Anne Perry: Southampton Row

“What’s wrong?” She was very pale now.

“You didn’t eat one?” Narraway insisted.

“’Course I didn’t!” she said hotly. “She brung them for ’im! What d’yer think I am, to go eating the master’s tarts what a friend come with?”

“I think you are an honest woman,” Narraway answered with sudden gentleness. “And I think that honesty saved your life to inherit a house a generous man wished you to have in appreciation for your kindness to him.” She blushed at the compliment.

“Did you see the book Mrs. Cavendish brought?” Narraway asked.

She looked up quickly. “Yes. It were poems.”

“Was it the book that was found beside him when he died?” Narraway winced very slightly at the baldness of the question, but he did not retreat from it.

She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “Yes.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

“Can you write, Mary Ann?”

“O’ course I can!” But she said it with sufficient pride that the possibility of her not having been able to was very real.

“Good,” Narraway said with approval. “Then will you please find a paper and pen and write down exactly what you have told us-that there was no raspberry jam in the house that day, until it was brought in by Mrs. Octavia Cavendish, and that she came with two raspberry jam tarts, both of which Mr. Wray ate. Also, if you please, that she brought the book of poetry found beside him. And put the date on it, and sign your name.”

“Why?”

“Please do it, then I shall explain to you. Write it first. It is important.”

She saw something of the gravity in his face, and she excused herself and went to the study. Nearly ten minutes later, after Pitt had taken the kettle off the stove, she returned and offered Narraway a piece of paper very carefully written on and signed and dated.

He took it from her and read it, then gave it to Pitt, who glanced at it, saw that it was wholly satisfactory, and put it away.

Narraway gave him a sharp look but did not demand it back.

“Well?” Mary Ann asked. “You said you’d tell me if I wrote that for you.”

“Yes,” Narraway agreed. “Mr. Wray died as a result of eating raspberry jam that had poison in it.” He ignored her pale face and her gasp of breath. “The poison, to be specific, was digitalis, which occurs quite naturally in the foxglove plant, of which you have several very fine specimens in your garden. It has been supposed by certain people that Mr. Wray took some of the leaves and made a potion which he drank, with the intention of ending his life.”

“He’d never do that!” she said furiously. “I know that, even if there’s some as don’t!”

“No,” Narraway agreed. “And you have been most helpful in proving that to be the case. However, you would be very wise, in your own safety, not to say so to anyone else. Do you understand me?”

She looked at him with fear in her eyes and in her voice. “You’re saying as Mrs. Cavendish gave ’im tarts what was poisoned? Why would she do that? She was real fond of ’im! It don’t make no sense! ’E must ’ave ’ad a ’eart attack.”

“It would be best that you think so,” Narraway agreed. “By far the best. But the jam is very important, so no one ever supposes that he took his own life. That is a sin in his church, and they would bury him in unhallowed ground.”

“That’s wicked!” she cried furiously. “It’s downright vicious!”

“It is wicked,” Narraway said with profound feeling. “But when did that ever stop men who consider themselves righteous from judging others they think are not?”

She swung around to Pitt, her eyes burning. “’E trusted yer! Yer got to see they don’t do that to ’im! You’ve got to!”

“That is what I am here for,” Pitt said softly. “For his sake, and for my own. I have enemies, and as you know, some of them are saying that I was the one who drove him to it. I tell you that so I have not misled you; I never believed he was the man who went to Southampton Row, and I did not even refer to it the last time I was here. The man who visited the spirit medium was called Bishop Underhill, and he is dead too.”

“’E never. .”

“No. He died by accident.”

Her face creased with pity “Poor man,” she said softly.

“Thank you very much, Miss Smith.” No one could have mistaken Narraway’s sincerity. “You have been of the greatest help. We will take care of the matter from here. The coroner will bring in a verdict of death by misadventure, because I will see to it that he does. If you have any care for your own safety, you will agree to that, regardless to whom you speak or in what circumstances, unless brought to a court of law by me, or by Mr. Pitt, and questioned on the subject under oath. Do you understand me?”

She nodded, swallowing hard.

“Good. Then we shall leave you and be on our way to the coroner.”

“Yer don’t want a cup o’ tea? Anyway, yer got to take your jam,” she added to Pitt.

Narraway looked at the kettle. “Actually, yes, we can stay for tea, just a cup. Thank you. It has been an unusually trying day.”

She glanced at the dirt and the tears in his clothes, and in Pitt’s, but she made no remark. She would have considered it rude. Anyone can fall on hard times, and she knew that very well. She did not judge people she liked.

Pitt and Narraway walked as far as the station together.

“I am going back to Kingston to the coroner,” Narraway announced as they crossed the road. “I can enforce the verdict we wish. Francis Wray will be buried in hallowed ground. However, there is little purpose in proving that Mrs. Cavendish’s tarts poisoned him. She would be charged with murder, on unarguable circumstantial evidence, and I doubt very much that she had the slightest idea of what she was doing. Voisey either gave her the jam, or more probably the tarts themselves, in order to make sure no one else was affected, both for his own safety in case it was traced back to him, and because insofar as he cares for anyone, it is she.”

“Then how in God’s name did he bring himself to use her as an instrument of murder?” Pitt demanded. Such callousness was utterly beyond him. He could not conceive of a rage consuming enough to use any innocent person as a weapon of death, let alone someone you loved, and above all who trusted you.

“Pitt, if you are to be any damned use to me at all, then you must stop imagining everyone else operates on the same moral and emotional plane as you do!” Narraway demanded. “They don’t!” He glared savagely at the footpath ahead of him. “Don’t be so bloody stupid as to think what you would do in a situation! Think what they would do! You are dealing with them. . not a hundred mirror images of yourself. Voisey hates you with a passion you can’t even think of. But believe it! Believe it every day and every hour of your life. . because if you don’t, one day you will pay for it.” He stopped and held out his hand, causing Pitt to all but collide with him. “And I will have Mary Ann’s testimony. That, and the autopsy result, are going where even Voisey will never find them. He needs to know that, and he needs to know that if anything happens to you, or to your family, then they will become public, which would be very unfortunate for Mrs. Cavendish, very unfortunate indeed, and ultimately for Voisey himself, whether she were prepared to testify against him or not.”

Pitt hesitated only a moment. It was safety for his family, and bought without compromise, without surrender. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out Mary Ann’s testimony. If he could not trust Narraway then he had nothing.

Narraway took it and smiled, thin-lipped. “Thank you,” he said with mild sarcasm. He knew Pitt had doubted, for an instant. “I am perfectly happy to have a photograph made of both papers and lodged wherever you wish. The originals must remain where even Voisey can never reach them, and it is best you also do not know where that is. Believe me, Pitt, they will be safe.”