Joe slammed the brown paper parcel down onto the table and slid out of it a leather-bound book.
“Dr. Hartest. Please be so good as to open this tome at page three hundred and seven, will you, and read out the recipe you’ll find there.”
Adelaide reached forward and took the book. “It’s something called The Accomplisht Ladie’s Companion,” she said, mystified.
Mrs. Bolton gasped and glowered at Ben, who was beginning to look a little shaken.
“And here it says: Receit for the bating of horses. A sovereign receit for keeping a horse in its rightful place. Will stop a horse in its tracks on the open road. Caution: will rouse ire and acute ill-temper in the creature if used against it in a confined space. Require your servant to collect together the following ingredients …” Adelaide looked up, sickened. “They’re all listed if anyone wants to see them … Stoat’s liver, cat’s urine, rat’s blood …”
“We’ll never know at whose instigation the ingredients were collected together. No difficulty in harvesting the essential one—the stoat remains. These were freely available to anybody walking about the estate, where they were regularly displayed on a spiked fence by Goodfellow. In the few hours available to our conspirator, the recommended maceration time in noxious fluids had to be ignored. Not a problem to a mind unimpressed by magic, a mind that saw through the hocus pocus to the essential effective ingredient. I’d have harvested half a dozen stoat livers, added a few rat entrails for bulk and stirred up the whole mess with a touch of urine from a house chamber pot. Perhaps our modern-day apothecary can inform us? I do know from Grace herself that the authority she consulted was …” Joe turned, not for cheap emphasis, but to do the accused the courtesy of looking her in the eye. “You—Cecily, Lady Truelove.
“And you, in turn, Cecily, consulted and conspired with your trusted friend and retainer, Enid Bolton.
“The plan devised by the two women was known to Truelove …” Joe asserted a fact for which he had no evidence and left a pause in which Truelove might have registered a denial. He did not, in the end, have the gall to leave his mother and his housekeeper to carry the can. “They arranged for James to be seen by the servants crossing over to spend the night at the Dower House.”
The group had fallen silent.
“This was murder. Nothing less. A plot which led to a shocking and painful death. We have the answers to the two questions I set you: The victim of murder? Lavinia. Her killer? The Truelove Household. A conspiracy of three: You, James; you, Enid; but principally, you, Cecily.”
Loyal old Sir Basil Ripley had heard enough. He got to his feet and pointed an accusing finger at Joe. “Not another word, young man! So this is the new policing you were so keen on, James? Is this truly a sample of your appointees? Where did you recruit him? Auditioning for a part in the latest shocker on the wireless? Sherlock Holmes with his dubious detective skills? Or was he trying for Inspector Lestrade with his clumping feet and his clunking logic? I can see no more advantage or entertainment in listening to this man’s ravings. What are you waiting for, James? Have him thrown out.”
Support for Joe came from an unexpected quarter. “Siddown, Ripley! You’ll do no such thing, Truelove! Now—carry on, Assistant Commissioner Sandilands.” Guy Despond pronounced his rank with careful emphasis.
“Hear, hear!” said McIver. “Let him at least get to the end. I do enjoy a good story.”
“Yes, go on, Joe.” Cecily’s voice. Sweet and reasonable. “I do hope you’re going to do justice to my motive for indulging in all this chicanery. You’re very nearly there.”
“A wasted lifetime? Is that strong enough? How it must have irked your ladyship to see all your sacrifices—your money, your years spent fostering the family of a man of dubious fidelity—come to nothing. You did your duty by him. You produced four children. You made a considerable investment in the line and to see it shrivelling away in the hands of a daughter-in-law you despised was more than you could bear. Her degrading behaviour at the dinner table that night in April signed her death warrant as far as you were concerned. You had to secure the future to validate your own past. I attribute the inspiration for the plot to you. As you told me candidly early on in my investigation—it’s a woman’s crime.
“You, Enid. For you, Lavinia had to die to preserve the household. To keep the house, as you always have. If Truelove failed, the whole establishment would have faltered and gone under, as other neighbouring estates have done, and been sold off, their staff released into a cold world with no chance of re-employment. The prospects for the older servants—I speak of you and Mr. Styles—were grim. Weighed in the balance against Truelove’s sparkling prospects, an injection of cash and a new heir to the family, Lavinia’s life counted for little. She represented a deficit in your book and you are a meticulous bookkeeper. You believed it the right moment to do a little judicious balancing. You had the means and the knowledge, and the practical aspects of the plot from the gingerbread onwards were left to you. I believe the lives of Dorcas Joliffe and Grace Aldred would have been at risk if a further adjustment had become necessary.”