Arsenic For Tea Read online

  ‘Apologies,’ she said. ‘Hetty found another rat in amongst the flour. It’s the third this week!’

  ‘I wasn’t frightened!’ called Hetty from beyond her.

  Chapman frowned crossly, and I could tell that he did not approve. ‘Fetch the poison,’ he mouthed at Mrs Doherty.

  ‘Yes – there’s arsenic in the hall cupboard,’ said Lord Hastings, busily salting his eggs. ‘A big tub of it. Bring it out, Mrs D, and dispatch the rodents immediately.’

  ‘Very good, Lord Hastings,’ said Mrs Doherty, and she backed out of the room.

  At that moment Mr Curtis came in, his hair gleaming wet from his after-run bath. ‘Happy birthday, Daisy,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Daisy graciously, but the bridge of her nose wrinkled up as she said it, and I could tell that she was surprised. So was I. What was Mr Curtis doing, coming down to breakfast so casually after what we had seen? Should he not be packing his bags? Lord Hastings was clenching his hands around his cutlery, and his teeth around the mouthful of egg he had just taken, but he didn’t say anything. I wondered if he was as surprised as we were.

  Miss Alston murmured something about getting things ready for our lessons, and slipped out of the dining room, but I scarcely noticed her go. I was too fascinated by Mr Curtis.

  He seemed determined to brazen it out. He took a plate of food and sat down at the table, setting his lovely gold watch down next to his right hand. Aunt Saskia gazed at it as though she wanted to eat it – I quite saw what Kitty had meant yesterday.

  ‘Further to our discussion,’ he said to Lord Hastings, ‘I don’t find it convenient to leave before this evening. If you could ask your man to take me to the station for the 9.06 train I should appreciate it.’

  I thought Lord Hastings might snap his knife, he was gripping it so hard.

  Bertie looked at him, and then back at Mr Curtis, and scowled. ‘I do think,’ he said loudly, ‘that there isn’t enough arsenic used in this house. The rats seem to get everywhere.’

  ‘It must be a terrible problem,’ said Mr Curtis, and he took a defiant bite of his bacon. I swear I saw him smirk at Bertie.

  Bertie puffed up with rage, and Stephen had to put a hand on his arm to calm him. Chapman dropped the coffee pot.

  ‘Have a care, Chapman,’ said Lord Hastings, jumping. ‘Curtis, O’Brian will have the car ready by eight this evening. Please be prompt.’

  ‘I shall,’ said Mr Curtis, still with that smirk on his face. I could tell that he thought he had won. He stood up, stretched, and sauntered out of the dining room.

  By my wristwatch, Daisy left a careful minute before she put down her knife and fork and said, ‘Lovely breakfast, Chapman. Do thank Mrs D. Kitty, Beanie, you finish up. Hazel and I will be waiting for you outside.’ She kicked me under the table, and I gulped down my last marmalady mouthful and said, ‘Yes, I’m finished.’

  ‘Good work, Hazel,’ said Daisy, and we ducked out of the dining room before Kitty could protest.

  Mr Curtis was still in the hallway. He was peering at one of the paintings, an old one in a dark frame. It was of a lady, very fat and nude, holding up her arms and beaming, and Mr Curtis was staring at it in the same way as Aunt Saskia had stared at his watch. Once again, he didn’t look like a person who thought that the things in Fallingford were worthless. He didn’t even notice us come out of the room – he was studying it closely, scribbling something down in a little notebook. Daisy nudged me. Was that notebook evidence? Could we work out a way to read it?

  But then I noticed something else. We were not the only people in the hall. The door to the music room was cracked open, and Miss Alston was peeping out. She was staring at Mr Curtis with an odd expression on her face – very still and thoughtful, as though she were taking in everything about him. What was she doing?

  Daisy had seen her too. She frowned, and looked from Mr Curtis to Miss Alston, and back again. Then the dining-room door slammed behind us in a sudden breeze, Mr Curtis jumped back from the painting and Miss Alston jerked away behind the door. The scene, whatever it had been, was over.

  Now all Daisy and I had to do was work out what it meant.

  3

  All morning we followed Mr Curtis as best we could. We had to carry on doing birthday things with Kitty and Beanie, and playing games that had been set up by Miss Alston (most of them memory games that Daisy was sure to win), but during bunbreak (I think Daisy only insisted on it so that she could run about the house for a few minutes, but I appreciated the buttery shortbread, baked by Mrs Doherty, very much) we came upon him on the first floor, peering at something on a table. It was one of Lady Hastings’ heavy old jewelled brooches. I saw his face, and there was greed all over it.

  ‘Oh, goodness, I forgot I left that there. Is it worth anything?’ Lady Hastings asked, behind him.

  ‘Well . . .’ said Mr Curtis. ‘Such an unfashionable cut, in such a setting . . . you might be able to get a pound or two for it, perhaps. There isn’t the demand for such things these days!’

  Again, what he was saying and how he was looking did not match up at all. It was highly suspicious.

  Just before lunch we saw him go past the door of the music room, out into the garden, and although the sun had gone in and the sky was fat and grey with cloud, Daisy suddenly decided that the one thing in the world she wanted to do was go and play in the maze. Kitty, who hates getting her hair wet, predictably said no (I wished I was allowed to agree with her), and Beanie loyally said she would stay with Kitty, so it was only Daisy and I who rushed out of the front door a few moments later. We turned left onto the front lawn, and saw that we were in luck. Mr Curtis was actually disappearing into the maze.

  ‘After him!’ hissed Daisy – and down the lawn we dashed, into the close, green-spiked tunnels. I could hear Mr Curtis up ahead, stamping along, but every path looked just the same, and just as wrong, and I wasn’t sure which way to go. Daisy, though, seized hold of my hand and dragged me forward, privet pulling at our skirts and socks, until I was sure that Mr Curtis would hear us or – worse – run into us.

  But Daisy, of course, knew exactly what she was about. She came to a sudden stop, inches from a flat green wall – and there, on the other side, I heard voices.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Mr Curtis sounded furious. All the oil had gone out of his voice. ‘I was going to meet—’

  ‘Margaret?’ Uncle Felix sounded perfectly silky. ‘I don’t think that’s a terribly good idea under the circumstances, do you?’

  My heart began to thump, and I tried not to look at Daisy. I had been hoping to avoid any more mention of Mr Curtis and Lady Hastings.

  ‘Are you warning me?’ asked Mr Curtis.

  ‘Nothing so gauche. However, if you choose to take it as that, I won’t contradict you. I think it would be best for all concerned if you left this house as soon as possible. If you stay – well, you might not like what happens.’

  Mr Curtis snorted. ‘You can’t touch me,’ he said.

  ‘Can’t I? I think I can. You see, I know what you’re really here for.’

  There was a very cold silence on the other side of the hedge.

  My heart leaped into my mouth. What did Uncle Felix mean? Was he simply telling Mr Curtis that he knew about him and Lady Hastings? He could be, but to me it sounded like something more.

  ‘And what’s that?’ asked Mr Curtis, all bluster. I could almost see him throwing back his shoulders and jutting out his well-defined chin.

  ‘You know,’ said Uncle Felix. His voice made me shiver. ‘You know very well.’

  Daisy was elbowing me frantically, mouth wide open.

  Mr Curtis cursed filthily, and I felt the privet wall in front of us shiver. Then off he went like a shambling bear, growling away to himself and making the maze around him shake.

  He was very easy to follow – though as we ran after him, everything seemed doubled and confused. I heard our footsteps, and his – and what I thought must be Uncle Felix’s
, just to the left of us, or just behind. But then I heard Uncle Felix to our right, muttering to himself. It gave me a horrid jump. Who had we heard before?

  At last we burst out of the maze – and there, coming down from the house towards it, was Lady Hastings. So it had not been her in the maze! She was peering up at the sky and teetering along in her high heels.

  ‘Where’s Mr Curtis?’ I gasped. We heard a noise, and turned – but it was not Mr Curtis we saw coming out of the maze either. It was Miss Alston. Her face looked strangely flushed and her handbag was dangling from her arm. The mystery was solved.

  ‘Daisy!’ she said. ‘Hazel! There you are. Where did you get to?’

  Then Mr Curtis burst out of the maze, panting and red-faced. He saw Miss Alston and started. I am quite sure (although she covered it very well) that she started too, as if guilty. What had she been doing?

  Mr Curtis was looking very angry indeed. He glared at Miss Alston, and then pointed a furious finger into her face, so that she had to step back.

  ‘I know what you are,’ he growled. ‘I know what you’re here for. Well, you’ll have to do better than that if you want to catch me out. Hah!’

  Then he saw Lady Hastings, and stared from her to Miss Alston, as though he wasn’t sure how much she had heard – and what she would make of it.

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ said Miss Alston steadily. ‘Girls, do come inside. I believe it is beginning to rain.’

  Of course, we had to be good and follow her, dodging raindrops as we went, but my heart was jumping about with excitement. What had Mr Curtis meant about Miss Alston? We had seen her watching him suspiciously earlier, after all. Daisy poked me, and I could tell that she was having exactly the same thoughts.

  The stone walls of the house closed in around us with a chill I could feel through my dress. Kitty and Beanie were hovering about in the hall, Beanie looking shy and out of place, and Kitty very cross. ‘You’ve been ages!’ she said to us accusingly. ‘We’re bored. I say—’

  But just then the dining-room door swung open, and Mr Curtis and Lady Hastings came out. They must have got in from the garden through the French windows. It was odd seeing them again so soon – I stiffened, and Daisy clenched her fists tight against her skirt.

  ‘Give me a week’s warning, at least – I can’t simply go—’ Lady Hastings was saying heatedly. Then she saw us, and stopped with a jerk. ‘Girls,’ she said. ‘Daisy. Miss Alston, didn’t I just now tell you to keep them amused?’

  ‘My apologies, Lady Hastings,’ said Miss Alston colourlessly. ‘Girls, time for another round of birthday games, I think.’

  ‘Oh goody,’ said Daisy, not taking her eyes off her mother.

  Lady Hastings blushed. Then she cleared her throat and said, ‘Good. Lunch is at one. Oh, and Daisy – happy birthday.’

  ‘Thank you, Mummy. Are you going somewhere?’

  ‘No,’ said Lady Hastings, who had suddenly seen something very interesting on the ceiling. ‘Poor Mr Curtis has been called away on business, and I was persuading him to stay. You must have misunderstood.’

  ‘Oh dear, I must have,’ said Daisy. ‘How silly of me.’

  We followed Miss Alston into the music room for our games, Daisy craning round behind her as subtly as she could to look at her mother and Mr Curtis. ‘Hazel!’ she hissed in my ear. ‘Mr Curtis is becoming more and more bold. We have to keep a watch on him – there’s no telling what he might do next!’

  I thought I could guess. Mr Curtis was leaving that night, and he wanted Lady Hastings to go with him. If Daisy used even half of her detective skills on the problem, she would know that. But it was her birthday, and you are allowed to pretend certain things on your birthday.

  ‘We will,’ I said, and I reached out and gave her fingers a squeeze.

  Daisy squeezed back. ‘Good old Hazel!’ she said. ‘I knew I could count on you.’

  4

  After lunch (only a few cold cuts of meat and salad, as the tea was planned for later) we had yet more birthday games. This time it was Sardines, and even Bertie and Stephen were persuaded to join in. We went in and out and up and down the wriggling many-cornered corridors of Fallingford, losing each other and finding each other again, and bumping into Chapman and Hetty as they tidied rooms and prepared Daisy’s birthday tea. In one round I was squashed behind a fat leather sofa which was shedding horsehair through splits in its lining, when Stephen crawled in behind me. He looked miserable and pinched.

  ‘Hello, Hazel,’ he whispered. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. Then, ‘This is a funny sort of birthday for Daisy, isn’t it?’

  Stephen made a face, and all the freckles on his nose wriggled. ‘Awful!’ he said. ‘That man, Mr Curtis – I don’t like him. He’s the reason Bertie and Daisy’s parents have been arguing, isn’t he?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said, my stomach lurching.

  ‘I hate it when parents argue. It seems like such a waste. You see, my father – my father’s dead. So when I see mothers and fathers rowing – I wish they wouldn’t, that’s all. They don’t know what might happen.’

  I wanted to hug him, but I was not sure whether Stephen was a hugging sort of person, or whether I was the sort of person who hugged boys behind sofas in empty rooms, so I said, ‘Oh dear!’ and gingerly patted him on the arm.

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ said Stephen thickly. ‘It was years ago. Though I don’t feel much like playing Sardines any more, somehow. What say we stop for a bit?’

  I stood up with great relief, because the back of the sofa had smelled like pressing my face against a very wet and dirty horse (Daisy tried to take me riding once, for five minutes, so I know what I’m talking about), and took a big gulp of fresh air. Stephen went over to the window, hands in pockets, sauntering like a cat. Then his back stiffened.

  I ran over and peered out too. We were in the little box room on the first floor, filled with old, broken furniture. It looks down onto a patch of front lawn and the gravel walkway with its stone urns and little ornamental bushes. Mr Curtis and Lady Hastings were standing there. Lady Hastings was wrapped in her fur, and Mr Curtis was holding his gold watch. The clouds had gathered up even more, and it was raining quite hard. I wondered what on earth they were doing outside, instead of coming into the dry – I knew that Lady Hastings absolutely hated getting wet. But then I saw why they weren’t thinking about being rained on. They were arguing again. Snatches of their conversation floated up to us.

  ‘. . . rather sudden, Denis,’ said Lady Hastings.

  ‘I don’t see that it is,’ said Mr Curtis. ‘Your husband . . . and we wouldn’t want . . . bring your jewels and the painting I told you about.’

  ‘But, Denis, dear . . . can’t—’ began Lady Hastings.

  ‘If you don’t,’ said Mr Curtis, in quite a different, hard voice, ‘I shall tell your husband . . . up to. We’ll see . . . thinks. How do you like that?’

  Lady Hastings gasped and clutched her fur tightly around her shoulders. ‘Denis!’ she cried.

  ‘You have until after tea to make a decision,’ snapped Mr Curtis. ‘And if not – well!’

  He stormed back towards the front door and, with a gasp, Lady Hastings chased after him.

  Around them, the rain had become a downpour, and I could hear grumbles of thunder far away in the hills. I turned and looked at Stephen. He was rubbing his cheek, as shocked as I was. ‘What did he mean?’ he asked. ‘Do you think . . .?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I felt very frightened. ‘Don’t tell Daisy or Bertie.’

  Stephen nodded. ‘Mum’s the word,’ he said. ‘But what if—’

  ‘He won’t,’ I said. ‘He can’t. He’ll be gone after the tea party. He said so.’

  I wished I really felt so confident. What if Mr Curtis did do something awful? I had a horrible feeling that things were about to go very wrong. ‘Can’t we go down and find the others?’ I asked.

  At the point wher
e the main stairs turned, we paused. Below us the hall was empty, but we could see the wet tracks where Mr Curtis and Lady Hastings had rushed through. The game had come through here too, and the hall was looking very dishevelled. All the cupboard doors were hanging open, the carpets were scuffed up and someone had brought the stuffed owl down and put it in the umbrella stand.

  ‘Hurry!’ I hissed. Mr Curtis must be nearby, and I didn’t want to meet him at all. We scampered down the stairs and dived for the safety of the library. The door closed behind me, and a moment later Stephen came running in after me.

  ‘Sorry,’ he panted, wiping his forehead. ‘I panicked. Froze up – nearly caught!’

  Beanie popped her head out from behind a chair. ‘Hello!’ she said cheerfully. ‘What are you doing out of hiding?’

  ‘Beanie!’ groaned Kitty, crawling out from under an occasional table. ‘You aren’t supposed to give us away!’

  ‘Have we won? Oh, have we?’ asked Beanie.

  Then Daisy emerged from an impossibly small nook in the corner of the room – Beanie jumped and squeaked, and said, ‘How did you get there?’ and the game seemed to be over.

  5

  At ten to three by my wristwatch the dinner gong rang; it sounded wobbly because Chapman was the one striking it.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Beanie. ‘Tea!’

  Daisy didn’t say anything – just smoothed down her skirt and patted her hair. I could see that she was dreading it. ‘Tea!’ I said to her encouragingly.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Tea. Spiffing.’

  Beanie and Kitty took her at her word – but as we went out into the hall I caught hold of her hand and squeezed it again, and Daisy squeezed fiercely back.

  As we went into the dining room, I felt a sort of sadness come over me. I couldn’t explain it, because all the electric lights in the room were blazing and there was the most gorgeous spread on the table – an enormous teapot, surrounded by lovely pillowy buns, and jellies in four different colours, and jam tarts, and ham, and boiled eggs, and muffins, and a fat chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Daisy piped in white icing, oozing cream. But the rain was slicing down outside the windows, harder and harder, and although Chapman had tried to tidy up and draw himself up tall, his hair was not quite combed and he had a speck of something pale on his lapel. His hands, as always, were shaking. I knew that really, although things looked so bright, they were all wrong underneath. I didn’t know how to behave among all these strange English people – more than ever, I wished I could go home to Hong Kong, where everything was safe and understandable, and even the rain was warm. Jellies were all very well, but they weren’t half as good as mooncakes.