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Charlie walked through the garden without much hope of finding the vanished imp. He and the nanny had failed to find Agnes indoors, which the nanny took with a stoic resolution suggestive of this being the usual state of affairs.
He had used the opportunity to question the nanny. On the day of the soirée, the nanny said she had taken Agnes out for a long walk in the park to keep her away from party preparations. Both of them had fallen asleep early in the evening in their rooms off the nursery. Or so the nanny had thought. In fact, Agnes had escaped, of course, and eaten too many cream cakes, naturally. The nanny had not woken until Agnes had complained of a stomach ache, after which, neither left the nursery. The woman was a saint.
Charlie didn’t bother to search the depths of the shrubbery or the dingier corners of the stables. A small child could hide away in the tightest of spaces and he did not wish to dirty his clothes. He was wearing his second-best suit to show the household he was a man of standing. Or, rather, to give the appearance of such on his first full day as a private detective.
He even had a new necktie for the occasion. His mother had presented it to him, right before she burst into tears. It was weirdly reminiscent of a long-ago memory of his mother seeing him off to his first day at school. In contrast, his father had seen Charlie off this morning with a simple handshake. Thomas Pyke had slipped a leather-bound notebook into his pocket, complete with a hidden slot for a slim magnifying lens. His father was a recent devotee of a new author of detective stories, Arthur Conan Doyle, who was also a physician. Charlie dreaded the inevitable day when his father introduced Grace to Sherlock Holmes. Her disappointment would be unbearable, when Charlie failed to provide a complete description of the suspect from a single footprint or the ash from a specific type of pipe tobacco.
A commotion from the direction of the stables took an axe to his musings. Charlie dashed back to the workroom. Declan Kelly emerged, propping up Richard Ormsby, whose bones appeared to have dissolved within his body. Richard’s low moaning resonated with anguish.
Wallace followed close behind, his expression grim. He waited until the others were out of earshot, before coming over to Charlie. “The tutu poison is down to the dregs. Richard Ormsby was sure the bottle was half full the last time he saw it.”
Charlie watched Richard being dragged into the house. “From his reaction, Richard must know what a dreadful death his father suffered. Murder, then?”
“Can’t entirely rule out accidental poisoning at this stage,” Wallace said. “Would you ask Mrs Ormsby to come to the drawing room. Make sure you keep her lady’s maid, Lawson, away. I want to ask each of them separately about how Doctor Ormsby was poisoned.” Wallace paused. “That is, if you don’t mind, Pyke. I know you’re not mine to command any longer, more’s the pity, but I would be grateful for your cooperation.”
“Working together does strike me as the most efficient approach, sir,” Charlie agreed. “I promise to inform you of any evidence I uncover. If it would help, I could talk to Miss Lawson while you interview Mrs Ormsby.”
Charlie found Mrs Ormsby in her bedroom, showing as much sign of animation as the drawn curtains and the mirror draped in black cloth. While her mistress sat silently picking at her black lace shawl, Lawson sat equally silently, stitching a black border onto a handkerchief.
“The police request your presence in the drawing room, Mrs Ormsby.” He held the door open to let her know it was a command, not a choice.
When they reached the drawing room, Charlie ushered Mrs Ormsby through, but held Lawson back. “Please follow me to the salon, Miss Lawson. Miss Penrose will stay here with Mrs Ormsby.”
The lady’s maid looked as if she would resist, but decided better of it when he placed his bulk between her and the door. “What’s all this about, Mr Pyke? Poor Mrs Ormsby wishes to mourn in peace.”
Charlie gestured her to a chair in the salon. “I am required to ask a few questions, Miss Lawson. Firstly, can you tell me your full name and the nature of your employment?”
“Miss Nelly Lawson. Lady’s maid.” She took the offered chair, sitting upright, with her hands resting in her lap. A posture direct from the Guide to Etiquette for the Discerning Lady’s Maid. Her voice was calm and precise, its origins obscured behind a standard English accent.
Charlie entered the details in his new notebook. “You also assist in the workroom, preparing herbal extracts and so forth. Is that correct, Miss Lawson?”
“Yes.”
Charlie remained polite, despite her defiantly uninformative answers. “An unusual role for a lady’s maid. Would you care to elaborate, Miss Lawson.”
“I do as I am asked. Mrs Ormsby and I met on the voyage out to New Zealand, during which time I assisted with her work as a nurse. She’s a qualified nurse, you know. I’m not, but she said I had an aptitude. When we landed, Mrs Ormsby was kind enough to employ me. I’m very grateful.”
Charlie leaned towards her and smiled kindly. “I can see that, Miss Lawson, by the care you take of Mrs Ormsby. A trusted lady’s maid is never more important than during a time of crisis, I imagine.”
Miss Lawson did not so much as blink her doe eyes in reaction to the compliment. “Thank you, sir. I’m sure I do my best by her, as she does by me. Now, how may I help you, Mr Pyke?”
“Mr Richard Ormsby showed us through the workroom.” Charlie noted that Lawson flinched at the sound of Richard’s name, just as she had when she saw him yesterday. “He is most impressed by his stepmother’s skills. I wonder if you might have a look at this bottle and tell me whether you have any like this in the workroom?”
Charlie dug into his Gladstone bag, which had been the doctor’s bag used by Mrs Macmillan’s husband when he was alive. Anne had always been very generous about passing on such items to him, including Doctor Macmillan’s clothes, which allowed Charlie to supplement his own meagre wardrobe with a variety of useful disguises and formal wear. Grace had assured Charlie that no one else had been allowed to touch his possessions, which Charlie took that as a welcome sign of Anne’s favour.
Touching only the top, Charlie drew out one of the small reagent bottles, which Lily had packed for him this morning, brand new from her workroom.
Miss Lawson took the glass bottle between her fingers and thumb. “A standard bottle. Smaller than we use.” She held the bottle out to him, depositing it on a side table when he showed no signs of taking it.
“Mr Richard Ormsby told us Mrs Ormsby had experimented with a native plant called tutu,” Charlie said.
“Oh yes, always trying new ideas is Mrs Ormsby. I helped her extract the active ingredient. Marvellous to think it might be the first time anyone has done it in a laboratory.”
Charlie nodded encouragingly. “Fascinating. Did the poison work on the rats?”
Lawson grimaced. “Horrible to watch, it was. At first, it looked as if they were going to die quietly, but then the rats had the most awful spasms. It took hours for some of them to die.”
“Did Mrs Ormsby throw the poison away afterwards?” Charlie tossed the question out causally. “Or had she used it all up on the rats?”
“There was more than half of it left.” Dawning suspicion seeped into Lawson’s voice, giving it a sharper tone. “Mrs Ormsby was going to throw it away, but other rat poisons were in short supply, so she thought she might keep it. I suggested doubling the dose, so the vermin died quicker, but we were busy with other preparations, so did not try it.”
“When was the last time anyone touched it?”
Lawson’s hands remained still in her lap, but with a definite tightening of the fingers. “To what do these questions tend, Mr Pyke?”
“If you would be so kind as to answer the question, Miss Lawson.”
Lawson took a moment to think. “As far as I recall, it must be close to two weeks since the tutu extract was last used.”
Her growing dismay appeared genuine as she asked the obvious question. “You’re not thinking it had anything to do with Doctor Ormsby’s death, I hope.” Dismay turned to distress as she saw the answer in Charlie’s silence. “Lord have mercy on him, what a way to go. Please, I beg of you, I must go to Mrs Ormsby now. She will need me.”
Lawson darted away before Charlie could stop her. He let her go. She was right – Mrs Ormsby would be in need of comfort. He tucked the reagent bottle carefully into a rack in his bag, labelled with Lawson’s name. If their plan had worked, he had just taken his first fingerprints from a suspect.
After discussion with the Southern Investigations team, Charlie had come prepared with the small bottles of highly polished glass, lightly oiled to preserve fingerprints. His aim was to secure prints from every member of the household, by the simple method of getting each suspect to examine one of bottles. Not as effective as gathering prints using an ink pad and shiny white index cards, but less likely to alert the murderer to their attempts to identify him or her.
Charlie returned to the drawing room, where Lawson was already cradling her mistress. Richard Ormsby watched the pair with narrowed eyes. Charlie slipped across the room to whisper in Wallace’s ear. “Sorry, sir, couldn’t hold the maid back. Should we keep them apart?”
Wallace drew him into the corner to ensure their discussion remained private. “We will have to question them separately, but a few minutes of comfort will be needed after the shock they’ve had. Besides, if any of them caused Ormsby’s death, I doubt they would have mentioned the tutu potion or kept the bottle. Mind you, poisoners tend to be more devious than the average criminal, in my limited experience. What did Lawson say?”
Charlie ran through the main points in a low voice. The evidence of Richard, his stepmother and the lady’s maid all indicated that the tutu poison had not been touched within the last two weeks.
Wallace nodded. “I’ve sent Kelly to telephone for Elliot and Weston, to assist at the formal interviews of the household. You may be present, Pyke, if the interviewee agrees, but I will reserve the right to eject you if circumstances dictate. No offence intended. Must stick by the rules, especially if the evidence is to be used in court–”
On the other side of the drawing room, Grace cleared her throat loudly. When they turned, she waved her hand at the empty chairs. Their suspects had absconded.
Wallace grunted. “Always the same with wealthy folks. Think they can leave whenever it suits them. I will search for them upstairs. Would you and Miss Penrose check the reception rooms?”
Charlie and Grace circled in opposite directions, meeting in a small room at the far side of the salon. The intimate arrangement of chairs and scatter of sheet music on a large chest in the corner indicated the room was used as both a private retreat and a music room. He took Grace’s hand and led her to a beautifully upholstered, but ridiculously narrow sofa. The seat was stuffed to a rock-like consistency, while the backrest curled ornately up to the midpoint, giving no rest to the back of anyone not sitting right in the middle. A piece of furniture less suited to the name “loveseat” was hard to imagine.
Charlie lowered himself gently onto it, in case the spindly legs gave way. “What do you think of the relationships between Richard, Lawson and Mrs Ormsby?”
Grace settled close beside him, the size of the loveseat giving her no other option. “Interesting. Mrs Ormsby and her lady’s maid seem to be unusually close.”
“They met on the voyage out to New Zealand and found they shared interest in nursing and natural remedies.”
“That might explain it. Those long voyages across open ocean can be the making or breaking of a friendship, according to my great-aunt. Richard seems very fond of his stepmother. He’s proud of her skills, I would say.”
Charlie lowered his voice to a whisper. “Too fond, do you think?”
“Charlie! Mrs Ormsby is almost twice Richard’s age and his stepmother. I really don’t see their attachment as improper.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing happened, Grace. Richard certainly doesn’t seem to like Lawson. Both of them flinch when they see each other and go out of their way to avoid contact. Could be jealousy, given the strong bond between the women.”
“Perhaps,” Grace said. “But it struck me that the tension between Richard Ormsby and Nelly Lawson could be an act. It’s only little signs, I admit. His eyes follow her when he thinks nobody is watching. Even when he is deliberately looking away, his body turns towards her. There’s something in the way they both become alert, as a dog does when its master enters the room. You’ll laugh at me, but I’ve often wondered if there is a scent or aura that can be sensed by two people who are attracted to each other. If so, those two are oozing it. Or rather, Richard is. I’m not so sure about Nelly Lawson.”
Charlie’s initial reaction was disbelief, but he could not deny that his own body reacted in exactly this way when Grace was near. He always knew when she had entered a room, even with his back turned. Without meaning to, he closed his eyes and sniffed the air.
“I see you know what I mean.” Grace’s smile verged on the mischievous as she leaned closer to him. “I’m not sure how I shall get any work done if you stay in Dunedin, unless the effect diminishes over time.”
Whatever this scent or aura was, Charlie hoped it would linger for a very long time indeed. As he leaned over to close the distance between them – for who can resist the lure of an intoxicating scent? – a rustling noise emerged from behind the chest.
“You’re not going to start kissing are you? Bengali doesn’t like kissing.” A stuffed toy showed its tiger face around the side of the chest, growling not very ferociously.
“No kissing, I promise,” Charlie replied. Not right now, at least. “Does Bengali have to put up with a lot of kissing in the music room?”
“Only Richard and Nelly.” A small, pale face appeared from behind the chest. The pigtailed imp, last seen upside down in the workroom window. “I told Mummy, but she didn’t mind. I’m not allowed to tell Daddy, because he would be cross.”
Seen the right way up, Charlie noted that little Agnes was very like her mother, with bright curious eyes and delicate features. Grace slipped away, presumably to share the news that Agnes had been found. He hoped Mrs Ormsby wouldn’t return too quickly. A bright, curious child invariably sees things that others overlook.
Agnes walked across the room and stood in front of Charlie, studying him intently. “My daddy died. That means he’s gone to heaven to help in God’s surgery. That’s what Mummy said, but I’m not so sure angels need appendectomies and hernia operations.”
Charlie stifled a smile. This must have been exactly what Grace had been like as a seven-year-old, questioning everything and using words like appendectomy with a confidence beyond her years. He tore a piece of paper from his notebook, folding it into a paper angel. “Maybe your daddy will fix the angels’ wings if they hurt them.”
Agnes gave serious consideration to his suggestion before shaking her head. “I don’t think God would let anyone get hurt in heaven, especially not angels. My name is Agnes Siobhan Ormsby and I am seven and one quarter years old today. Who are you?
“You have a nice name Agnes Siobhan Ormsby. My name is Charlie Thomas Lee Pyke. Thomas for my father and Lee for my grandfather.”
“My mother’s name is Siobhan. She said as soon as I was born she knew I would be like her, so I ought to share her name.”
“I’m very like my father. How did Bengali get his name?”
Agnes gave Charlie a withering look. “She is a Bengal tiger cub. Mummy made her for me.”
“I’ll bet she is a clever little cub who likes to explore secret places.” Charlie waited for her nod. “Why is Bengali hiding today?”
Agnes planted her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes in a perfect parody of a disapproving parent. “She was naughty. Again.”
“Curiosity and naughtiness tend to go together, don’t you think?”
“She is very curious,” Agnes agreed. “Bengali is going to be a scientist, testing things for herself instead of being a good cub and believing what she is told. She ruined mummy’s best slippers by testing if they would float in the bath. They didn’t.”
Charlie struggled to keep a straight face. “I’m surprised the water damaged the slippers so badly as to ruin them.”
Two circles of pink flared on the little girl’s cheeks. “I tried to dry the slippers by the fire, but I put them too close and forgot about them.” Agnes hung her head, pigtails swinging in contrition. “Bengali and I aren’t allowed near fires anymore. Especially after we got into really big trouble for putting a candle to the curtains in the nursery to see if they would burn.”
“Even young cubs like Bengali must know it’s dangerous to play with fire.” Charlie wondered how much the Ormsbys had to pay to keep the nanny from deserting.
Agnes nodded with all the sincerity of a reformed arsonist. “I wasn’t allowed to see Bengali for a week after that. I had to climb up to Mummy’s top shelf to get her so she wouldn’t be lonely when everyone else was at the party. I wasn’t allowed to go to the party because I am too small.” After a pause for honest reflection, she added, “And because I ate too many of the cream puffs.”
A scuffling from the adjacent salon indicated Grace had found Mrs Ormsby and was holding her back from entering the room. Charlie knew it wasn’t his place to be interviewing this mischievous little pyromaniac, but he had a strong feeling that Agnes was upset about something, despite her boldness. He ignored the eavesdroppers and continued with his gentle probing, hoping Agnes would find it easier to talk to a kindly stranger than to her family.
“I love cream puffs too,” Charlie admitted, “but if I eat too many, my stomach hurts. Was that why you had a stomach ache after the party, Agnes?”
Her eyes went wide. “How did you know I was sick?”
“Your brother Richard and your nanny both mentioned it.”
“It wasn’t the cream puffs. I only had four or five. Six at most.” Her mouth turned down and quivered – the expression every adult recognises as a precursor to tears. “Bengali knows she must never, ever touch the bottles in the bathroom cabinet. But Daddy drinks his tonic every day and she wanted a little taste too. It was no more than a dab on the tongue, honest. I didn’t mean to knock the bottle over, but the taste was so horrible, I couldn’t help it. It made me sick, just like Daddy.” Agnes burst into tears. “Mummy will be very cross.”
Charlie held up his hand to stop anyone entering the room. “Agnes, I think your mother will be proud of you for finding out something important that nobody else knows. Do you remember what you did with the bottle of tonic that made you sick?”
Agnes tucked herself into a ball around her tiger. “I hid it under my bed and put another bottle back in the cabinet so no one would know I had been naughty. Mummy said if I was naughty one more time this week, she would give Bengali away to the orphans.”
“Agnes, I promise you can keep Bengali. But I would very much like to have a look at the bottle, being a curious kind of person myself.”
“I suppose so. May I have the paper angel, Mr Charlie Thomas Lee Pyke?”
Charlie handed it over. “Your mother was worried about you when you disappeared, Agnes. Do you think if you closed your eyes and counted to ten, she would appear by magic and give you an enormous hug?”
Mrs Ormsby only had eyes for her daughter as she rushed into the room, passing Charlie as he left.