Martin Edwards - The Arsenic Labyrinth

Sylvia Blacon was such an assured hostess despite her age and frailty that it came as a shock to Daniel when, twenty minutes into their conversation, she told him that she was almost blind. Her body was twisted with the effects of arthritis and brittle bones and she had to hobble around with a frame, but he admired her determination not to surrender to self-pity. She lived in a large, overheated bungalow in a quiet cul-de-sac on the outskirts of the village and had a companion called Geraldine, a no-nonsense Geordie with the build and charm of an armoured personnel carrier. Geraldine had served them both with tea and now marched back into the room bearing a plateful of calorie-laden goodies.

‘You’ll have a cake?’

Black Forest gateau, meringues or profiteroles, Daniel was spoiled for choice. He helped himself to a profiterole. Very tasty and besides, Geraldine looked ready to slap him if he turned up his nose at her home cooking. He relaxed in his armchair. In summer this room would catch the sun in the middle of the day. The pastel colours of the curtains and the floral coverings on the armchairs and settee were faded, and even the ebony sideboard and bookcase had lightened in tone. It was an old person’s room, but Sylvia was an old person who loved books and history and he’d warmed to her. Uniform editions of Wordsworth and Walpole’s Herries Chronicles sat above two rows of history books, classics from Macaulay, through Trevor-Roper and on to Simon Schama and Niall Ferguson. There was even one of his own early efforts.

‘So you talked to young Jerry Erskine?’

Sylvia’s deep voice contrasted with her skeletal frame. Her forehead and hands were covered in bruises. She hadn’t been beaten up by Geraldine, she’d explained with a throaty laugh, the marks were caused by minor bumps to skin worn by the years until it was as thin as cellophane.

Nobody else, Daniel suspected, would call the man Jerry, let alone describe him as young. ‘Yes, he was very helpful.’

‘Competent historian, Jerry. Doesn’t mean to be a prig.’

Sylvia had made it clear that she was a Daleswoman who prided herself on plain speaking. After a lifetime telling people what she thought about them, she wasn’t about to change now. The late Mr Blacon, who had lured her to the Lakes from her native Leyburn, had passed away thirty years ago, but he’d made a packet from a dental practice in Windermere and left her well provided for. He suspected she’d engaged the intimidating Geraldine because no one else was strong enough to cope with her. Already he’d learned that the grammar school she’d taught in had been swept away by numbskulls who mistakenly despised academic elitism and why almost every reform since the 1944 Education Act had been a retrograde step. She had a degree from Cambridge, but she was prepared to concede that his Oxford pedigree wasn’t a bad second best. If she hadn’t had a sense of humour, she might have been intolerable. When he complained that Hattie Costello had beaten him to it with the Ruskin book, she said Hattie Costello was a painted trollop and even if now she couldn’t see what she looked like, she still sounded like a painted trollop.

‘So you no longer wish to study the lots my nephew Roger bought with the money Betty Clough left our Association?’

‘On the contrary, I’m crying out for fresh inspiration. I take it you were friendly with Alban Clough’s mother?’

Sylvia sighed. ‘Ah, Betty was a lovely woman. When I first met her, she was in her fifties, but when she stepped out, she still turned heads in a way I could only ever dream of. Not that she was a peacock, far from it, she always kept herself to herself. So sad when she died. There is little worse, Mr Kind, than seeing all your old pals shuffle off this mortal coil, one by one. It may seem a wicked thing to say, but I shan’t be sorry when my time comes.’

Geraldine had marched in again to tidy away the plates. The clicking of her tongue sounded like the snap of handcuffs.

‘You’ll see me out, you will.’

‘Betty recommended Geraldine to me, Mr Kind. You cooked for Betty at one time, didn’t you, dear?’

Geraldine scowled. ‘Aye, she was champion.’

She slammed the door behind her and Sylvia said, ‘She’s a treasure. Absolutely devoted to dear Betty and her family. As for me, I couldn’t manage without her.’

‘Alban Clough gave me a copy of the family trees for the Cloughs and the Inchmores. Fascinating stuff. Did you know Tom Inchmore, by any chance?’

Sylvia pursed thin, dry lips. ‘Tom was a dullard, I’m sorry to say. His grandmother was a friend of mine and she once confided in me that perhaps it was as well that the line had died out. She looked after the boy after he lost his parents, but he was a sad disappointment, sly and unpleasant. If Betty hadn’t insisted that Alban give him a job, he would never have found honest employment.’

‘So you knew Edith as well as Betty?’

‘All my life, as you might expect in a village this size. Edith was always in Betty’s shadow, of course. She lacked the money, as well as the looks. All she had was the Inchmore name. She never had much to say for herself, didn’t Edith. But she was a proud woman and if she was jealous of Betty, she took care not to let it show.’

‘Did the two women have much to do with each other?’

‘Not really. Edith always kept herself to herself. She didn’t have two pennies to rub together, though I remember Betty once telling me there was a bond between them.’

‘Meaning what, exactly?’

‘The Hall, I suppose. And the way the families’ fortunes had been so intertwined.’

‘Which is why Betty insisted that Alban give Tom work?’

‘Even though it was common knowledge that Alban had no time for the lad. It must seem very old-fashioned to a young chap like you, Mr Kind, but Betty came from a generation with a sense of duty. That is why she made the bequest to our Association. She felt it incumbent on her to support our work. Also, she wanted to mark our friendship. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t herself interested in history.’

‘Unlike her son?’

Sylvia snorted. ‘Myth and legend? Stuff and nonsense, if you ask me. Betty and I didn’t discuss Alban or the dusty exhibits he set up in that old mausoleum of theirs. She guessed my opinion and neither of us wanted to fall out. Of course, she thought the sun shone out of his backside. All mothers are the same where their offspring are concerned. Not that I’ve had any of my own, but I’ve dealt with enough pupils’ parents to know how besotted they are.’

Without much hope, he asked about the curse of Mispickel Scar, but Sylvia sniffed and made it plain she could cast no light on the story’s source. A true historian, she only trusted verifiable documentary evidence.

‘I suppose you’re wondering about these bodies they found in the old mine shafts? Heaven only knows what’s going on in this village. They talk about being tough on crime, but it’s getting more like downtown Detroit with each passing day. Now I hear that someone else has been found dead.’

Daniel almost choked on his last mouthful of profiterole. ‘Another body?’

‘Geraldine popped out to the shops earlier on, she’d run out of sugar. The news is all over the village. Apparently some fellow was fished out of Coniston Water this morning.’

‘Do you know who?’

‘He wasn’t a local person, by all accounts, just someone passing through.’

Her tone made it clear that this was a small mercy for which the villagers were thankful. Daniel said, ‘Was it an accident?’

Sylvia gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘I doubt whether an accident would justify hordes of police officers swarming around the lake. We’re not safe in our beds these days, and that’s a fact.’