A Study in Scarlet Women (Lady Sherlock #1)(64)

The character of the interior had changed, too. With the beauty of the coast obscured, it did not have the same airiness and sparkle. Instead Treadles felt an intense isolation, made only more stark by the unrelenting prettiness of the décor.

Before Treadles’s arrival, Sergeant MacDonald, with two local constables in tow, had made a search of the entire property. Two sources of arsenic had been found. One, located in the kitchen, had been dyed red—as required by law to prevent accidental misuse. The other, a box of white arsenic kept for killing mice, was in the storeroom.

This was more or less normal for a household of this scale and provided no immediate clues as to who might have used it. Not to mention, even though one had to sign for the purchase of white arsenic, with forethought, a would-be poisoner could always find an unscrupulous chemist some distance away and make the transaction untraceable.

For this was a poisoner with forethought. No arsenic had been found in the contents of the dead man’s stomach, but it had seeped into his hair and nails, indicating a long-term poisoner at work.

Then what happened? Why did the poisoner change tactics? What made it imperative that Mr. Sackville must die immediately, rather than at an indeterminate future date?

And did it have something to do with Becky Birtle having been a rather impertinent girl?

“Can you tell me something of the traffic into and out of the storeroom, Mrs. Cornish?”

They were again in her office, but the housekeeper didn’t radiate as much command over her fiefdom as she had the previous time—knowing that Mr. Sackville had been murdered couldn’t possibly be easy on anyone at Curry House. “The storeroom is usually locked,” she said, with determined self-possession. “Cake and biscuits are kept inside and we don’t want Jenny Price getting into them. But Mr. Hodges has a key—he took cocoa and sugar for making Mr. Sackville’s morning cup. Mrs. Meek, too, when she wanted a nice tureen for soup.

“And sometimes I give Tommy Dunn my key. The staff receive three meals a day and tea besides. But it’s hard work he does. I don’t mind him taking a few extra biscuits for himself.”

“So everyone, other than Jenny Price, goes in and out of that room.” This wasn’t helpful to Treadles’s investigation at all.

“That’s right. There’s no wine or beer in it—those are in a locked cellar. No silver either. And no one has ever taken anything they oughtn’t from the storeroom. But Inspector, why are you interested in who can pinch arsenic when Mr. Sackville died of too much chloral?”

Treadles glanced down at his notes. “You didn’t mention Becky Birtle. Did she have access to the storeroom?”

“From time to time I asked her to fetch something for me. But surely you can’t suspect a child?”

Treadles didn’t answer this question either. “The morning of Mr. Sackville’s death, when you went into his room, had the curtains been opened yet?”

Mrs. Cornish blinked. “I’m sure I don’t remember. There was Mr. Sackville so cold and all. I paid no mind to the curtains.”

“Had the curtains been closed, you would have needed to open them to see.”

“I don’t remember anything about the curtains—they must have been open.”

She exuded respectability. It demanded nothing of Treadles’s imagination to envisage her picture gracing the cover of The Experienced English Housekeeper. Would she lie?

And more importantly, if she lied, what was the reason? What would impel her to spare him the impression that the housemaid might have been up to no good?

“I would like to see a photograph of Becky Birtle.”

The abrupt change of subject had Mrs. Cornish reaching for her teacup. “She didn’t leave behind any.”

“Tell me something of her character then.”

Mrs. Cornish added what appeared to Treadles an excessive amount of sugar to her tea. “Becky is at a . . . trying age. She thinks she’s a woman full-grown and doesn’t care to be told different. But she has a good heart. In a few years she ought to turn out a fine young woman.”

“When do you expect her to return to Curry House?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you, Inspector. Now that her parents know Mr. Sackville was murdered, I dare say they wouldn’t like for her to come back at all.”

Did Treadles hear a note of relief in Mrs. Cornish’s voice? She had reasons to be concerned for her own respectability—it would not reflect well on her, as head of the staff, if it became known that Becky Birtle had conducted herself in a questionable manner. But was that Mrs. Cornish’s only worry?

“You asked earlier, Mrs. Cornish, why I’m inquiring after arsenic when Mr. Sackville died from an overdose of chloral. The answer is we have found arsenic in Mr. Sackville, indicating that someone has been poisoning him.”

Mrs. Cornish started violently. “No!”

Treadles went on. “That someone most likely had frequent access to him. Since Mr. Sackville was more or less a recluse, that limits the suspects to members of the household.”

“But—but what a horrible thought.”

“Unfortunately that is the case.”

“But he died of chloral. And no one in this house knows how to burgle two different doctors’ places.”

That was the puzzling part. But Treadles had learned, in his years as a detective, that those in service were a far more diverse lot than commonly presumed. It was not unheard of for the servant hall to harbor a few who had known the shadier side of life.