The Poisonous Seed (35 page)

Frances peered inside. The door opened directly onto a small parlour. A modest fire blazing in the grate was somehow contriving to heat the room, a tiny oven, a kettle and a flat iron, while simultaneously boiling two pans of savoury smelling food on the iron plates at either side. A stout, elderly woman seated on an easy chair rose with some difficulty and came to greet her, walking with the aid of a stick. ‘Miss Doughty! Oh I am so pleased to see you! I’m Eliza Cranby. You must be tired. Do come in, the kettle has just boiled.’

There was a curiously lumpy piece of furniture in the room, a kind of backless sofa much piled with rugs and cushions of all colours, and Frances realised that Mrs Cranby, no longer able to climb the stairs to her bedroom, had disguised her bed as quite another article.

A much younger woman, a slender copy of the first, was tending to the fire and the cooking. ‘This is my daughter, Dora,’ said Mrs Cranby. ‘Now Will, I hope you have been making sure that Miss Doughty had a pleasant drive here, and showed her all the sights. Please take a seat, Miss Doughty. We have our supper almost ready and I know you must want something after so long a journey.’

‘Thank you so much for your hospitality,’ said Frances. ‘It’s a very pretty village. Such delightful cottages.’

‘I could not be happy anywhere else,’ Mrs Cranby declared. ‘I was sorry to leave Tollington House, but this suits me very well. Dora goes in to do the laundry and cleaning for Mr Armitage, who has it now, and I turn my hand to the mending. And we are very comfortable here, very comfortable indeed.’

‘I’ll get on home now,’ said Will, as he departed, ‘but I’ll be here to take you all up to church tomorrow morning. Good day to you Miss Doughty. I hope you have a pleasant visit.’

‘Oh, Miss Doughty, you can’t know how grateful I was to have your letter!’ exclaimed Mrs Cranby, easing herself into a chair beside a square, plain wooden table.

‘Talked about nothing else since,’ said Dora with a smile, bringing a pot of tea.

‘I was only Mr Wright’s housekeeper for a year, but I can honestly say a better employer I could not have wished for. So thoughtful – such manners! And to think he met with a terrible end like that and no one brought to justice!’ Mrs Cranby shook her head. Almost ten years ago it might have been, but Frances saw that the murder of John Wright was fresh in her memory.

‘Is it his family who have asked you to enquire into the murder?’ asked Dora.

Frances felt ashamed at having to be less than candid with these kindly and honest folk. ‘I am afraid I am not permitted to say,’ she said.

‘His family!’ said Mrs Cranby contemptuously. ‘What do they care about him, whoever they are! There is a fresh posy on his grave every Sunday, Miss Doughty, and do you know where it comes from? From
me
. I put it there, because someone who knew him ought to do so, and never a member of his family have I ever seen tend that grave. I used to keep it tidy, when I could get about better, and now Will does it for me.’

‘Mr Wright had a sister, I believe,’ said Frances.

‘Yes, and if I caught hold of her I would give her a piece of my mind!’ said Mrs Cranby. ‘Do you know, she told everyone that Mr Wright was mad?’

‘And what do you believe?’ asked Frances.

‘That he was as sane as any of us sitting round this table!’ Mrs Cranby exclaimed. ‘All that talk about how she cared for him and she has never been seen here to so much as pull one weed from the grave. And those stories she told about how he was supposed to imagine he owned great estates and said he went out for meetings when he stayed indoors. Well, I can tell you, I was shocked when I heard about that because I saw no sign of it at all.’ She gave an emphatic nod, followed by a quick glance in Dora’s direction as if she expected her daughter to say something, but Dora tended to the cooking and was silent.

‘Did he have many visitors?’ asked Frances.

‘Only what one might expect. There was Mr and Mrs Garton from Old Mill House, and Reverend Jessup, and Mr Mullin the land agent, and Mrs Tate who used to collect for charity – she’s gone, now, poor soul – but that was all.’

Frances suddenly realised that here at last was someone who she did not have to persuade to answer questions. Her hostess had probably been bursting to do so since receiving the letter. She took out her notebook and pencil and saw Mrs Cranby beam with pleasure. ‘No one came to see him from outside the village?’

‘Never, that I know of.’

‘I understand he used to write a great many letters,’ said Frances, scribbling.

‘Oh yes, and posted them himself.’

‘And you saw on one occasion that he wrote to a Mr Keane in London?’

Mrs Cranby was clearly impressed that Frances knew this. ‘Yes, so I did. I don’t know what came of that.’

‘But this Mr Keane, he never visited Mr Wright as far as you know?’

‘No, Miss, as I said, I don’t think anyone came there who I didn’t already know.’

Frances nodded, thoughtfully. ‘He must have received letters, too.’

‘Oh yes, very regularly. I can’t say who sent them, but I believe they came from London.’

‘Do you know what happened to them? I suppose the police must have taken them away?’

‘I didn’t find any for them to take,’ said Mrs Cranby. ‘I think he burnt them all before he went away. Some gentlemen don’t trouble to keep their letters.’

Frances wondered if those last hours before John Wright left Tollington Mill could hold a crucial clue to his death. ‘Before he left – the last time you saw him – did he give any reason for his absence?’

‘No, only that he would be going away on business. It was all done in a great hurry, and he didn’t really have time to say much about it.’

This was, thought Frances, the first she had known that John Wright’s departure was a sudden one. ‘How much warning did you have that he was going?’

‘Just a few hours. He told me, and he was gone the same day.’

‘How did he seem – I mean his mood? Was he worried, or excited, or – did he seem to be afraid of anything?’

‘He was not in his usual state of mind,’ said Mrs Cranby, thoughtfully. ‘He was always a very calm gentleman. The sort you’d think wouldn’t be easily upset. He was flustered, I would say, rushing about a great deal. Like he’d had some troubling news. And —,’ she paused. ‘There was one thing I thought was strange.’

‘Yes?’ Frances held her breath.

‘I’m sure you know he was a very clever artist, and he had a sketch book he used to take with him, and draw the countryside and houses hereabouts. The thing is, when he was getting ready to go, he took it and threw it on the fire. Burnt it up, Miss, quite deliberately. And I do remember thinking to myself at the time, why would he do such a thing? And the more I thought about it, the more the idea came into my head that he wasn’t expecting to come back.’

‘Did you tell the police this?’

‘I did,’ said Mrs Cranby, ruefully, ‘but you know what the police are like; they thought it was just my fancy.’

‘Did he take very much with him in the way of luggage?’

‘One bag, that was all.’

Frances was astonished. ‘When he expected to be gone a month?’

‘He told me he would send for his other things, but he never did.’

Frances stared at her notes, wondering what it could all mean. ‘How often did Mr and Mrs Garton visit?’

‘Oh several times a week, or else he would go there. What would you say, Dora?’

Dora was bringing a platter of boiled ham and potatoes to the table. ‘Oh yes, very friendly they all were,’ she said. ‘I used to do laundry and cleaning for Mr and Mrs Garton, so I was often there, and sometimes they asked me to help with the cooking, too. When Mr Garton and Mr Wright went off drawing together I used to put out a cold supper for when they came back.’

‘Is it true, Miss, that Mr Garton died recently?’ asked Mrs Cranby. ‘I have heard talk in the village that he did.’

‘Yes, I am afraid so,’ said Frances.

‘I haven’t heard anything of them since they left,’ said Dora, slicing the ham onto plates. ‘Mrs Garton – do you know – did she have a little boy or a little girl?’

Frances stared at her for a moment. ‘You knew her condition?’

Dora smiled. ‘Well it wasn’t that hard to see. She kept saying she was bilious, but it was plain enough to me.’ She piled potatoes beside the thick slices of ham and pushed the plate over to Frances. ‘You start on that before it gets cold. Don’t wait on us.’

It was the best ham Frances had ever tasted, and she said so. ‘You were quite right about Mrs Garton’ she added. ‘She gave birth to a baby girl in the January after she left here, and since then she has had four more children, all healthy.’

It was Dora’s turn to look surprised. ‘Well, that
is
remarkable,’ she said.

‘Oh, you mean you knew there had been some – medical complication.’

‘Yes, well it was obvious that there was something the matter, what with all the time they had been married, and no family,’ said Dora. ‘Dr McPhail used to come round and there were visits to doctors in Bristol, and then they went to see someone in London, and I think there was a man in Edinburgh, but they always came back looking very despondent so I expect they had been told there was no hope. Then Mr Garton took a sea voyage in the hopes that the air would do him good. He’d been looking very weary before, what with the business causing him a lot of worry, but when he came back he looked so much better, the very picture of good health, and it wasn’t so long after that I noticed the signs of a child on the way.’

It was a few moments before Frances understood the import of what had just been said, and she gulped down a piece of ham almost unchewed. ‘
Mr
Garton took a voyage?’

‘That’s right, away for three weeks he was.’

‘Not
Mrs
Garton?’

Dora looked puzzled. ‘No, Miss.’

Frances chose her words carefully. ‘You see – I had been told that Mrs Garton was a lady in very delicate health, and that the doctors had said she could never be a mother.’

Dora shook her head. ‘Oh no, you’ve been told wrong. Mrs Garton was a very slim young lady but she was never unwell.’ She paused. ‘I hope you don’t think I ever listen to private conversations …’

‘I am sure you cannot be blamed for overhearing something by accident,’ said Frances, with an encouraging smile.

‘Only I once heard Mr Garton telling Dr McPhail that he had been took very bad when he first came to England, and his doctor had told him then it could mean that he might never be a parent.’

Frances thought that she could see the reason for the error. She had been told about Henrietta’s poor health by Cedric, who in turn had had the story from his brother. Percival must quite understandably have been sensitive on the subject and preferred to let his family believe that the fault lay with Henrietta and not himself. She wondered if the sea voyage and Garton’s improved health had indeed been the reason for the arrival of the longed-for family. Suppose, however, that Garton was not Rhoda’s father. He could have suspected this himself, but the birth of four more children after the family’s removal from Tollingon Mill, and everyone they had known there, would have reassured him. Had there, Frances wondered, been an intrigue between Henrietta and James Keane? And if so, how would she ever prove it?

When the dinner plates had been cleared away, Dora showed Frances to the little room upstairs where she slept, and where a folding bed had been arranged next to her own narrow cot. Frances suspected that had she been a young gentleman, as they had at first thought, Dora would have had to sleep downstairs with her mother. Dora offered Frances her own bed, but Frances would hear none of it and insisted that she would be perfectly comfortable on the folding bed. ‘My mother would be most mortified if she knew I had not given you the proper bed,’ said Dora, ‘not that she will know as she cannot climb the stairs now.’

‘Miss Cranby,’ said Frances. ‘What did you think of Mr Wright?’

Dora smiled. ‘Oh, I know my mother will hear nothing against him, and I will not say anything contrary in her hearing, but a handsome face does not always mean goodness of nature. There was something in his eyes that always seemed to be weighing and measuring and making unkind judgements. I know Mrs Garton did not care for him.’

‘Did she say so to you?’

‘No, only I once heard her say to Mr Garton that she would prefer it if he did not invite his friend to the house so often as she could not be easy in his company.’

‘And what did Mr Garton reply?’

‘He asked her why she did not like his friend but she would not say.’

‘And did Mr Wright visit them less from that time?’

‘No, I don’t believe so. After all, it was Mr Garton’s house and I suppose he could invite whoever he wanted.’

Frances felt uncomfortable about making an indelicate suggestion concerning Mrs Garton’s friendships. ‘What other visitors were there to the house?’

‘There were business acquaintances of Mr Garton’s. Elderly gentlemen; most of them had known his grandfather. They talked about trade and shipping, and more than once I saw Mr Garton all but fall asleep in his chair and Mrs Garton pinch herself to stay awake. Oh and Reverend Jessup used to dine there sometimes, and there is no sleeping in
his
company, for he seems to know everyone and everything and Mrs Garton found him very amusing. Mr Garton was a kind man, but rather dull in his conversation.’ Dora paused, and made a great performance of smoothing the quilt. ‘I can guess what many folk might have been thinking in my place, but if every lady who found another man more interesting than her husband went and did something she shouldn’t we would all be little more than animals and there would be no saving us.’

It was not hard for Frances to imagine Henrietta pining for company in the quiet village, with Percival often absent in Bristol, returning only with talk of business, or perhaps no talk at all. But then the Gartons had removed to Bayswater, which for all its dirt and noise was a constant bustle of gossip and incident. Both husband and wife had cheerfully plunged into society and then there had been the happy arrival of the children. The change had breathed new life into their fading affections.