d better go and fill up the scuttle before I go upstairs,” she said, and before the housekeeper could answer, Gertie was out the door and charging across the yard to the coal shed.

She had almost reached it when a deep voice called out her name. Turning, she saw Clive striding toward her, the wind ruffling his black hair. As always when she first caught sight of him, she felt a flutter of excitement deep in her stomach.

Clive wasn’t handsome, like Dr. Prestwick, but he had a kind face with dark eyes that always made her feel warm inside when he looked at her. She always forgot how big and brawny he was until he was standing over her and reminded her all over again. She liked that she had to look up at him. She wasn’t used to that. It made her feel protected and safe when she was with him.

He was smiling as he stopped in front of her. “Good morning, Gertie.” He reached out and smoothed back a stray strand of her hair. “How are you this fine morning?”

She smiled back at him. “Better now that I’ve seen you.”

His grin widened. “Seeing you always makes my day brighter.” He bent over and took the coal scuttle out of her hand. “Here, I’ll fill this for you.”

“Thanks!” She watched him open the shed door and step inside, wondering if he knew that one of her least favorite jobs was filling the scuttle. Something about walking into that dark, smelly, dusty hole always gave her the creeps.

Probably because she’d once found a maid buried among the lumps of coal. Every time she shoveled the gleaming black lumps into the metal container she thought about the moment she’d spotted the maid’s shoe and realized it was attached to the foot of a dead body. She’d fainted dead away, and it had been weeks before the nightmares had stopped.

Even watching Clive shovel the coal made her all shivery inside. She was glad when he’d filled the scuttle and stepped outside again into the cold, fresh air.

She held out her hand to take the scuttle from him, but he shook his head. “I’ll carry it back to the kitchen for you.”

If it had been anyone else, she would have grabbed it from him, insisting she was quite capable of carrying it herself. After all, there were women out there giving up their lives for women’s rights and independence, and she fully supported their struggles.

It was time men realized that women were human beings, not slaves to their every whim. Women were quite capable of making decisions, changing lives and even ruling countries. All they needed was the chance to prove themselves, but men were too afraid to let them because deep down they knew they would lose their power over them.

With Clive it was different, somehow. It felt good to have him do things for her. She tripped alongside him, forgetting all her worries about food poisoning and Tucker the Terrible. It was enough to have these few minutes by the side of the man she loved.

The man she loved.

The truth hit her like a bolt of lightning. She stopped, stunned by the realization and terrified by its consequences. She had fought against this very thing for so long, determined not to risk her heart again. After all she’d been through, how could she have let this happen? What the blue blazes was the matter with her, that she had let herself fall into yet another trap?

Furious with herself, she snatched the handle of the scuttle and dragged it out of Clive’s hand. “I’ll take this. You’ve got work to do.” She couldn’t look at his face, for fear of what she might see there. Keeping her head down, she charged across the yard and through the kitchen door.

Beatrice looked up as Gertie barreled across the kitchen, barely stopping to drop the scuttle in front of the stove before barging through the opposite door and out into the hallway. She didn’t stop running until she was at the door of the dining room. By then she was out of breath and had to hold onto the door while she got it back.

Pansy was laying tables, and looked up as Gertie stumbled into the room. “Whatever’s the matter?” She dropped the spoons on the table and hurried over to her. “Are you ill?”

“Yeah, I am.” Still gulping in air, Gertie leaned one hand on the nearest table. “Sick in the head, that’s me.”

Pansy frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.” Gathering the last of her wits, Gertie picked up a handful of silverware. “Let’s get these tables laid before the old bat comes screaming after us.”

“But—”

Gertie raised her hand. “I’m all right, Pansy. Just out of breath, that’s all.”

Pansy stared hard at her. “You don’t look all right. You’re all white and shivering. You must be catching a cold.”

“Yeah, that’s what it is.” Gertie somehow summoned up a grin. “You’d better stay away from me if you don’t want to catch it.”

Pansy backed off, though she still looked unconvinced.

Gertie turned her back on her and started laying out the place settings. Thank the Lord for work. She needed to keep her mind off what she’d just discovered. She needed to see her twins, to remind her why falling in love with Clive Russell was absolutely the worst mistake she could ever make. She needed to remember how she felt when she found out that Ian was married, or when Ross died, or when Dan told her he was moving back to London without her.

She needed to fall out of love with Clive Russell, and the sooner the better.

CHAPTER

5

Cecily was in her office when Kevin Prestwick called on her. She had barely got a greeting out before he informed her that Beatrice Tucker had destroyed every one of the Christmas puddings.

Her first thought was utter dismay that now there would be no flaming puddings to carry into the dining room. Her second thought was that the housekeeper had something to hide.

“It means, of course,” Kevin said, pacing back and forth in front of her desk, “that we have no way of pinning down the source of the poison.”

Grasping at straws, she murmured, “Of course, it might not have been the pudding that killed Mr. Armitage. It could have been something else. Perhaps the pork, though the butcher is always so careful to see that it’s properly cured. Besides, I ate it myself and since no one else appears to have taken ill, I don’t—”

“Cecily.” Kevin stopped pacing and placed both his hands on the desk. Leaning forward he said quietly, “Armitage died from an ingestion of an arsenide compound. Commonly used in rat poison.”

“Oh, my.” Cecily clutched her throat. “Mrs. Chubb always keeps a supply of rat poison in the pantry. Do you think some of it could have fallen into the pudding mixture? I can’t imagine that Michel would be so careless. Then again, he takes a sip now and then from the brandy bottle and—”

Once more Kevin interrupted her. “The amount it would take to kill a person that quickly would not have been there accidentally. Either Armitage had been ingesting arsenic over a period of time and it finally caught up with him, or someone put a heavy dose of the stuff into something he ate. Either way, these are very definitely suspicious circumstances.”

So there it was. Much as she’d tried to suppress it, ever since she’d first heard of the death, she’d had the feeling that Archibald Armitage had been murdered. Now it was confirmed, and it was possible that her temporary housekeeper had killed him.

“Is there any way to determine whether or not the dose was administered here in the Pennyfoot?”

Kevin shrugged. “Not without evidence of the source.”

“So we have no way of knowing if someone here in the club killed him, or if someone he knew elsewhere had been poisoning him.”

“Precisely. I’m sorry, Cecily. I’ll ring the constabulary for you. I expect P.C. Northcott will pay you a visit this afternoon.”

“No doubt.” Cecily sighed. “I’ll make sure no one touches anything in the room until Sam Northcott has looked at it.”

“Good idea.” Kevin headed for the door. “Though if the poison was in that slice of pudding and the rest of them have been destroyed, I don’t know how the constable is going to prove anything.” He paused and looked back at her. “Be careful, Cecily. It’s possible you have a killer in the Pennyfoot. Again.”

She smiled wearily at him. “Thank you, Kevin.”

He gazed at her for a moment longer, then with a sharp nod of his head, disappeared out the door.

With a heavy heart, Cecily reached for the bellpull and gave it a tug. Another Christmas marred by a violent death. Much as she disliked the temporary housekeeper, she couldn’t bring herself to believe that the woman had actually murdered one of the guests.

If Armitage had been poisoned here, maybe Mrs. Tucker had simply wanted to make him sick, in retaliation for his rudeness. Though even that seemed somewhat harsh treatment for such a feeble crime. Having been in service for most of her life, Beatrice Tucker should be well used to rudeness and insults from her superiors. No matter what Mr. Armitage had said to her, he surely didn’t deserve such an agonizing end.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a tap on the door. Pulling herself together, Cecily cleared her brow. “Come in!”

Pansy tiptoed into the room and bent her knees in a curtsey. “You rang, m’m?”

“Yes, Pansy. I need you to tell Mrs. Tucker that under no circumstances is anyone to enter Mr. Armitage’s room until I say so.”

Pansy drew her brows together. “Yes, m’m. I already cleaned it up, though, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Cecily brushed her fingers across her forehead. “You did what?”

“I cleaned it up, m’m. It were awful, to tell the truth. I kept heaving all the time I was cleaning.”

“Did you bring anything out of the room?”

“Yes, m’m. I did.” She raised her chin and stared at the ceiling, frowning in concentration. “Now let me see. There were newspapers, an empty cigar box, a whiskey bottle and a glass and some books. I left all his clothes and personal things in there, though. Mrs. Tucker said we had to wait and see what you wanted to do about them. Oh, and there was the slice of Christmas pudding that Mrs. Tucker sent up to Mr. Armitage. I s’pose he never had a chance to eat it before he got ill.”

Cecily raised her eyebrows. “The whole slice?”

“Yes, m’m. He hadn’t had one bite of it.”

Thinking hard, Cecily tapped her fingers on her desk. “What did you do with the things you brought out?”

“Mrs. Tucker told me to put everything into a pillowcase and bring it down to the kitchen. She said the things might be com . . . cotimate . . . contimate—”

“Contaminated.” Cecily frowned. “What did she do with them?”

“I think she put them out in the yard, m’m. She said she’d ask you what to do with them later.”

“Very well. I want you to put everything in the coal shed for now, out of the rain. I’ll see to them later.”

“Yes, m’m.” Pansy curtsied and backed up to the door. “Will that be all, m’m?”

“Yes, Pansy. Thank you.” Cecily waved her off and stared at the telephone. With any luck Kevin would have gone straight back to his surgery. She might be able to talk to him within the hour. Right now, she needed to think.

Apparently the Christmas pudding was not the culprit in the death of Archibald Armitage. Therefore it could be that the housekeeper was not directly to blame for his death, after all. Perhaps the gentleman had been ingesting the poison for some time before he came to the Pennyfoot, as Kevin had suggested. That was quite a relief, though she would feel a great deal better if she could be certain of that. All she could do was wait for Kevin to examine the contents of Mr. Armitage’s room and hope fervently that the good doctor could give her some answers.

*   *   *

“Not the Christmas pudding?” Standing at the kitchen sink, Gertie stared at Pansy. “Are you sure?”

Pansy nodded. “I brought down the pudding myself. It’s in a pillowcase in the coal shed, along with everything else. Except Mr. Armitage’s clothes and things. Mrs. Tucker said as how to leave them there.”

Gertie felt a stab of disappointment. She’d had high hopes that the housekeeper would be found guilty of murder and sent to prison, thus freeing them all from the woman’s bad temper and allowing them to enjoy the Christmas season.

Reluctant to give up the idea, she murmured, “Well, the old bat could still have poisoned him with something else.”

“Well, I don’t know what. He ate what everyone else ate.”

“We don’t know that.” Hearing the squeak of the kitchen door, she hastily grabbed a platter and started drying it. Lowering her voice, she muttered, “Maybe Tucker the Terrible sent him up something else to eat.”

“Well, if she did and he ate it, we’ll never know, will we.”

Gertie pursed her lips. “Maybe we can trick her into admitting she did it.”

“How are we going to do that?”

Gertie shrugged. “I dunno. But I’ll think of something.”

“You two stop nattering and get on with those dishes!” The housekeeper’s strident voice made them both jump.

Gertie turned around to face her. “We was just talking about the bloke what died,” she said. “What do you think killed him? Could it be something from this kitchen what poisoned him?”

“Of course not!” The housekeeper jerked her hand, dropping the rolling pin she was holding. It clattered onto the floor, then rolled over to Gertie’s feet.

She bent over to pick it up and offered it back to Beatrice.

The housekeeper’s eyes glinted with temper. “Wash that thoroughly and put it back where it belongs. And if I hear any more gossip about Mr. Armitage’s death, I’ll report you both to madam. Is that clear?”

Gertie rolled her eyes and dumped the rolling pin into the soapy water in the sink. Too bad the old bat hadn’t poisoned the actor. Now they would have to continue to put up with her over Christmas.

She couldn’t wait for Mrs. Chubb to come back from seeing her daughter. If Tucker the Terrible didn’t shut up screaming at them, Gertie thought fiercely, she might be tempted to put poison in the miserable cow’s tea herself.

*   *   *

When Phoebe arrived early that afternoon for the dress rehearsal, Cecily ushered everyone into the ballroom as fast as she could manage. The last thing she wanted was for Phoebe or the members of her dance troupe to find out about the death and start speculating. Word would spread quickly throughout the Pennyfoot and, before she knew it, she’d have guests abandoning Christmas at the club.

Phoebe seemed surprised and a little put out by Cecily’s haste to get rid of her. “Do you have an urgent appointment or something?” she asked, as Cecily closed the doors of the ballroom behind the last dancer.

“I have many urgent appointments.” Aware that she was being somewhat rude to her friend, Cecily forced a smile. “There is always so much to do this time of year.”

“Ah yes.” Phoebe watched her dancers wander onto the stage and shook her head. “Look at them. I don’t know how many times I’ve told them this is a dress rehearsal.” She raised her voice and yelled at the stage. “That means
costumes
, you imbeciles! You are all supposed to be in full costume. Get backstage and
dress
! I want everyone back here, in full costume, in five minutes. Anyone who is later than that will not be performing tomorrow night. Is that clear?”

A weak and ragged chorus of, “Yes, Mrs. Fortescue,” wafted down from the stage. One by one the dancers trudged off behind the curtains and disappeared.

Phoebe shook her head, making the peacock feathers in her hat dance about. “Those girls will be the death of me.” She turned back to Cecily. “Speaking of death, I heard that one of your guests died in his room yesterday. That must have been a dreadful shock. He was a famous actor, wasn’t he? How dreadful. I suppose the news will be in all the newspapers. Those news reporters seem to ferret out these things when it pertains to a famous person.”

Cecily’s dismay quickly turned to annoyance. “Who told you about it?”

Phoebe patted her arm. “My dear, please don’t worry. I shan’t say anything, of course. It wouldn’t do for these girls to find out someone died right here in the Pennyfoot. You know how superstitious those silly girls can be. Why, I’d never get them back in here.”

With an effort Cecily curbed her irritation. “I’m quite sure I can rely on your discretion, Phoebe. I would, however, appreciate knowing who it was told you about Mr. Armitage’s death.”

Phoebe looked offended. “It was Madeline, of course. Freddie and I happened to bump into her on our way out. Freddie very kindly offered her a ride in our carriage, since it was raining and she usually walks all the way home. She said that Kevin would take her home and that he was here attending to Mr. Armitage, who had died in his room. I’m sure she didn’t realize that it was supposed to be such a deep dark secret from me.”

Cecily was quick to make amends. “Of course not,” she said, tucking her arm in Phoebe’s. “I just wondered who else knew besides us. After all, news of a death in the house isn’t exactly conducive for Christmas cheer.”

“Indeed it is not.” Apparently mollified, Phoebe squared her shoulders. “It’s sad, of course, passing away right at Christmastime. It seems so much more tragic, somehow. Though from what I understand, Mr. Armitage was not a very nice person. Why, I heard him myself arguing with one of your guests. Not to speak ill of the dead, but he was quite belligerent, and his language was disgusting.”

Cecily raised her eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware that you were acquainted with Mr. Armitage.”

“Well, not personally, of course, but I certainly recognized him when I saw him. His picture was in the newspaper, together with an article that mentioned he would be spending Christmas at the Pennyfoot. I’m surprised you didn’t see it.”

Taken aback, Cecily took a moment to answer. “I don’t have time to read the newspaper, though Baxter reads it. I’m surprised he didn’t mention it to me.”

“Probably because he knows you would be upset.” Phoebe tilted her head to one side, causing the wide brim of her hat to bounce off her shoulder. “You usually like to keep the identity of your famous guests a secret.”

Sensing she was still a little peeved, Cecily smiled. “Only to the general public, Phoebe, dear. It’s one of our policies, to protect our guests from unwanted intrusions.” Her smile faded. “You said that Mr. Armitage was arguing with one of our guests. Do you happen know who that was?”

Phoebe frowned. “Well, I don’t know his name, but he was quite a portly gentleman, with gray hair and a luxuriant mustache. His wife interrupted the argument, and I do believe he called her Henrietta.”

“Ah.” Cecily nodded. “That would be Sir Reginald Minster and his wife. I don’t suppose you have any idea what they were arguing about?”

Phoebe made a big production of brushing imaginary specks from her skirt. “As a matter of fact, I do. I came upon the gentlemen in the lobby, and rather than pass by them while they were engaged in such a violent confrontation, I hid behind the Christmas tree until they had left.”

Cecily was about to speak when a voice from the stage interrupted her. “Mrs. Fortescue? Ada can’t find her headdress. She says someone stole it.”

“Nonsense.” Phoebe glared up at the young woman. “Tell her to look for it. Remind her she has to move things to find things. I’ll be there in a minute and I expect everyone to be dressed and ready.”

“Yes, Mrs. Fortescue.” The woman turned to go, hesitated, glanced back at Phoebe, then with a shrug of her shoulders, disappeared behind the curtains.

“Such utter ninnies.” Phoebe shook her head, dislodged her hat, and straightened it with a tug from both hands.