The Swordmaster's Mistress: Dangerous Deceptions Book Two(25)

‘No, Mr Hunt. None now. I have been unable to detect any odours which might have helped my diagnosis.’ He said something, low-voiced, to Jared about stomach contents and Guin pressed the handkerchief to her mouth until the desire to vomit had passed.

‘Twite.’ That was Jared again. ‘Do you have a tactful, discreet footman, one who can go round to Lady Fulborne’s house and discover if there have been reports of anyone else taking sick? Someone who can manage it without revealing what has occurred here? If there has been an outbreak of food poisoning this death would have a straightforward, if tragic, explanation.’

‘At once, sir.’ Twite hurried out.

‘Mr Hunt,’ Guin said, from behind the screen. ‘I do not think my husband ate anything that I did not, last night at the ball. You ate at the buffet also. We are both perfectly well.’

‘Shellfish are notoriously dangerous, Lady Northam,’ the doctor interjected. ‘It could take just one bad oyster, crab or lobster.’

‘Augustus did not eat shellfish of any kind,’ she objected.

‘What are those on the floor? Be careful, Doctor, you almost crushed them with your foot. See? Here, let me gather them up.’ A moment later Jared came around the screen, his hands cupped around something that glittered. ‘Lady Northam, do you know what these are? There are five of them.’

She picked one up, a crumpled little silver-paper square about three inches across. ‘It is a sweet wrapper. But it should not be in here, Augustus was not supposed to eat sweetmeats. You forbade it yourself, Doctor.’

‘I did indeed, and without much effect by the look of it. There is an uneaten one here beside the bed. Marchpane I would guess.’

‘Marchpane? Peter, find Faith and bring her here please.’ Jared came round the screen and looked at her, one eyebrow raised enquiringly. ‘I sent her away, it did not seem fair to inflict this – ’ she waved a hand to encompass the room ‘ – on her. She will not have gone far.’ The maid came and hesitated in the doorway. ‘Faith, where did you put that box of sweetmeats that came from Parmentier’s yesterday?’

‘Oh, my lady, you said to hide it away from his lordship and I did, I am certain I did. I put it in the cupboard in your sitting room, I can recall as clear as day. But the box is back on the table again. I am sorry, my lady, if it was my error, and I did get held up with that that fuss over heating the smoothing irons on the kitchen range. I got to arguing with – ’

‘Never mind that now. Did you, or did you not, put the box in the cupboard?’

‘I would have sworn that I did, my lady. But it is on the table again now, so perhaps I didn’t.’ Faith looked ready to cry. ‘Is that what caused it?’

She was normally very reliable, conscientious to a fault. Guin kept her voice gentle. ‘We do not know. If you did forget, then it was a genuine mistake. Just go and fetch it for the doctor, Faith.’

‘No. Show me,’ Jared said. ‘Do not touch it.’

‘I will come too. Follow us out and stand outside the door, let no-one in until I return,’ Doctor Felbrigg instructed the footman.

They all trooped along the corridor to Guin’s sitting room and stood around the table where the box sat in the middle.

‘When we left it the top was back on properly, my lady, not like this,’ Faith offered. ‘I had set it back nice and square and tied the ribbon and then you said to put it away so that his lordship wasn’t tempted to take one. I said to myself that I’d do it when I had ordered your bath water and I’d swear that I did.’

‘But you were all in a bustle and there was a lot to do,’ Guin suggested. ‘You told yourself you would do it, so perhaps, in your mind, you thought you had.’

‘Yes, my lady,’ Faith said miserably. ‘Perhaps.’

Jared reached over and lifted the lid, turning back the silver paper that lay over the contents with his fingertips. ‘Six, no, eight are missing.’

‘When I came home from the dressmaker it had been delivered and I had a fondant and Faith had one of the crystallised fruits, I think.’

‘Orange it was, my lady.’

‘And you were expecting to receive these sweetmeats? Or were they a surprise present?’

‘Aug… My husband had placed a regular order for a box each week from Parmentier’s. But they should know not to include marchpane which I do not like and which Augustus adores… adored. I was surprised when I opened this box to see them.’

‘So you would not have been tempted to even nibble at one?’ When she shook her head the doctor strode out and came back a few minutes later with a small box that had once held soap in his hands. ‘I have put the remaining marchpane and the wrappers in here. They must be tested by a chemist. The Coroner may well decide to have the entire box tested.’

Guin sat down on the nearest chair. It felt as though the tendons in her legs had been cut. ‘Poison? You suspect that Augustus was deliberately poisoned? By eating the sweetmeats in my box?’

‘We cannot rule it out, Lady Northam. We have to check everything, you know.’ Doctor Felbrigg’s bedside manner seemed unshakeable, but his face betrayed him. That was exactly what he thought.

Not an accident, not a heart attack. Time seemed to have slowed to a sticky, slow-moving trickle. Guin turned to look up at Jared, still and dark and grim-faced like an angel of death in the room. ‘You said they were not trying to kill. You said they were an inept assassin,’ she said. ‘Now look! They have murdered Augustus and what have you done to prevent it?’