Too Close to the Sun (54 page)

Letters, envelopes, pencils, erasers, pins, two boxes of matches. Grace moved her fluttering fingers over the items that faced her in the drawer, at once trying not to disturb their seeming unordered order, and at the same time investigating the various contents. There was something there that drew her attention, but she passed on, looking for the reference. It was not there. She looked up at the housekeeper, and gave a little shake of the head, sighed, closed the drawer, and pulled on the middle one. Again, unlocked. And there, before her eyes, was a fresh envelope addressed:
To Whom it may concern
. And opening the envelope, Grace took out the page inside and read the words in Edward’s distinctive handwriting:

Dear Sir, Madam,

I have pleasure in recommending to you the services of one Euphemia Timkins who has for the past year plus been in my employ at Asterleigh House
. . .

‘Here it is,’ said Grace, holding up the envelope in one hand, the letter in the other. ‘Success at last.’ She put the letter back into the envelope, stepped across the floor and put it into Mrs Sandiston’s hand. ‘Here – please give it to Effie, and tell her I’m sorry it’s been so delayed.’

Mrs Sandiston thanked her, put the envelope into her pocket, then said, ‘D’you want me to lock up, ma’am?’ standing hesitantly with her keys in her left hand.

A moment passed, a moment that would change Grace’s
life, and Grace said, ‘Not for a minute or two. Leave the key and I’ll bring it down to you.’

‘Very well.’ Mrs Sandiston nodded, clearly not happy with the proposal, for it was against the usual practice. ‘I’ll come back and lock up when you’re through, ma’am.’

‘Thank you – just give me ten minutes.’

Grace stood there while the sound of Mrs Sandiston’s footsteps faded on the stairs. She looked down at the desk before her. The centre drawer was still open. She glanced over its contents and then pushed it shut. And then turned her gaze to the drawer on the left, the one she had opened first.

After a moment she gingerly grasped the handle and slid the drawer open.

She stood looking down at the interior of the open drawer, and her eyes moved to focus on the object that had distracted her: an envelope, folded over, with contents that rattled dimly when the drawer was moved. An envelope, unsealed, that had spilled a little of its contents with the shifting of the drawer.

Turning, stepping away, she crossed to the door and silently closed it.

Back before the desk, she looked again at the envelope and the two or three seeds that had spilled from it.

This was what had attracted her – the seeds that had rattled into the corner of the drawer from the envelope’s aperture. The seeds had struck a chord in her somewhere.

Tentatively she reached in and picked up the seeds that had spilled into the drawer. Then she took up the envelope in her right hand, tipped it, and spilled a number of the seeds into her palm.

They were quite large, the size of a pea, and of a light brown colour. They looked like mottled beans. Her immediate thought was surprise that such things should be kept in a secluded place like this. What were they, and what
were they for? In her experience Edward had never been overly interested in matters horticultural, and she could not entertain the idea that he would be starting now. While the questions went through her mind, there in some other part of her brain a little bell rang again. She stood there with the seeds in her hand trying to think what that something was.

It would not come. After a few moments she tipped most of the seeds back into the envelope and, keeping five or six still in her hand, put the envelope back and closed the drawer.

From the study she went to the kitchen where she found Mrs Sandiston, and told her that the study could now be locked again. Afterwards she went into the sewing room, her little lair, where no one came but she and Billy and the maid. A fire had been lighted and she sat by the fireside and laid the seeds out on the small table at her elbow.

And then as she looked at them it came to her; she knew where they had come from.

At once she got up, left the room and went to the conservatory. It had been long ago that her attention had been drawn to the plant, but she remembered the incident. She rarely went into the conservatory, but now as she entered the smell and warmth swept over her with such familiarity as if it had been only yesterday when she had last been inside. Turning to her right she moved past the stunted palms, the lush green of the ferns with their sweet, sickly scent and then past the wicker chair, the sofa and table. She moved past the spot where on its ornate stand the birdcage had hung – gone now, like the small songbirds, those songbirds that had refused to sing – to a place beside a tall, prickly shrub that in the ripeness of summer had born such strange fruit. The plant she sought was no longer there.

It had been there; she had seen it herself. She could recall Edward’s words as she had looked at the plant, telling her that it carried a deadly poison. She could almost see the
plant in front of her – very tall, with palm-like leaves, toothed at the edges. She could remember its ripened fruit, too, see again the bean-like seeds. But the plant was not there now. However, there was a space where the plant had stood, so she was not mistaken.

For a moment as she stood there she considered going to see Mr Clutter. He would surely remember removing the plant – if indeed he had been the one to remove it. Further, he would know the name of the plant; he might even recognize the seeds.

But something held her back from going to see him. If she spoke to him there was no knowing to whom he might casually report her enquiry. And then how to explain it? The fact of the place at which she had found the seeds – Edward’s private drawer – could put her in a difficult position. For the time being, she thought, she would try to keep things from general knowledge.

And then she remembered the name of the plant – the English name; they had joked about it: the
castor oil
plant. She remembered too that there was in existence a picture of it.

Often when Billy got in from school he went straight to seek out Grace. But not every day. So today, to try to ensure that she saw him without delay, Grace left word with the maid to tell him that she wished to see him. He found her in the drawing room, waiting for him. He was going out again, he told her; to join one of his schoolfriends. Grace said she wouldn’t keep him long, and after asking him how school had gone that day, moved at once to the subject uppermost in her mind.

‘Billy, you drew pictures of many of the plants in the conservatory, didn’t you?’

‘You know I did,’ he said. ‘So did you. Sometimes we drew them together, or I did them with Mrs Spencer.’

‘Yes. There was one plant in particular – it’s gone now – that we both made drawings of.’

‘Which one?’ He was impatient to be gone.

‘It was a tallish plant near where the birdcage stood. I think it was the castor oil plant.’

‘Oh, yes, the castor oil plant.’ Then he added, smiling at his own smugness, ‘Genus
ricinus communis
.’

‘You remember its Latin name even.’

‘It was written on the little plate.’

‘I threw my drawing away, I’m sorry to say.’

‘I’ve still got mine.’

Grace smiled. ‘I was hoping you’d say that. I thought you would. I know you never throw anything out. Can you get it for me – your drawing?’

‘Now?’

‘Is that inconvenient?’

‘I was going out as soon as I’ve had something to eat.’

‘It won’t take you long, surely.’

Twenty minutes later Billy was handing Grace one of his sketchbooks, opened to a page showing a drawing of the plant. Grace looked at the sketch of the large plant with its huge, handsome, fan-like leaves and bristly, spined clusters of fruits.

‘May I borrow this?’ Grace asked.

‘Of course. What d’you want it for?’

‘I just want to borrow it for a while.’

‘All right.’ She hadn’t answered his question, but he did not pursue it. ‘I’m going out now, then,’ he said, ‘as soon as I’ve had some tea.’

Left alone, Grace sat looking at the sketchbook page. Beneath the drawing Billy had written the date that he had made it, and also
Ricinus communis
– a name he had obviously copied from the plant’s label in the conservatory. After a few moments Grace got up from her seat and, leaving the room, made her way to the library.

It did not take long to find the right book, and soon she had found a page on which was a description of the plant. And there was a small drawing too, not as fine as Billy’s but informative, nevertheless.

The article, after describing the plant – to her surprise, she read that some specimens grew to thirty or forty feet in height – went on to say:

… Although the plants are probably native to Africa and Asia they have become naturalized throughout the tropical world. They are chiefly cultivated in India and Brazil where they are largely grown for their oil in pharmaceutical and industrial usage …

The article then spoke briefly of the plant’s poisonous properties. When Grace had read it she read through it again, and on a piece of paper made some notes, after which she closed the book and put it back on the shelf.

The next morning, Grace decided to go to Corster, and eschewing the notion of having Rhind or Johnson drive her, she walked to the station and there caught a train into the town where she bought some silk colours and linen. Having finished her shopping in good time, she set off for the station and there caught the train heading back to Berron Wick. She got off the train, however, when it reached Liddiston, and there made her way to an address in Willow Street, close to the station. According to the card that Dr Mukerjee had given her when he had called on the occasion of Billy’s fall, he held surgery in his house on weekdays from ten o’clock until twelve. When she rang the bell at the front door of his house it was close on 11.30.

A maid showed her into the doctor’s waiting room on the left of the hall and after Grace had given her name the woman went away, closing the door behind her. There was
no one else in the room. Sitting on a sofa, Grace began to glance through a copy of that morning’s
Times
that had been left on the coffee table. She did not have to wait long. After just three or four minutes the door opened and Dr Mukerjee stood there in his frock coat, smiling at her in greeting and speaking her name.

‘Mrs Spencer.’

Grace gave him her hand. ‘Good morning, Doctor.’

‘Please, come into the surgery.’

He opened the door to the hall and Grace allowed herself to be ushered through into the room opposite. There beside his desk she sat down.

The doctor asked after Billy’s health and after her own. Replying to the latter question, she said that she had been well except for the fact that she sometimes had difficulty sleeping. ‘I’m sure it’s just a passing thing,’ she added, ‘but perhaps you could let me have something that would help.’

The doctor asked if she was being kept awake by worries of any kind, and she replied that she was not.

‘Do you drink a lot of coffee?’ he asked. ‘Coffee is a stimulant.’

‘I drink very little.’

‘Perhaps you need more exercise,’ he said with a smile, and Grace, with a smile in reply, said that perhaps she did.

Anyway, the doctor said, he would give her a little chloral hydrate and a prescription for more when it was required. She should take it at night, though she must not, of course, exceed the dose. No, she said, she would not do so. He went out of the room then, and returned a few minutes later with a small bottle of what looked to be fine crystals. He placed it on his desk then wrote out a small label for it and stuck it on the bottle. That done, he wrote out the prescription for her to take to the chemist.

‘Just take the chloral in water as directed,’ he said as he
pushed the bottle across the desk towards her. Then he looked down at the written prescription. ‘Was there anything else?’ When Grace said there was not, he signed the paper, blotted the ink and handed it to her with a little inclination of his head. Grace thanked him and said there was no need to send his bill to the house, she would pay it now. He was slightly surprised at this, but covered his surprise immediately and said, ‘But of course.’

When Grace had paid her little bill she put the receipt in her bag along with the prescription and the medicine. There in her bag also were the seeds and Billy’s little sketchbook. Dr Mukerjee moved in his seat, expecting her to rise. But she remained where she was.

‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘while I’m here there’s just one other thing …’

‘Yes, what is that?’

‘You’re from India, I believe.’

‘That is correct.’ He nodded. ‘I’m from Calcutta. Though I have lived in England for a number of years.’ He frowned slightly, showing his puzzlement at her question.

‘It’s just that –’ Grace said, smiling, ‘perhaps you can settle something – a little disagreement with my young brother.’

He smiled back. ‘Well, if I can, certainly – anything that will help to pour oil on troubled waters.’

‘You practised in India, did you?’

‘Yes, but –’

She took the sketchbook from her bag, opened it at the drawing and laid it on the desk before him. ‘I wondered,’ she said, ‘if you would be familiar with this plant. I’m given to understand that it grows commonly in India. It’s found also in Brazil, I believe and in Africa and –’

He broke in, cutting her off: ‘That’s the castor oil plant. Oh, yes, that’s well known in India.’

‘The castor oil plant.’

‘That’s what it’s commonly known as. Because we get castor oil from it.’

‘And it grows in Brazil also …’

‘Yes, Brazil, Siam – and many African countries. It needs a hot climate to really grow tall. Though it’s not exactly a good plant to have growing around a house. Particularly where you might have small children.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because of the poisonous nature of its seeds. They’re deadly. Some people find the plants very attractive, and they’re used in gardens for landscaping. Well, in the tropics they can grow so tall – very impressive plants indeed.’