Fool's Gold (A Lord Ambrose Mystery) Read online

  Dr. Langridge from Bridgwater, the town nearest to here, was called, a stable boy riding to fetch him. The doctor is an elderly gentleman and was well fortified with spirits, I fear. When he arrived. I followed him up to the young man’s room, intending to offer assistance if it should be required.

  He was closeted in the deceased’s room for but a few minutes, as I surmised. I was standing at the entrance as he bent over the bed, and I heard him say, “Quite so, quite so—and here is the cause of it!”

  It was a bottle of poison. He took out the stopper and sniffed at the little vial. “Ah, the smell, quite typical of prussic acid.”

  It was a tiny blue bottle, as is usually employed to contain poisons.

  “Highly corrosive,” said old Langridge. “Death is instantaneous and frightful—mortal poison!”

  Then he placed the bottle again on the table beside the bed, from whence he had taken it, and left the room, and I heard him murmuring for a few minutes with Sir Antony in the passageway outside.

  “A terrible accident—yes indeed, I can see no other explanation of the circumstances,” the old fellow was mumbling. “Yes, these young men can be so unwise, they will take part in some experimentation or other; even when it involves taking risks with their very own lives! I daresay that is exactly what has happened here, Sir Antony: my foolish young colleague was trying out the properties of the drug and took enough prussic acid to put an end to his life! Here is the bottle: it was on the table beside his bed, and you see it is quite empty. What a tragedy…Yes, thank you, sir, I’ll be obliged for a dram of brandy before I call on your lady. The night is getting chilly, you know, very unwholesome…”

  They went off into the hall and the door closed behind them, and after a few minutes there came a rather dragging tap at the door and the doctor entered Lady Jesmond’s room. Plainly, there was little to be done except to try to calm her nerves, and after seeing that she had some sleeping-draft for the night, Dr. Langridge took himself off doubtless to snore the rest of the night through till he should arise to compose his bill for attendance.

  I slipped downstairs again to Lady Jesmond, who was weeping and exclaiming all the while. 1 cannot reproduce all her cries and disordered remarks, but I set down the gist of what she said, which was, when I reflected upon it, a strange account indeed of the end of a young man who but a few hours previously had appeared in perfect health—at least, so far as an untrained eye might judge. My lady’s talk went something like this, all rushed out exceeding fast, with gasps and sobs intermittent.

  “Oh, how dreadful—why, this is the most frightful thing. I heard a noise, you see, a loud banging, almost a sort of drumming—in the room above me, and then a voice calling out, or groaning, rather. Yes, it was more like the groaning of a soul in pain, more of a general sound of suffering, you know, an agony—so I pulled my old silk wrapper about me and ran upstairs and tapped at Dr. Kelsoe’s door, for his room is directly above mine and the noises seemed to emanate from thence, but there was no answer at all, so I opened the door and there I saw him—oh, the poor young man!”

  And so she continued in this vein, and could tell us nothing of what she actually observed when she entered the room, for she was overcome with tears and agitation each time she reached this point in her narrative.

  She has, I believe, the kindest of hearts and was weeping half the night. It was sad indeed to see such a carefree and pretty creature cast into such a state of agitation. The housekeeper seemed greatly distressed also by her mistress’s unhappiness. She is a good creature who came up and sat beside the bed, until at last my lady fell asleep as the draft took effect, but so late was the night advanced that dawn was fast approaching.

  The master of the house has taken charge of events calmly enough—he is such a dry old stick you were as like to find tears coming out of an Egyptian mummy as out of Sir Antony Jesmond—but he seemingly did all that needed to be done straightaway. He has written to Dr. Kelsoe’s family to inform them, but I believe they are residents of Lancashire, and Sir Antony’s letter is not like to reach them for a week or more. There is no parson near, for Jesmond Place is an isolated house, but the local curate has been informed and in the graveyard here this unlucky young man will no doubt find his last resting-place.

  And there, with his quiet grave, the matter should end. But I am much troubled in my mind by some of the circumstances, which Dr. Langridge did not note.

  Here I paused in my reading. The day had brightened now. Belos entered the library to light the fire, which was still usual in that cool May. Showers of sparks spurted up and crackled round the logs, hissing as the fire took hold and the rough bark blistered and the resins ran out and caught the flames.

  Points of fire reflected on silver candelabra and gilt bindings. Warmth and light made a patchy invasion of this end of the long room: the other seemed now cast into a corresponding darkness, fitfully dispersed by leaping and restless shadows as clouds scudded overhead.

  An anxiety was overtaking me: I did not trouble to pull up a chair, but read on, leaning at the side of the hearth, propping my elbow upon the mantel. Elisabeth’s writing continued even and steady as ever, her flowing script carried over the pages, yet the matters of which she wrote were deep and puzzling, as she herself commented.

  No, there was nothing unusual about the bottle of acid. But what bothered me, and still troubles my thoughts, was that it had been placed neatly upright upon the night-table beside the bed. That, and a circumstance which I did not immediately apprehend, so entirely natural did the arrangement seem at the time. But I distinctly recollect it, and it troubles me now: I can see old Dr. Langridge standing beside the young man’s bed. And then comes what is so strange! I have been over it several times, picturing it in my mind’s eye, and I am persuaded that I cannot be mistaken.

  Dr. Langridge removes the stopper from the bottle and sniffs at it, exclaiming at the odor of poison.

  But how came the stopper back into the bottle?

  That is the point that I cannot quite get over although it appears to have passed quite unnoticed by the old physician. Yet how should a man be supposed to toss down a bottle of corrosive poison and replace everything as neatly as if he had taken a sip of cordial?

  For there was no sign of disorder. The sheets were drawn up carefully and folded down under the chin of the poor fellow, as neatly as if he had just got into bed for the innocent sleep of a child tucked in by its nurse.

  Perhaps, Ambrose, I am too suspicious, as the sad experiences of my earlier life may have tended my mind in that direction; having seen crimes committed, I now suspect them everywhere. But all the circumstances of this young man’s death trouble me excessively still. I know little about the medical effects of poisoning by prussic acid, but I have always believed that it provokes the most fearful and instant agony, so that to have time to climb neatly into bed, to stopper the bottle, to fold down the bedclothes as if one were preparing for a night of blissful rest—all these, I believe, would simply not be possible. The agony must surely be so great that the deceased must fling himself about and render his linen into total disorder, and the throes of pain and death would surely descend instantaneously, the moment that he swallowed the dreadful draft.

  I think it unlikely to have been Lady Jesmond who put the stopper back into the bottle and tidied the bed-linen—she was in a state of great confusion and hysteria. Nor was it the old doctor himself, for it was all done before he arrived.

  And then, Dr. Langridge’s suggestion of an experiment… What experiment should John Kelsoe have been undertaking in this way? To determine what would be a fatal dose? If so, had he taken any previous quantities, were there any notes made of the measures, any record kept of the dosage? There seemed not to be a single scrap of paper in the room, save one lying near the door, which I stooped down and picked up—yet it appears to have no bearing on the matter of the death. But it was all I could see.

  She had enclosed it. A crumpled slip of paper fell from
the pages of the letter, and I smoothed it out. It was a yellowish scrap, seemingly part of a list.

  Coals of fire.

  Quicksilver

  Cakes of glass.

  I studied it for a few moments. Odd, that the handwriting was not the quick educated scrawl of a young medical man but uneven and shaky, the black ink spidering across the paper in the way of elderly penmanship.

  The meaning, if any beyond some gibberish scribbled down by a doddering old member of the Jesmond household, escaped me. I returned again to the letter.

  There is something most extraordinary about this whole matter. It seems we are asked to believe that a medical man. presumably well-informed about the dangers of prussic acid, suddenly swallowed the contents of a bottle of the same, climbed quietly into bed and arranged everything most considerately and carefully around himself. Then he gave some terrible cries and expired!

  So had someone in this house entered the room and carried out these small and horrible acts of domesticity—but without raising the alarm or even making any attempt to save the unfortunate young Dr. Kelsoe?

  That is what troubles me so, for there is something so precise and so inhumanly cold about such actions. I keep wondering which of my fellow-creatures here at Jesmond Place might have been capable of them.

  Poor young man! That is all I can say about Dr. Kelsoe, for I scarcely knew him before his untimely death.

  Lady Jesmond’s distress has been plain for all to see—or rather to hear, for she cried and wept all the next morning also, while various callers—first Dr. Langridge once again, then the parson about the funeral arrangements—came and went. She has a tender heart, but as you may imagine there are certain uncharitable souls who will think the worst.

  There is to be a Coroner’s inquest upon the unfortunate young man, but Dr. Langridge has already intimated that he will be strongly inclined to favor accident as the probable reason for this tragic occurrence, and the Coroner is Sir Edward Knellys, who is well-known to Sir Antony.

  Ambrose, I would, in my heart of hearts, desire to leave Jesmond Place, but Lady Jesmond, poor affectionate creature, seems to need companionship so much, and I cannot be unfeeling enough to abandon her. Sir Antony we never see all day, not till dinner-time. Mrs. Romey has instructions to take his meals into his chamber upon a tray, and to collect the empty tray when he rings. At other times, the servants are not to disturb him. These are Sir Antony’s orders: any disobedience will be punished with dismissal, he says.

  Forgive me for my long account. In my distress at the cruel currents that lie beneath the surface of our existence here at Jesmond Place, I can turn only to you. It may well be better that you and I should take our separate paths through life—yet, as we have said in the past, it seems that we cannot live together and we cannot live apart!

  I trust I may hear something from you. My compliments to Master Belos.

  Elisabeth.

  There was something added in an uneven and splashed hand, as if written in great haste just before the letter was sealed.

  I beg you to come! E.

  CHAPTER 3

  An interruption came before even I, Ambrose Malfine, precipitate though I am, had decided upon a course of action. It is very true that “When sorrows come, they come not as single spies but in battalions.”

  Belos had entered the room as I reached the end of Elisabeth’s communication, with its alarming suspicions still moving through my mind. Before I could say anything, he hurried up.

  “My lord, I have heard something that means I must beg leave of absence for a few days.”

  “Why, Belos, what’s the matter?”

  “There has been a strolling actor from a troupe going to Bath, who stopped a while in the alehouse, when his horse went lame just the other side of the village. And he brought some news last night…”

  “News, what news?”

  “Tragedy, my lord. True tragedy.”

  “Good God, man, what’s the matter?”

  “Kean is dead.”

  “Kean? The actor, Edmund Kean, d’you mean?”

  “Aye, my lord, the greatest Shakespearean of our generation. It is said that watching him act was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning. My lord, his Macbeth was so…so terrifying that the whole audience jumped if a board so much as creaked in the pauses of his speech. He is to have a great funeral at Richmond, with all the actors from all the London companies in attendance and Macready himself will give an oration.”

  “And you naturally wish to do honor to the great leader of your profession, although it is so long since you yourself trod the boards. But I suppose an old war-horse still snorts at the sound of the trumpet—pardon me, Belos, that was somewhat clumsily expressed. You naturally, as a former actor, wish to attend this perf…—this funeral at Richmond. Well, you had better take yourself off then. Shall we say it might take you the best part of a week to get to Richmond and back? I suppose the day of the funeral is fixed, but I have no doubt it will be a most elaborate occasion that will have taken some time to arrange, so if you leave now you should make Richmond in time.”

  “Thank you, my lord. I’ll get some things together and leave right away.”

  Belos bowed, perhaps somewhat deeper than might have been necessary.

  There was, of course, no doubt that he could have had as much leave from my service as he desired. Ever since he had brought me back from Greece, half-dead from wounds as I was, and nursed me back to health at Malfine, I had from time to time asked him to consider if his interests were best served by remaining buried in the heart of Somerset. He had been on tour with a troupe in Greece when he had met with misfortune and I, enthusiastic young hero as I was then, took him into my service. If I had saved his life, which then looked near to expiring from starvation, a short while later, when I was wounded, he repaid the favor a thousand-fold. He beat off the doctors who would bleed me of the few last drops of red blood I possessed, and got me on board a ship bound for England. It was thanks to him I was now at Malfine, where I had eventually recovered from the Turkish saber-slashes whose scars would never quite disappear.

  I would find it difficult to describe Belos, if I were required to set it down. Say that he were missing and I had to give an account of him—why, the truth is that the man is a kind of chameleon, yet nothing very remarkable in any particular. His age, for instance. I conjecture he is somewhere about his fortieth year, but would hesitate to lay any wager upon it. His eye is of a light-brown color, or so I think, yet now, when his face is not before me, I wonder if it is not truly more inclined to lightish gray, for sometimes it seems so in my recollections. But his hair is surely something of a grayish-brown—and yet again, it can look quite dark in certain lights. His height—well, he is of average height, for I tower over him with my lanky shins, yet somehow I do not feel as if I am of greater height than he.

  All in all, you would say that Belos is a perfectly unexceptional personage, “l’homme moyen sensuel” to perfection, of whom no notice would be taken in any crowd or assembly. How could such a man ever dominate a stage, you might think, or move an audience to fright or tears?

  And yet there are certain things that mark him out. He has a most deep and mellifluous voice, which somehow leaps forth and carries without the slightest effort to the farthest corner. Belos may stand in the great entrance hall at Malfine announcing a visitor, and as it were throw his voice into the air so that it ascends up the great staircase and round the marble hallway. The name of some pot-faced local worthy who desires an interview with the master rings out as sonorously as an iambic pentameter winging its way to the gallery of the Theatre Royal.

  This is of course a particularly valuable faculty for a servant in my employ, for it allows of a dramatic delay, a pause which gives me plenty of advance warning to avoid my neighbors, and most especially the damned parson.

  However, Belos is extremely reticent about the past and does not usually mention his thespian history, and I was therefore somew
hat surprised by his desire to do homage at the funeral of Edmund Kean.

  I would have even gone so far as to suspect him of an intrigue, which I myself might well have embarked on under such a cover, viz. one so outrageously dramatic that it would probably approach the Venetian carnival in atmosphere. But this gave me occasion to reflect for a moment upon that scene of general carnal intrigue, and I realized that I had never heard Belos express an interest in the warmer passions. He had, it is true, once mentioned a soprano at La Scala with tenderness, yet with a kind of actorish pose that made me suspicious that he had no real entanglement with the lady. Was it possible that he had other inclinations, which might flourish on a foreign soil better than in our right little, tight little island?

  But his distress at Kean’s death was real enough. And I bade him farewell with a good grace; it suited with my own desire remarkably well, for that desire, as the reader of these pages may have deduced, was the urge to ride immediately in the direction of Jesmond Place and see to the safety of Miss Elisabeth Anstruther.

  Yet I would not give in to that desire. I had absolutely no intention of becoming enmeshed in the murderous coils that lay brooding in that household. On the contrary, I laid Elisabeth’s letter down on my library table, took up a volume of John Locke, and with my intellect attempted to overwhelm my natural inclinations.

  No, I would not indulge her! She had made the decision to leave my roof, she had decided that my protection was not needed—and now at the first sign of anxiety she was begging me to run to her side! Well, let her leave Jesmond Place of her own accord—she was a free creature, not tied to the lady’s side with a leash. She could depart at any moment. It was certain that she owed no duties toward Clara Jesmond—why, Elisabeth had scarcely known her for five minutes altogether!