CHAPTER X

OF ARSENIC IN A SACK-POSSET—

LOOKING BACK ON IT AFTERWARDS, Fenton thought that the next month—or nearly a month—was the happiest time of his life.

Above all was his love for Lydia, his near-worship of Lydia. In those few weeks he had seen her change from a semi-invalid into a happy, laughing, sturdy girl, more beautiful of face and more healthily beautiful of body; and for some mysterious reason she adored him.

He himself was contented as he had never been contented. Professor Fenton, of Paracelsus, grew as young in spirit as his present age. For he lacked nothing he wanted.

“Why,” he would think, “all I need is a daily bath and a toothbrush: and these, in clumsy fashion, I now have. Otherwise, is my living much different from what I found in the bustling twentieth century, when I took a cottage in rural England, and much enjoyed it?”

Or again:

“How strange,” he reflected, “have been the minds of authors I have read, setting a character back hundreds of years in time! I think their learning is not wide enough. For they never allow the poor devil to have a good time. He must fret and fume because progress—accursed progress, and thrice-damned machinery—have not come to wreck men’s lives.

“He is infuriated by the lack of telephones and motorcars. I felt no need of them when I studied, in rural Somerset, for some dreary degree or other. Our author, through his hero, is appalled at the sanitation, the harsh laws, the power of King or Parliament. Yet, in my heart, I confess these matters trouble me not at all.”

Nevertheless there was one black spot at the back of his mind. This was the dread date, June 10th, when they said … well, they said Lydia would die. Every time this remembrance wormed into his brain, he blotted it out, swore Lydia should not die because he would prevent it, and kept the question at bay.

Also, amid the pleasant times of which we shall hear, a few ugly incidents struck into his life like a dagger. The first of the incidents occurred on the very night after he and George and Mr. Reeve left the King’s Head, following their meeting with the Green Ribbon Club.

Fenton had wanted to go home, since late afternoon was drawing in. But George insisted they must take a cup of wine in sign of triumph.

“What’s more, you must sprucify yourself,” he argued, not unreasonably. “What! Return with those hands and those sleeves? You’ll find a bowl of water at the Devil, for a surety!”

“A cup of wine, judiciously swallowed,” declared Mr. Reeve with dignity, “improveth the digestion at all times.”

So they had one or two at the Devil, where Fenton sprucified himself as well as possible. Then they moved on to the already long-famous Swan at Charing Cross. There, inside settles with high backs, facing each other across a table, George and Mr. Reeve fell to business with a will amid the roar and foulness of the tavern.

Fenton, whose palate as yet could not put down the wine or even the ale, took a desperate try each time. Then, half-ill, he used a stratagem.

Sitting on the floor beside his settle, legs outsprawled, was a hairy and drunk fiddler, whose eyes remained open but who could not move. Each time the tapster would arrive with fresh pints, Fenton would surreptitiously turn and pour his own down the throat of the fiddler, whose mouth opened automatically to receive it. As a result he drank himself almost sober; and, lifting the battered fiddle and bow from his lap, sawed away with much energy.

Mr. Reeve, nearly as boozy but more dignified, accompanied him on the cittern. The whole company of the Swan joined in singing ballads remarkable for great bawdiness and minuteness of detail with regard to female anatomy.

George swore (and six times he swore) that he would accompany Fenton to Pall Mall, and ask Meg to wed him, after but one more pint. You may guess the outcome. Both George and Mr. Reeve fell under the table, as was the convenient custom.

With the assistance of two tapsters, Fenton paid the score and got them both wedged into different sedan chairs. Having ascertained that Mr. Reeve was well in the care of the “mine hostess of the Rising Sun, Red Lion Fields, being a kind willing dame of scarce sixty,” Fenton sent two heavily snoring chairs in different directions. Before each ran a linkboy, his torch flaming against powdery-blue dusk. Since it was not yet dark, there could be small danger of footpads.

Afterwards Fenton hurried the short distance to his own home. The stately periwigged porter, with his tipstaff, stood very straight at the door.

“There is one question … er …”

“Sir,” replied the stately one, “I am called Sam.” Then rapidly he gave forth news. “Madam York hath departed, in a coach not her own, but with heavy boxes, not an hour agone. And I rejoice to tell, sir, that her ladyship, your wife, is well and mends in her health. A dozen times in the hour she sends Mrs. Pamphlin to seek you.”

“Thank God,” Fenton said slowly, and felt his heart contract.

The stately one bowed.

“I—I desired,” Fenton said at length, “to learn how many letters were dispatched from here this day. But that’s a trifle, now I learn …”

“Sir, there were four letters,” returned Sam, reckoning up how many times he must seek a street porter. “One from her ladyship, to Mrs. Wheebler the dressmaker’s, at La Belle France in Covent Garden. One from Madam York, to a Captain Duroc in Chancery Lane. One from Mr. Giles, to his brother by Aldgate Pump. One—hem!—from the cook-maid Kitty …”

“Kitty! Can she read or write?”

“One would not have thought so,” frowned the stately Sam. “’Twas so ill writ I could not discover the address myself, and gave it to a porter with sixpence, desiring him to be off.”

“But this could not have happened in the afternoon! The wench (or so I think) was under guard in my study …”

“Nay, sir, all letters were sent in early morning.”

“Oh, no matter!” thought Fenton, and, as Sam gravely opened the door, he dashed through the malodorous lower hall, up the stairs, and along the passage to Lydia’s room.

The wax lights fluttered as he flung open the door. Lydia’s room, over the panelling, was hung with tapestries which all but covered every inch of the walls. The heavy, sedate bed yet had gilt Cupids at its corners. Lydia, fully dressed in a low-cut gown for evening, sat in an upright chair beyond a golden sconce of five candles, a book in her lap.

Though she had undergone a bad time in recovery, as was plain from her pallor and the shadows under her blue eyes, still she was Lydia. She stretched out her arms. Fenton held her as tightly, cheek to cheek, as though he feared she might vanish.

“Dear heart,” he said, when Lydia moved back to run her gaze searchingly over his face, “I hope I—I made you not too ill, so as to make you well?”

“Fie!” Lydia told him, her pink lips trembling. One eyebrow lifted a little, as though she would smile. “’Twas nothing! Though troublesome at times, I’ll own, especially …” Here she paused, embarrassed; and also she saw the imperfect condition of his right sleeve. “Oh, Nick, you have …”

“If I have, Lydia, you see me returned without hurt.”

“Oh, I should have known that. I am not displeased. I—I am even proud. But I had not thought …” Her voice trailed away, as though horrified.

Across the room, her lean stiff back uncompromisingly turned to them, stood Mrs. Judith Pamphlin, holding high a plate so as to polish it.

Lydia’s shoulders trembled very slightly. After giving a covert glance towards Judith, she pressed her lips to Fenton’s cheek, moving back the periwig, and whispered.

“I shall have your company this night, shall I not?”

“And all nights!” he said aloud, and kissed her so that her lips moved under his.

“Then,” he thought, “she is still frightened by her Puritan nurse?” This must be stamped on like an insect. He straightened up.

“Woman Pamphlin,” he said, lashing her with the cold, even voice he had used before, “turn and face me.”

Mrs. Pamphlin, putting down plate and cloth on a mirror-table, turned slowly. Her lips were a locked line.

“I warned you,” said Fenton, “of ill consequences if you spoke one word of your Puritan cant to my wife. Have you done so?”

“Nay, she hath not!” cried Lydia. “I much wondered at it. Underneath all, I think, she is kind.”

“Then you have done well,” said Fenton to the rigid Mrs. Pamphlin. “Take care you say no word of it to her ever again. Now go!”

Mrs. Pamphlin marched out of the room, closing the door.

“My dear,” Fenton said gently, “you must not let these people affright you with their poisonous folly! I—I have an affair of moment, now, with the servants …”

“Yes. I am sensible of it. Nick, dearest heart, I have wondered …”

“But I will come back as soon as possible, and be with you at all times!”

Nevertheless it was a minute or two before he left the room, with Lydia’s warmth tingling through him. He raced downstairs, round towards the study at the rear of the ground floor.

If he had looked only at the three candles in their silver candelabrum, atop the dark carved cabinet of the satyrs’ heads, the room would have appeared just the same. But Big Tom, the sculleryman, lay sprawled on his back before an empty fireplace, his snores rising violently. Nan Curtis, the stoutening kitchenmaid in the cap, dozed in a chair with her head on one side. But, towards the carved cabinet where Kitty Softcover stood at one side and Giles at the other, he felt an atmosphere of hatred near murder.

“I make you all apology,” Fenton told them, “for being longer than I had thought. Giles, was there no difficulty?”

Giles, pale but with thin jaws hard-set, rattled the coils of the cat-of-nine-tails.

“Sir,” he replied, “they did wish for food and drink, and I took it as my responsibility to command cold meat and ale.”

“Good! Have you complaints?”

He looked at the others. Nan Curtis, roused to wakefulness by his first words, kicked Big Tom to life with her felt slipper, and both sprang up.

Kitty, her eyes narrowed, leaned against the black cabinet with her arms folded. Her breast slowly rose and fell, a core of spitefulness; the light burnished her red hair and threw shadows of eyelashes on her cheeks.

“I ha’ complaint,” she snapped.

Again Fenton looked her up and down, wondering why he felt such intense repulsion for her.

“This bowse,” she jerked her head towards Giles, the Alsatian thieves’ cant thickening her voice, “did ’proach me in the way of amorousness. Did take his hand, thus …” She reached down towards her skirt, but Giles cut her off sharply.

“What the girl says,” he interrupted, “is true. However, sir, she made a remark touching yourself. This, under favour, I would repeat to you privily.”

“Giles,” said Fenton, “should this happen again, and ’tis entirely a matter for your own conscience, be sure I hear nothing of it. Else I might be compelled to punish you, which would be a pity.”

Kitty, in as much incredulity as wrath, screamed out at him.

“Th’lt not punish him?”

And Fenton realized, now, what his ear had not been keen enough to catch through Kitty’s pronunciation. Before all of them, she had been using the “thee” and “thou” of complete familiarity.

“The matter of punishment, slut, we’ll discourse of.” Fenton drew the money pouch from his pocket and threw it to Giles, who caught it expertly. Briefly he took the packet of arsenic from the same pocket. “It was you bought this poison, one hundred and thirty-four grains of it. Nay,” he added wearily, “don’t addle your head to deny it. I have been to the Blue Mortar. Now: who sent you to buy it?”

There was a long silence while Kitty, still with arms tightly folded, studied him from between narrowed eyes.

“Th’ hastna discovered,” she decided. Up went her shoulders. “Then who can tell?”

“I can tell,” answered Fenton with devilish quietness. “Giles! We do as I have ordered. Shepherd these people down to the kitchen. Kitty shall prepare a bowl of sack posset. The poison (of this I am certain) is in some ingredient already. Then it shall be drunk.”

This time Kitty did not refuse. Her very small mouth, with its horizontal lower lip and Cupid’s bow upper lip, made some derisive movement.

But Fenton, this morning raging with fear for Lydia, knew in his heart he had been too severe with those he believed to be faithful servants.

“Be not afeared,” he said, looking at each of them in turn. “You will suffer no harm.”

Reaching up on tiptoe, Giles fetched down the silver-branched sconce of three lights. Nan Curtis went out first, drying her tears, then Big Tom with his hand at his forelock, then Kitty expressionless of face. Giles’s light sent a golden shining before them.

The stairs down to the kitchen, Fenton remembered, were across the hall and faced south so that it might lie beneath the dining room and be at the back.

“Hold!” said Fenton, whom Giles was about to light downstairs.

A hurrying of footsteps on the upper staircase stopped him. There was Lydia, in her evening gown of claret-coloured velvet outlined in white and gold, under the golden candle gleams.

“Nick, I would go with you,” she pleaded. “I have a reason for this, truly!”

Already Fenton’s nostrils had caught the heat and reek from below; he wondered whether he himself could manage it.

“Lydia, you can’t go down there! Besides, you are in need of rest. Permit Giles to light you to your room!”

Lydia’s blue eyes opened in wonder.

“Down there? It is nothing!”

“Nothing?”

“My—my father, as you are aware,” Lydia lowered her eyelashes, “had no lack of coin or worldly goods. Yet many times he commanded me to scrub a kitchen worse than ours: so to chasten my pride and teach me humility. —Dear heart! Is aught wrong?”

“I wish the old swine were still alive,” Fenton was thinking. “For I swear I would kick his behind from here to Ludgate Hill!”

“Lydia,” he smiled at her, “I never command. But it will much please me if you do as I ask.”

“Why, then—!” said Lydia, and did not pursue the matter.

“Giles, take the light. Do you give me the whip. Escort my lady. When you return, bring with you a clock. Any nature of clock.”

And then, as their heels rapped away, he picked his way down the stairs. Of the odour we need say nothing. Since wax candles were too costly for servants, he could see below a gleam of tallow lamps with floating wicks, and a low red light from a coal bed not yet gone out.

Dull red light, and heavy dull heat. How many scenes, as he remembered them, had been played against a background suitable for his casual acquaintance, the devil! But the devil must be far away, busy amongst so many million other souls. On Fenton’s right hand was a brick wall, on his left a wall of very dirty plaster. …

Then he gave a gasp, with that sense of the heart choking in the throat.

Something lurking against the right-hand wall, something as yet invisible, moved out against his side. Arms went round his waist. Small, rather chilly lips were pressed to the side of his neck.

“I knew th’ didst but pretend,” whispered the voice of Kitty, very low, and in quiet glee.

Fenton threw her away from him, flung her towards the left-hand, plaster wall. But it was hardly a foot away; her back made no noise as she landed there, except for a slight crackle of old plaster.

“I likes to be struck; I likes to be flogged; eh,” whispered Kitty, her very large dark-blue and innocent-seeming eyes a-glitter­. She nodded towards the steel-tipped thongs of the whip in Fenton’s hand. “But not with that!”

Fenton was about to roar out and order her downstairs, when her next whisper stopped him.

“A comical gullery, was’t not, when th’ didst put Fire-Meg in a chamber opposite th’ wife? And each kepit strict watch on other one, and forgot us?”

(Then here was the explanation of Sir Nick’s odd conduct! But, in the name of all sense or even lack of sense, what could Sir Nick find attractive in this … this …?)

“See!” flashed Kitty’s whisper.

Now Fenton dared not move, in case he heard more information. They were about halfway downstairs, with the faint yellow tallow lamps and red fiery coals showing at the foot. Again Kitty sidled towards him, but this time facing down.

“See,” she went on, “how I keep close t’ gift th’ gav’st me?”

Bending forward, holding open the front of her coarse blouse, she pointed. Round her neck, and slung down between her breasts on a grubby length of ribbon, hung a ring set with a triple tier of very fine diamonds. It curled round into a tiny snake’s head, stretching as far as any woman’s knuckle. The coils glittered wickedly.

“Pretty!” cooed the red-headed girl.

“I gave you that?”

“Th’ didst. Who else?”

Again she sidled round him like a cat, attempting to get in front. Fenton did not push her, though his arms had become tense to do so. Kitty’s own felt slipper dislodged itself from the wooden stair tread. She screamed out, fell backwards, and rolled heavily and all ways to the foot of the stairs, where she crouched unhurt with eyes glaring up.

A shout of laughter went up from the kitchen, dominated by the bass of Big Tom. Falling downstairs was considered an excellent jest. Also, from somewhere in the kitchen, there was a noise like the whack of light iron on a stone floor.

The laughter stopped instantly as Fenton appeared. Kitty sprang up and bounced lightly away, a strange but triumphant look about her. Steadying his head and nostrils, Fenton looked round. This was not an underground room, as he had expected. Two heavily barred and dust-furred windows looked out towards a back garden and the edge of the stables.

The immense fireplace was much the same as he had seen at the cookshop, though nothing was over or near the fire, and more pots and kettles hung close to it. There were rats, too; he heard them scuttle. A long table, its cover a frayed tapestry piece discarded from upstairs, showed where the domestic staff ate. There was a tall oak carry-all, later called a dresser, on whose shelf stood the dim tallow lamps. Its shelves held upright dishes and cups: mostly earthenware, but some glazed or even china.

Big Tom, a heavy poker in his hand, suddenly leaped at one corner of the carry-all. There was a sound not quite to be described. In triumph, touching his forelock with it, Big Tom held up a dead or dying rat.

“Well done!” Fenton gulped out the words gravely.

Pleased, Big Tom went over to a heavy waist-high shelf, under which was heaped a pile of refuse. But in the board above was a large funnel-shaped depression, with underneath it a baked-clay funnel-shaped top and drainpipe as big as a chimney pot. About to throw the dead rat on the refuse heap, Big Tom hesitated and more delicately dropped it down the drain, emptying after it a little water from a large bucket. Nan Curtis nodded approval.

“Now,” said Fenton, “let Kitty prepare the posset exactly as ’twas always prepared. Nan!”

“Good s-sir?”

“You shall watch her, close to her shoulder, and see nothing but what is usual shall be done.”

Kitty, carrying her magnificent hair high, behaved with a contemptuous carelessness. She went to the carry-all, taking down a bowl of eggs and putting them on the dining table. She also took down a smaller earthen bowl, and a knife and fork from the drawer.

While Nan Curtis watched with screwed-up eyes, Kitty broke four eggs on the edge of the bowl and flipped their contents into it. With crossed knife and fork in two hands, she began swiftly to whip the eggs.

Footsteps descended inside the plaster-enclosed stair wall. Giles appeared at the foot, with new wrinkles of anxiety in his face, and hugging a large clock. Behind him was Lydia, who peered past his shoulder without fully descending.

“Sir, sir,” groaned Giles, “I fear your lady wife hath too wheedling and coaxing a tongue. She did persuade me that, though you said not in the kitchen, this did not include the pair of stairs leading down.”

Lydia, holding high the candelabrum of three branches, looked at Fenton in so ingenuous and wide-eyed a fashion that he relented.

“Let be, then,” he said, though he hated having her there.

“Oh, yes!” cried Lydia.

Giles, while Lydia casually sat down on the next to the lowest step, went over and set down the clock on the shelf of the carry-all. Everybody could see it. It had a bold face and a slow-swinging pendulum, inside an elaborate wooden case carved by Grinling Gibbons.

“Mr. Giles?” muttered Kitty, who had now whipped the eggs to a yellowish liquid.

From a bunch of keys Giles unlocked a cabinet, where the china used upstairs was set in racks. Taking a china bowl holding a good deal more than a pint, he put it on the table. Then he hurried towards a door at the front, presumably leading somewhere towards a wine cellar.

Nan Curtis fluttered her hands.

“Milk!” she said.

And, with unsteady hands, she took down from the carry-all a flattish earthenware jug, with a dish inverted on top to keep off flies or insects.

“’Twas fresh-fetched from the dairy this morning, as I said,” Nan insisted. “Yet, if it be turned—” Before she realized what she was doing, she tipped up the jug and tasted the contents.

“Good; this is sweet,” she quavered. On the flash realization came to her; she looked, horrified, at the jug; then at her hand as though, like George, she feared it would swell up and turn black before her eyes.

“It can do you no harm,” Fenton assured her firmly. “You took but a small sip.”

Yet a start went through the hot room. Though this kitchen might be heavy with malodour, it was heavier still with evil. And all the evil, Fenton sensed, was concentrated in the small body of Kitty Softcover.

Carelessly Kitty poured the liquid eggs into the bright-painted china bowl with gilt legs. After this she poured the half-pint of milk, and stirred the mixture. Giles, having returned with a quart bottle of whitish-looking wine, opened it with a corkscrew—the corkscrew being far from a recent invention—and put the bottle on the table.

From a wrinkled but bulging twist of paper, Kitty took out four small lumps of loaf sugar and threw them into the bowl. Measuring with her eye by holding up the bottle, she poured in exactly half a pint of sack.

“The’ be th’ sake pusset,” she snapped. “Now drink of it!”

And she backed away. The pendulum of the big clock ticked loudly, yet so slowly that time did not seem to move at all.

Fenton’s next move was so unexpected that all shied back, and Lydia pressed her hands over her mouth. Fenton tossed the heavy cat-of-nine-tails to Giles, who caught it gingerly. Then with both hands Fenton picked up the bright-coloured china bowl, tilted it to his mouth, and took a good drink. Afterwards he set it back on the table.

Taking from his breeches pocket the bloodstained handkerchief with which he had sprucified himself at the Devil, Fenton wiped his mouth.

“I order no servant of mine,” he said, “to do what I would not do myself.”

They stared at each other. Such a master merely bewildered them. Again, curiously enough, it was Big Tom who first understood.

“Good!” he growled out. Hitching up his trousers, he reached for the bowl.

“No!” Fenton said sharply “Stand back!” Big Tom, hairy and puzzled, obeyed. “No other person shall drink of it, save one.” He made so imperious a gesture that Kitty ran to the table.

“Now, slut!” Fenton added. “Drink as I did.”

Kitty hesitated. Her eyes, wide open, searched his face. Suddenly she lifted the bowl, took a good drink of it too, and set it down. Then, arms folded, she backed towards what might (roughly) be called the kitchen sink.

“Then it’s not poisoned,” thought Fenton, “or is it?”

Tick went the slow heavy pendulum; an interminable time until again tick.

Fenton was across the table from Kitty, who had leaned her back against the sink. Giles, in his sober black, stood not far from her; the complexion of his face, against the upstanding light-red hair, seemed almost green. Fenton dared not look at Lydia.

“I fear,” he said, “we must wait some fifteen minutes or more, should the symptoms of pain come on.” He laughed. “Come: have you all a palsy on your chops? It’s none so bad as that! Sure someone can tell a merry tale, and divert us by its relation? If—”

Big Tom, his iron poker ever ready, made another whacking leap and killed a rat.

Everyone gave a start; and Big Tom seemed surprised and hurt when they glared at him. Only Lydia gave him a smile of approval. There was a long scuttle and scurry of rats. Big Tom dropped the rat into the drainpipe behind Kitty, who did not even look round.

Tick; a pause that stretched out like elastic; tick.

If nobody wished to speak of the matter, Fenton decided, they had best remain silent. Once more he examined the evidence.

In that bowl, he felt convinced, there was arsenic. Judith Pamphlin, whom he did not like but whom he trusted, had sworn she had overseen the preparation of that bowl each day; and each day had carried it to Lydia, without being stopped or distracted.

Very well. Then it must be in one of the ingredients, since nobody had tampered with them today. Unless, of course, the poisoner had given up for a few days, as had also happened. …

Fenton’s gaze strayed round the room. He looked at the clock on the carry-all, slowly beating against eternity. He looked at the dishes, and at long wooden spoons. At the back of his mind there obtruded some bump of wrongness in this preparation of the sack posset; something left undone or unnoticed.

Tick; and now the elastic seemed to stretch out until …

Fourteen minutes. A dozen times purely imaginary pains racked up through him. But once more he glanced at the clock as well as the other implements. Then, like the tallow-soaked spindle of a tinder-box scratching across his mind, it flashed up in a blaze.

“That’s it!” he cried out. “That’s how!”

Hurrying to the carry-all, he picked up one of the long spoons. At the table again, he thrust the spoon into the whitish-yellow-brown mixture of the china bowl. Round and round he stirred it. Then he looked at Kitty.

“Come here!”

Kitty approached as though hypnotized.

“Now drink of it!” said Fenton.

“Nay, do thou go first!”

“Drink it, damn ye! To the very dregs!”

“I’ll not!”

Fenton’s right hand swept to his sword grip. For the first time Kitty’s face was pale, a glaring pallor against mahogany-coloured hair which had begun to loosen round her head.

“I’ll drink,” she muttered.

Fenton stood away. Kitty, fastening her hands round the bowl, slowly raised it to her lips. Whereupon, with a lightning half-turn, she darted four steps and overturned the bowl’s contents down the drain. The china bowl smashed. Kitty bent over still further, her back to them.

“Giles, give her the lash!”

The steel-tipped thongs hissed. Fenton felt no qualm as they struck Kitty’s body, which was flung forwards still further. Small spots and lengths of blood became visible against the back of Kitty’s blouse, until her heavy hair tumbled down her back and hid them.

Releasing her grip, she sank face downwards against the heap of refuse under the sink.

“No more!” Fenton said quietly. “Until we determine what must be done.”

Going over to the cabinet near where Kitty had stood, he took out what had so suddenly appeared in her hand: a wrinkled and bulging twist of paper. Fenton pulled it open. Out on the table rolled about fifteen small pieces of loaf sugar.

“Herein lies the simple secret,” he said. “I were dolt and Jack-fool not to have surprised it! I have told you, I think, that arsenic is a white powder. It is without taste or odour. D’ye take my meaning, Giles?”

“Truly, sir! But …”

“Prepare a very thick solution of arsenic in not too much water,” Fenton continued with disgust. “Dip your sugar loaf into this, taking care it shall be there only shortly; then it shall not even lose its shape, much less dissolve. Your arsenic is absorbed into it. If a white coating remain, this is not to be distinguished from the colour of the sugar.”

He could see the superstitious awe of poison in their eyes as they moved back.

“You have all seen the girl Kitty do what was done,” he added. “When she stirred the bowl with a knife (d’ye recall?), she stirred only milk and eggs. She had not yet thrown in the poisoned sugar lumps. At the end, she did not stir the sack posset. Thus …”

“Stay, I have it!” exclaimed Giles. “The sugar lumps sink to the bottom and do not discharge their poison at once. Now I remember, you and the wench did drink immediately ’twas prepared. You drank from the top, as she must have known; and had no scathe.” Fenton nodded.

“Giles,” he added, wrapping the lumps in the paper again, “I put these in your care. Guard them well. A dozen, taken all together, might well cause death. Here.”

“Sir, I …” began Giles, hesitantly taking the twist of paper.

Giles ran his tongue round dry lips. For all the suggestions and insinuations he had made that morning, it appeared he had not really believed them.

“Why, then,” he blurted out, “this means matter for a magistrate. Sir, this means Tyburn Tree!”

Kitty, in pain but still undefeated, slowly struggled to her feet and turned round.

“Cuffin-quire, eh?” she screamed out, meaning a magistrate. “What I could tell to a cuffin-quire …!”

Giles made a movement of the lash, but Fenton’s hand stopped him. Kitty was not looking at Fenton, or Giles, or any person except Lydia, but she looked undisguised hatred.

Lydia, a girl of her time and generation, had not been in the least disturbed by anything she saw or heard or even smelt. Lydia had been sitting on the stair, on the step second from the foot, her elbows on her knees and her rounded chin in her hands. The silver sconce of three candles threw clear light on her claret-coloured gown, with the white and gold.

Now Lydia raised her head, cheeks a little flushed and eyelids lowered. She was not in the least commanding or dominating; she could never be this, and never wished to be. She felt no particular dislike of Kitty for the attempted poisoning; such things happened; what would you have? What showed under her eyelids was a shrinking abhorrence of another woman.

“If you mean,” said Lydia coldly, “the diamond ring you stole from me …”

“Stole?” cried Kitty. “Th’ husband—”

“You lie, for I saw you steal it. And truly ’tis mine, since you will find my name graved inside. But pray keep the ring. I would not wish to wear it again. Even a ring may become … soiled.”

At this, to Fenton’s astonishment, Lydia turned on him a look almost of adoration.

“Dear heart,” she added, “I have spoken because I must. Now do with her what you will.”

All the servants were looking at Kitty, not pleasantly. Giles’s fingers tightened on the handle of the lash. Big Tom slowly tapped the heavy poker against his hand, considering it. Kitty’s eyes flashed round to each of them.

“Give her …” Fenton began. He paused, half-sick. How could he tell what had been the doings of Sir Nick? “Give … no, curse it! I—I can’t have a woman flogged. Let be!”

“Sir,” said Giles, “not far from here, in Hartshorn Lane off the Strand, there is a stern and upright justice named—”

“No!” said Fenton, “I want no noise of scandal. Worse, I want none of your filthy hangings. Law or no, none is dead. Give her … give her a couple of guineas, and turn her into the street within the hour. She has a ring; she may keep it, as my wife desired. But she must not return. I apprehend we have dogs?”

“Four mastiffs, sir, trained for short tempers and sharp teeth. Whiteboy, the terrier, hath distemper and cannot chase rats this night.”

“That will do. Should she attempt to return, set the dogs on her. That is all. I bid you good night.”

Lifting the silver candelabrum, he lighted Lydia’s way as she went before him up the steps. All four in the kitchen were struck dumb.

They went to the ground floor, then slowly up the other stairs. Fenton, the light in his right hand, his other round Lydia, was in torture of more than one kind.

“I would have given all I have,” he said wretchedly, “if you had not seen what passed down there.”

He felt against him, rather than saw, Lydia’s astonishment.

“Nick! Why, there I,” her voice sank, “most admired you. In two quarters of the clock, you found and tore out this poison-­secret like a buried evil thing which none else could see. And—and no master in London would have been so gentle in punishment.”

“Lydia, as concerns that ring. I …”

“Hush! I have forgot it.”

“But I durst not explain myself. It was not I, not myself …”

“And am I insensible of that? I know you—” Lydia’s soft voice trailed away, as they went up the rest of the stairs and down towards her room, and Lydia puzzled her head. “But I don’t know. Strange! Yet the one I love to madness is one I met last night, and partly in morning, and all this night. You are … no, I can’t tell!”

“There is no need to tell.”

Lydia sent a covert glance up and down the passage, as though to seek a lurking Judith Pamphlin, as they stood at the door.

“Nick,” she whispered, “sure I have no need of a maid, have I? This gown is most facile to unfix; and the rest—well!” Lydia’s cheeks grew flushed, but her eyes were very bright and her speech more rapid. “Nick, Nick, need we trouble our heads with having supper, this night?”

“No! No! No!”

The door closed after them.

And, in that house, presently all the lights went out. Towards the east, the vast old smoky huddle of roofs along the river had long been dark; most of its inhabitants went to bed at dusk, so that they might be awake by sunrise.

But Lydia, and certainly Fenton, could no longer be restrained. They passed the night in a kind of fury and violence. Once it occurred to Fenton, in a vague kind of way, that the Puritan girl knew more than most; briefly he cursed his other soul, before it was swept away by different considerations. Near dawn, when both half-dozed towards an exhausted sleep, Lydia clasped him tightly and fell into a fit of sobbing. He was wise enough not to speak, and presently she slept.

In a few moments he was asleep too. Birds bickered in the vines outside. A grey sky mingled with ghostly white. And so, from that night, they passed into the days of happiness.