Small Plates (15 page)

N
ow, Bridget, I know it won't have aged as much as it should, but I want you to make a special plum pudding. A very large one. Here are the charms and a sixpence. Mind you don't lose them. I'll pour the brandy on myself.”

The cook gave a slight curtsy and nodded. She knew her mistress didn't trust her with spirits. Mrs. Fairchild should be keeping a closer eye on those two scamps Master William and Master Albert. Bridget just hoped the brandy would light, given how much water those two had put in the decanters to hide what they'd drunk.

There was a knock on the back door. Bridget looked through the glass, then gave a quick glance around to be sure Mrs. Fairchild had gone back upstairs before opening it.

“Aren't you a fine sight with flour on your cheek!”

“Well, give your sister a quick kiss and be on your way. The mistress wants a whole 'nother pudding.”

“Hmmm—tell you what. I'll come by with a special charm for you to put in at the end.”

Bridget opened her mouth and closed it. She'd have to add more fruit or it would be all metal bits.

“Do you serve it out yourself or does your mistress?”

The question puzzled her. Patrick had never been much interested in household details when they were growing up, but she told him.

“She comes down here and douses it with the brandy. Molly brings it to her in the dining room, where she lights it at the table and everyone oohs and aahs, then Molly takes it back down and I cut it up before it's back up again on the plates. Molly's fair wore out by the time it's over.”

He helped himself to one of the molasses cookies cooling on a rack. She slapped his hand—and he was gone.

T
he guests had returned to the table after an interval in which the ladies repaired to Victoria Fairchild's bedroom to titivate and the men to Elliot Fairchild's library to smoke cigars. All had need of a breather before dessert, after the meal that had started with oysters and romped through Mock Turtle Soup, stuffed flounder, and the roasted birds with accompanying side dishes before finishing up with cheeses and water crackers from England by way of S. S. Pierce.

Patrick O'Hara caught Franny Fairchild's eye, causing the young lady to blush becomingly. What a fine woman she was, he thought, and how could her people think of saddling her with that sorry excuse for a man, Sumner Cabot? Well, it would soon be over. He grinned at his hostess at the foot of the table.

“A fine spread you're giving us, Mrs. Fairchild!”

She acknowledged his compliment with a slight nod. Despite her instructions to the servants—and Elliot—to offer him drink, he had consumed only one glass of claret. He'd listened politely to Martha Cabot's description of her new greenhouse and Oliver Winthrop's diatribe against Mayor O'Brien. “Don't you worry—we'll make sure he gets only one term. Don't know how we slipped up.” Yet Victoria wasn't worried.

“If you'll excuse me, I'll just see to the pudding,” she said.

Her husband beamed. Maybe she wasn't the easiest woman to live with, but he could count on her to keep up the Fairchilds' celebrated reputation for hospitality. Wish she'd consulted him before she'd hired Sargent, though. Could have gotten someone cheaper.

Franny surveyed the table. She wished she were sitting next to Patrick. They could hold hands under their large white damask napkins. His handsome face was so alive, a marked contrast to the pale, undistinguished men surrounding him. Boring. The meal was boring. Her life was boring, but she'd soon be free of it all.

The pudding on its silver salver was enormous, and when Victoria set it alight, the blue flames threatened to set the table on fire. Molly quickly took it back downstairs to serve while the table had to content themselves with mince and cranberry pies, Nesselrode pudding, sweetmeats, and fruit.

Victoria slipped out again, returned, and then it was Franny's turn to vanish briefly and discreetly. No one would have been rude enough to inquire about their whereabouts. It was well known that the Fairchilds had lavatories on each floor!

Molly was surprised when Bridget followed her upstairs carrying the rest of the dessert and even more surprised when Bridget instructed her to give Miss Franny a particular piece. And then after the ladies were served, Bridget handed her two plates, saying, “The one on the left is to go to the young Mr. Cabot, the right to Mr. O'Hara.”

As Molly passed Albert Fairchild, he looked quickly around the table, saw the attention of the adults otherwise engaged, and grabbed the large slice of pudding from Molly's left hand. He was a favorite downstairs and she let him take it, giving Sumner Cabot the slightly smaller one Bridget had said was for Patrick O'Hara. It must have to do with the charms, some sort of joke. But she couldn't very well snatch the plate away from the young master, could she?

Bridget was tired. She'd done as her brother Patrick and her mistress had asked and that was that. Bunch of tomfoolery. Back in the kitchen she put her feet up and dozed off. It seemed only seconds before Molly came flying through the door, shrieking, “You've poisoned the child for sure! Come quickly!”

Upstairs young Albert Fairchild was clutching his stomach and crying out in pain. His mother was by his side and, seeing Bridget, screamed at her, “Which plate did he get?”

“Same as everyone,” Bridget said firmly. Molly grabbed her arm and started to say something. Bridget hushed her.

Victoria picked up Albert's plate and examined the charm. It was a button. In a frenzy, she ran around the table, snatching forks from her startled guests.

“The shoe, Bridget! The one I told you had the horseshoe! Where is it?”

“We must send for Dr. Shaw,” Martha Cabot said to Elliot Fairchild. “Your son is obviously very ill and Victoria has gone mad.”

“Molly, send Amos for the doctor,” Elliot Fairchild ordered. “And, everyone, please go into the drawing room. I'm sure Albert merely overdid himself at the table.”

Sumner Cabot, well known as a trencherman, had cleaned his plate as soon as he'd been served—as well as all the plates earlier. He looked concerned, worried about his own digestion no doubt, and started to make his way from the room. He had no sooner taken a few steps when he too began to cry out, collapsing onto the floor. Everyone rushed back.

Victoria ran to where he had been sitting and seized his plate, empty save for traces of the thick powdered sugar that had covered the portion, sending two little charms flying, a wishbone and a horseshoe. She covered her mouth, stifling a scream, and fainted dead away.

Franny Fairchild looked at Patrick O'Hara in alarm. She had carefully removed the ring he'd had his sister place in her plum pudding and was waiting. But why was Albert sick? And what was the matter with Sumner? She gave her beloved a despairing glance and moved toward her mother. She knew Victoria always kept smelling salts in the small reticule she was carrying.

Dr. Shaw lived a few doors away and left his Christmas dinner immediately. He went first to Albert, now vomiting copiously into a large Rose Medallion bowl his brother had fetched from the sideboard. A moment later, the doctor announced, “The boy has no fever and his eyes are clear. Where's his plate?” Molly handed it to him and he sniffed the crumbs, “Ipecac. A nasty joke. Soaking his pudding that way!”

All eyes turned toward brother Will.

“I never did!” Further protestations were drowned out by the room's relieved comments. Ipecac! It was in every household. Sumner must have gotten a dose too, and the doctor turned his attention to the figure writhing on the carpet in agony. Relief would soon turn to horror.

“We must get this man to a bed. It is ipecac from the odor, but it's something else as well. Where's his plate?”

When it was produced, Dr. Shaw looked at the crusted sugar left and dipped his finger into it, tasting a minuscule amount. “He's been poisoned. I suspect arsenic.”

Victoria Fairchild had regained consciousness, aided by her smelling salts. She appeared not to have heard the doctor's words and asked, “Albert, my Albert, is he all right? And Mr. O'Hara, is he sick too?”

Franny had been holding her mother's hand. She dropped it.

“Albert will be fine and Mr. O'Hara isn't sick at all. Sumner is the one who is gravely ill.”

Victoria moaned.

“Please get my mother a glass of water, Molly,” Franny said.

The men were carrying Sumner to one of the bedrooms upstairs and Albert to his own. Patrick hadn't been asked to help. Frances Fairchild went over to him.

“Is it good-bye, then?” he said.

“It almost was, but no, it's not good-bye.”

F
aith Fairchild's coffee was stone cold, but she took a gulp. Enthralled, she'd forgotten to drink it. “So it
was
arsenic and Sumner Cabot died?”

Marian nodded. “Arsenic mixed with the powdered sugar sprinkled onto just that portion of pudding.”

“The question is was it Franny or Victoria—or maybe both?” Faith added this last reflectively.

“No one was ever charged, and the death was ruled accidental, but the cook swore her mistress pushed a horseshoe charm into one portion instructing her to give it to Molly for Mr. O'Hara—Bridget's own brother! Victoria denied it. And there was arsenic in the house, not just in the shed for pests. Both Victoria and Franny used it to make their eyes look brighter, as many women did then.”

“Arsenic trioxide was easily confused with flour or sugar,” Faith said. “The Victorians called it ‘Inheritance Powder.' In this case, the goal was different, a marriage to be avoided at all costs, but the outcome—a painful death—was the same. Yet, why the ipecac?”

Amid these speculations, the thought uppermost in Faith's mind was: How could Tom have neglected to mention what was undoubtedly one and possibly two Borgia ancestresses?

“The Fairchilds moved to Norwell immediately afterward,” Marian said. “Franny ran off and married Patrick O'Hara. I believe they lived in Jamaica Plain.”

Real estate—the Fairchilds, who had immediately established what were now Fairchild Properties, as well as other named endeavors on the South Shore, seemed to be uppermost in her mother-in-law's mind. “To return to the matter at hand,” Faith said, getting up for fresh coffee. “This was all a very long time ago. I think we can leave the Christmas dinner table as is.”

“That's what my mother-in-law thought one year. The year her husband fell facedown at Christmas dinner into his mince pie—Fairchilds never served plum pudding again—dead of a massive coronary at only age sixty-eight.”

Faith almost dropped her mug. Clearly she had to try to find out what had really happened or generations to come, including her own two children, would be saddled with the Christmas Dinner Curse ad infinitum.

What did they know for sure?

Two lovers who wanted to elope, hoping to slip away in the confusion—did one or both also want to eliminate Cabot, admittedly a roadblock, as well? Poisoning one serving made the victim too obvious, but they—or Franny alone—must not have wanted two to die. So, ipecac—a harmless substitute. The same could be said for Victoria. Her goal was to eliminate Patrick O'Hara, someone she considered a nonperson—it wasn't really murder, if the victim wasn't a human being. She'd have to have someone else get sick so that ipecac would be assumed the culprit for both—how sad that Mr. O'Hara reacted so severely to it! She'd marked Mr. O'Hara's piece by pushing a horseshoe charm into the top, but Sumner Cabot had gotten it instead.

Or were both women guilty? Did Franny pour ipecac over the pudding at random, planning only to create a disturbance to cover her escape with Patrick? Meanwhile had her mother launched a deadlier plan?

Marian had said the Fairchilds had moved to Norwell immediately afterward. If Faith had learned one thing about her in-laws—and every other New Englander she'd met—it was that nothing that came into the family's possession ever left, including those proverbial boxes of “String Too Short to Be Saved.” There were stacks of correspondence boxes in the barn that had long ago been converted to a garage. No Fairchild cars had ever been housed there since it was filled to the rafters with “stuff.” The boxes containing papers were in the old hayloft.

It took Faith several visits to finally come across the answer. In the meantime she'd learned that her father-in-law had apparently been unable to toss a single empty bleach bottle (cut a piece out and they made excellent boat bailers), that Fairchilds also never threw away a single map—the kind from AAA and the kinds from the
National Geographic
(there were piles of the magazine itself too), and happily, every once in a while she'd come across a real treasure—Marian's childhood books, which Amy would love—and a mammoth Erector set in the original metal box for Ben. While she had hoped for a written confession, what she found in an old hatbox was close: a bundle of letters, tied with a faded blue ribbon, written to Victoria from her daughter, Frances O'Hara.

She took them to the house to read aloud with Marian. The first one was dated a year after the fateful Christmas with an address in Jamaica Plain written below the date.

Dearest Mother and Father,

I trust this missive finds you well and I am writing to send greetings of the season to all. I am also writing to tell you some news. Tuesday last I was safely delivered of a daughter, whom we have named Louisa, after dear Grandmother. With your permission, we would like to give the baby, who is blessedly healthy, Victoria as a middle name.

Mr. O'Hara is now the foreman at work. The owner of the company has no children and has told him that he will make him a partner soon. They have almost more jobs than they can handle and will be breaking ground for a grand new house here for the mayor soon.

I am very happy save for the regret that my hasty departure and subsequent marriage have caused this rift between us. As I have written before, I would like to come to Norwell to see you—especially now to introduce your new granddaughter. Please grant me this Christmas wish.