I WAITED UNTIL Gerrund was safely out of sight before ringing the bell. Matilda answered, bracing herself, foot against the door the moment that she saw me.
‘Dr Poynder has given instructions you are not to be admitted,’ she informed me.
‘Tell your master,’ I emphasised the last word to remind her of her place, ‘that I have important information regarding his wife.’
‘Then you had better come in, Lady Violet,’ Poynder said from somewhere close behind.
‘But you said,’ Matilda began.
‘Do not argue with me, girl,’ he snapped.
Where had I heard that girl before?
Matilda opened her mouth to object but shut it and stood back.
As was to be expected Poynder was in full mourning, only the white of his shirt visible behind the black frockcoat, waistcoat and neat bow tie. A black-banded silk hat stood on the side table beside a tray of calling cards.
‘May I offer my condolences,’ I began.
‘Come through,’ he told me with barely a nod but – concerningly – instead of taking me to the front right-hand sitting room where I had been on the previous two occasions, he led me towards the back of the house on the other side. Gerrund would never hear me from there.
I told you to bring a gun, Ruby reminded me. Lovely wallpaper.
You never say that about mine.
You may draw your own conclusions.
We entered a shady study, oak-panelled with a large oak desk and a glass-fronted oak bookcase filled with hefty medical tomes, a great many journals stacked on the top shelf. The maroon velvet curtains had not been drawn. Poynder flicked a light on without appearing to burn his hand and I wondered if I should tell him how dangerous that was. If they could not escape through the switch, the electrical flames would build up in the walls, Mr Poplar had explained when I had called him back a third time.
‘It is cooler in here,’ Poynder observed and it was, despite the French windows overlooking a well-trimmed lawn, for the sun beat on the other side of Haglin House.
A door was open on the left side of the room and it led into a large cupboard also crammed with books and papers.
I sat in one of the two dark tan leather armchairs facing each other at forty-five degrees to the unlit fireplace.
‘You claim to have information,’ he began, sitting upright in the other chair and I took a breath.
‘I had your wife’s hair analysed,’ I announced.
I had not expected him to break down and confess when confronted with that information, but he might have done me the courtesy of blinking.
‘You had a sample of her hair?’ he challenged, and I hesitated.
It would not go down well if I described how I had obtained it, and a pretence that I had clipped it from Dolores’s head while she was ill would not have been received with much more equanimity.
‘She gave a locket to a friend as a keepsake,’ I stated, not entirely untruthfully, and he exhaled heavily.
‘Martha Ryan,’ he declared. ‘That woman is a pestilence. I had to threaten her with the police before she would keep away.’
‘She was concerned for her friend,’ I protested. ‘Perhaps if you had explained…’
‘Had my wife no right to privacy?’ he demanded. ‘She did not want the world to know of her illness, and telling Mrs Ryan would be tantamount to announcing it in The Times.’
‘The tests showed traces of arsenic,’ I told him, and he blinked that time, but we all have to occasionally.
‘I would have been surprised had they not,’ he countered. ‘Amongst other tonics, Dolores consumed large amounts of Fowler’s solution, which has an arsenic base.’
I never knew that, Ruby admitted and neither did I.
Hefty opened his mouth but thought better of it. If he claimed to have known, he would have to explain why he had not informed me.
‘The tests showed a much larger concentration than would be expected from any medication,’ I lied.
‘It can build up to a surprising degree.’ Poynder brushed a speck of something invisible from his lapel.
That voice, I realised. Come here, girl.
‘I saw you,’ I said, though in truth I had only glimpsed a muffled figure. ‘In Lower Montford.’
‘I sometimes do charity work there.’ He shrugged.
‘Outside the Green Munky public house,’ I continued. ‘Soliciting the attentions of a young girl.’
‘You are mistaken.’
‘I have other witnesses.’
‘They are mistaken too.’
‘You have something of a reputation, Dr Poynder,’ I told him. ‘Servants who will testify to your lascivious behaviour.’
‘Which servants?’
‘Edwina spoke to a number of people.’
‘What a pity she cannot do so now.’
‘How did you know she was dead?’
‘Word gets around,’ he replied without pause.
That is a circular explanation of nothing, Ruby pointed out. He might as well say that he knew because he knew.
If he was going to lie, I decided, I would not be outdone.
‘Edwina made a sworn statement,’ I said, and he shifted slightly in his chair, the brown leather creaking with his movement, ‘testifying that you made improper advances to her.’
‘Servants often make these absurd claims to explain their lack of employment,’ he told me smoothly. ‘Edwina was a nice girl but dim and clumsy. She left a trail of breakages far too numerous to be docked from her wages and so my wife had to dismiss her.’
‘Would you say that she was honest?’ I probed, and he leaned back in his chair.
‘Clearly not in the case of her allegations.’ He shrugged with one shoulder. ‘Truth and the lower orders are not always comfortable bedfellows.’
‘And yet a number of people believed her story,’ I said and he touched his fingertips together, his elbows on the arms of his chair.
‘People will always give credence to gossip and scandal.’
‘I am talking about a different story.’
That was not at all clear, Ruby said.
‘About what?’ Dr Poynder asked, a smidgen too casually, I thought.
If it involves Count Vorolski Zugravescu it is my story, Ruby objected, pacing the room.
Wormwood came into the room and his employer looked up. He had not touched the bell rope.
‘Might I have a word, sir?’
‘What?’ Poynder snapped irritably.
‘In private if you please, sir.’
‘Oh very well.’
His employer got up and marched into the corridor, his valet closing the door so that all I could hear was a low buzz before Poynder reappeared.
‘Thank you, Wormwood,’ he said, a great deal more civil than he had been a few moments ago.
Poynder shut the door but it swung ajar again.
‘Shoddy catch,’ he muttered, fiddling with the door handle before returning to his desk.
‘I am a busy man, Lady Violet,’ he declared, hands flat on his blotter. ‘Perhaps you would like to tell me what Edwina’s different story concerned.’
‘Mungo Peers,’ I replied, my eyes fixed upon Dr Poynder.