DR POYNDER CAUGHT me and Ruby rolled her eyes. Was I really such a milksop that I swooned into the embrace of a big strong man? I was about to deny it when, much to my chagrin, he scooped me up and held me for all the world the blushing bride except for two things. First I was dressed more like a vagabond – how on earth had my hem got so badly ripped? And second I was not blushing – whatever Ruby whispered in my auricle.
Though not especially big, Poynder must have been strong for down the stairs he went as easily as I used to carry Rodrigo, though, unlike my kitten, I felt no temptation to purr. The door at the bottom was open.
‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked nervously.
‘Downstairs,’ he said, which I had almost calculated for myself.
If he meant to strangle me, I speculated, he could have done it more conveniently in the attic.
He has a surgery on the ground floor, Ruby reminded me. It must be well supplied with scalpels… and sawsssss. She lingered gruesomely over her last word.
That would be much messier, I objected.
If you would care to inform me of the date upon which men commenced worrying about making a mess, she began, I can arrange a soiree to celebrate the anniversary.
Oh Lord, do not let me end my days like that parrot, I prayed and I could imagine Saint Peter making a note of my invocation. Thou shalt never guess what I heardeth this day, he would chuckle to entertain new arrivals.
Along the corridor we went and down the next flight of stairs. On the first floor I was reminded of when I had broken an ankle. Shillidge the pigman had carried me back to the house and I was almost sure that he had not meant to trip and drop me into that trough of swill. They probably had a good laugh about that too behind the pearly gates and I was not sure that I wanted to go there if they had such a peculiar sense of humour.
Dr Poynder, I discovered, used a slightly scented soap. This was a modern fad for men but I, for one, approved. Most members of the male sex were heavily scented with aromas of their own creation.
Was this the time to tell him that there was a cobweb dangling from the cornice? As we arrived safely in two pieces in the hall, I decided that it was not.
Into the front sitting room we went, where he deposited me gently to recline upon a chaise longue. The burgundy velvet might have complemented my attire quite nicely if my dress were in a state to match anything other than something the rag-gatherer might be content, though not thrilled, to come across.
Somewhat less than gracefully I hauled myself to sit somewhat less than elegantly upright.
Poynder stood at a mahogany cabinet with his back to me but it did not take any of Hefty’s detection skills to deduce, from the clinks and plashings, what he was doing.
Mixing poisons, Ruby suggested, having narrowly escaped death at the hands of Docteur Charpentier in The Tangled Sheet Murders.
Does one usually add soda to strychnine? I had an idea that it was not traditional.
Poynder handed me a tumbler.
‘Drink that.’
I sniffed it. Brandy. Not my tipple of choice but gamely I took a drink and found it rather welcome.
‘Are you not having one?’
Ssstrongly sssussspicioussss, Ruby hissed.
‘I have surgery in half an hour.’
But not on me! my brain screamed so piercingly that all my characters, except for Ruby – and Arturo who was deaf – fled and even she flinched.
The scream reverberated and faded, but there was still a commotion in the background. Somebody was hammering at something. Was Zugravescu’s henchman Igor trying to break out through my occiput? He had, after all, smashed through a wall to abduct Ruby.
Nobody could have taken me that easily, Hefty boasted.
Nobody would want to take you in any way, she retorted.
I was aware of heavy footfalls in the hall. The knocking stopped and the rattle of carriage wheels grew louder.
A servant is opening the door, Ruby explained, if only to prove that she could keep her head while all about were losing theirs.
‘If you don’t let me in this instant you’ll be needing your master’s attentions for a week,’ I heard Gerrund threaten, for he could never wait and not be tired by waiting.
Actually that’s quite poetic, Miss Kidd – rarely one to offer praise – commended me.
‘Just try it and you’ll be looking for an undertaker,’ Wormwood challenged and Poynder managed a wry smile.
‘It would appear that our men have introduced themselves,’ he said before raising his voice. ‘Show him in, Wormwood,’ he called. ‘I am sure Lady Violet will feel more comfortable with a chaperone.’
There was some muttering, the door closed and Gerrund marched into the room, Wormwood standing in the doorway in case we were thinking of making a dash for freedom or back upstairs or whatever he thought we had planned.
I was about to greet my man with something enthusiastic along the lines of What in the name of Beelzebub kept you? when he gasped as if he had been punched in the solar plexus.
‘Oh my grandmother’s bones, milady!’ he croaked. ‘What have they done to you?’
‘Well…’
‘You look dreadful.’
‘Thank…’
‘A complete mongrel’s mess,’ he assured me.
‘I…’
‘Like something fallen off the catmeat man’s cart.’
‘I am all right thank you,’ I assured him coolly, not quite as pleased to see him as I had expected to be.
Poynder squirted a soda water into an empty tumbler. His fingers were even longer and thicker than I had remembered, not at all like the slender sensitive tendrils described by Penelope Fitzbubble in Dr Heaven’s Hospital. It takes a strong grip to saw a man’s leg off, Romulus told me from experience, having had to do it when the field hospital had run out of ether.
Wormwood was still gawking at me.
‘You don’t look all right,’ he insisted to clear any misapprehension I might have harboured that I was fit to be presented at court.
‘Sit down.’ Poynder indicated an upright chair against the wall.
Gerrund looked to me. I nodded and he crossed the room to sit ten feet away at two o’clock from me, arms folded but watching the doctor alertly.
‘I could have you prosecuted,’ Poynder warned, which I knew meant that he would not.
‘For what?’ I asked.
‘Breaking into my house.’
‘Nothing was broken,’ I pointed out for the second time that day.
Except your bonnet, Ruby contributed, in case I had forgotten in the last three seconds how ghastly was my appearance.
‘Trespass,’ he tried again.
‘Not a crime,’ I told him. ‘Though you are entitled to ask me to leave.’
Poynder brushed my remarks aside.
‘I am sure my solicitor could build some kind of a case against you,’ he said, rather lamely, I thought, ‘but I am equally sure that none of us want to go through a trial.’
He sniffed his drink though it could not have had much of a bouquet.
‘I am quite sure that you do not,’ I told him firmly and he looked at me askance. ‘Before I explain that statement, there is one thing I need to know.’ I put a hand on my right knee to mask a tear in my dress, shushing Ruby’s assertion that there were myriad things of which I was ignorant. ‘Who killed Colin?’
Take a guess at Dolly, Ruby suggested, though I had not known they were on such casual terms.
I am not so sure, I reasoned. She freely admitted all her other crimes, but she seemed genuinely distressed when I confronted her about that one.
Poynder’s expression was a study in puzzlement.
‘My wife’s parrot escaped when her maid failed to secure the cage and left the window open,’ he protested.
‘Escaped into her dressing table,’ I said in disgust. ‘Tell me, Dr Poynder, was the creature still alive when you dissected it?’
He put his drink down on the sideboard.
‘You are quite mad,’ he told me.
Only quite, Ruby queried.
‘Shall I send my man to fetch it?’ I asked, hoping that he would reject my offer for I had no wish to see the thing more clearly or to endure that stench again. It had reminded me of when I had discovered the family vault being ransacked at Thetbury Hall by thieves under the misapprehension that we were dull-witted and wealthy enough to entomb our loved ones in their finest jewellery. I had locked them in for twenty-nine hours before troubling to report the incident.
I don’t remember that, Ruby said.
It was before your time, I told her for – flying in the face of arithmetic – Ruby, having been born four years ago, had always been twenty-five.
Gerrund half-rose uncertainly but the doctor raised his hand.
‘I shall not have you invading my home any further. My man will go.’
‘Don’t try anything funny,’ Wormwood warned, and I choked back a quip before it reached my larynx as he strode from the room.
Poynder took up his soda and went to stand with his back to the fireplace, a favourite position for Inspector Hefty while he explained to an aristocratic family how they were all suspects but the real murderer was…
‘I do not know what you mean about the bird,’ he said, ‘but I am beginning to understand why you have been to such bizarre lengths.’ He sipped his soda, and I resampled my drink. ‘That damned woman put you up to this,’ he asserted and, to save me the bother of not knowing who he meant, concluded, ‘Martha Ryan.’
‘Who?’ I asked lamely, but he did not trouble to reply.
‘I told her repeatedly to stay away.’
‘She is Dolores’s friend,’ I protested, rather undermining my last question.
‘Friend?’ he spat. ‘What species of friend pesters a dying woman?’