"The tragedy of English cooking is that 'plain' cooking cannot be entrusted to 'plain' cooks."
Deeply annoyed, Kate remained after Sir Charles left the room to pursue his inquiry, whatever it was. But it was not fair to burden the poor vicar with her irritation. The vicar had come to share her grief over the death of someone they both cared for, and she owed him nothing less than her full attention.
She rose. ' 'The servants are engaged with the constable, so I cannot offer you tea." She went to the cabinet where Aunt Sabrina kept several bottles of liquor. "Would a glass of brandy do instead?"
"It would indeed," the vicar replied. His smile was a feeble one, and he took the glass she offered him with a shaking hand. His shaggy mane of white hair was disarranged and his collar was crooked. "The constable, you say?"
"Yes." She sat down across from him. "Would you care to hear the details of the morning?''
"If it would not be too painful."
It was painful, indeed. But she had the sense that the old man would find no calm within himself until he learned what had happened from someone who had shared Aunt Sabrina's last moments.
When she finished, he leaned back and closed his eyes. He was silent for a long time, and when he spoke, it was with such a soft voice that she didn't quite hear him.
"Such a rich life."
"I beg pardon?"
He opened his eyes, pale blue and watery. "Your aunt. She was a remarkable woman who insisted on living her life as she thought best, regardless of others' opinions." He shook his head. "I envied her," he said softly. "She was free of the constraints that bind so many of us to our accustomed ways. And yet she was generous to those who had fewer gifts. Sabrina was a woman of many charities."
Kate said nothing. Perhaps it seemed to the vicar that her aunt had been unconstrained. But however self-governing Aunt Sabrina's earlier life may have been, in the past few years Aunt Jaggers had tyrannized her.
"You said that the constable is here," the vicar remarked.
"Dr. Randall could not be sure of the cause of death," Kate said. "It seems there will be an inquest, and probably autopsies. The doctor suggested that the constable be asked to interview the servants while the details were still fresh in their minds. I concurred."
"Quite right," the vicar said. "Quite right. But if Sabrina and her sister did not die of illness, how-?" He looked at Kate, alarm widening his eyes. "Did the doctor suggest…? Is there a thought of…?"
He answered his own question with an emphatic shake of the head. "No, of course not. I am sure that some obscure disease or condition will be discovered to be the cause."
Kate rose and added another lump of coal to the fire. She knew the word that the vicar could not bring himself to utter. Poison. The same word had occurred to her when Sir Charles had responded so abruptly to her mention of the mushroom pudding. If the pudding had been at fault, the poisonings must have been accidental, arising from ignorance in gathering the mushrooms or carelessness in cooking them. Even though all who handled mushrooms were carefully schooled in the dangers, the newspapers frequently reported such accidents.
But Beryl Bardwell had read too many sensational stories
and concocted too many murderous plots to accept that easy answer-especially given the state of high tension at Bishop's Keep. If Aunt Sabrina alone had died, Kate might have suspected Aunt Jaggers to have been responsible. Her treatment of poor Nettie and little Harriet were only two examples of the woman's sudden bursts of ungovernable passion, and there was that business with Jenny as well. Aunt Jaggers hated her sister, and it was very likely that she would inherit the estate. Yes, if Aunt Sabrina alone had died, Kate would immediately have suspected Aunt Jaggers of slipping a poisonous mushroom into the pudding.
But if the pudding were indeed the lethal weapon, Aunt Jaggers could hardly have been the killer. She had eaten two portions of it-hers and Kate's-with a greedy relish.
Kate picked up the poker and stirred the fire. There was another way to interpret the tragedy. Aunt Sabrina had clearly been desperate to escape from whatever threat of exposure her sister was holding over her head. "If I had not already decided to put an end to her intimidations and cruelties, this would be the last straw," she had said when Kate told her that Aunt Jaggers had discharged Cook. Kate had flinched then at the pent-up fury in her aunt's words. What if that fury had inspired Aunt Sabrina at last to take matters into her own hands? What if her desperation to escape from her sister had driven her to kill?
But Aunt Sabrina had also eaten the pudding. If she had decided to kill Aunt Jaggers, she also intended to kill herself as well. Which was not, Kate thought with a deep sadness, beyond the bounds of possibility. She remembered Aunt Sabrina's instructions to turn over to the vicar the letters and cipher manuscript, almost as if she expected to be incapacitated. Unthinkable as it seemed, Aunt Sabrina might have felt that murder and suicide were the only ways to find release from her tormentor and to forever conceal the secret Aunt Jaggers threatened to reveal.
The vicar looked at her. "You are thinking…"
"That the constable will soon tell us what he has learned," Kate replied evasively, going back to her chair. She could not share her speculations with the vicar. She had not a shred of
proof on which to base them, and they would only trouble his Christian spirit.
"No doubt." The vicar made a tent of his fingers against his thin lips. ' 'Did your aunt speak to you about her… concern for the German letters?''
"Yes," Kate said. "Thank you for reminding me. She wanted me to give them to you, and the cipher document." She looked at him. "There is some question in my mind about the letters," she added hesitantly. Was now the time to mention the business? But Aunt Sabrina had seemed quite urgent about them, so perhaps there was something more here than she understood. It might be best to say what she thought.
' 'I had already gotten a start on translating the letters when Aunt Sabrina asked me to lay them aside. I feel they are not… that they are…" She took a deep breath. "I am no scholar of the German language, sir, but I have learned something of its grammar and spelling. In my opinion, the letters were not written by a native German speaker. I believe them to be forgeries."
The vicar's eyes narrowed, but Kate suspected he was not surprised. "You are quite sure?"
"No," Kate admitted. "I could be mistaken, or there could be another explanation for what I have observed. Perhaps they should be shown to some other person who might-''
"There is no need," the vicar said. His tone had the finality of a judge pronouncing a sentence of death. "Your observations are corroborated by a letter from Mathers, in Paris."
Kate sat upright. "What did it say?"
"The letter denounced Westcott as a forger and a fraud, and the author of Fraulein Sprengel's putative correspondence. Your aunt brought it to show me. As you might imagine, she was extremely distraught."
Kate nodded, remembering. "She was indeed. She was still highly disturbed when she returned yesterday evening."
The vicar's mouth twisted, as if he were tasting something foul. "It seems that the respected Dr. Westcott bestowed upon himself his own forged authorization to establish the Order of the Golden Dawn."
Kate stared at him. "If the letters are forgeries," she said
slowly, "then the Order founded on their authority is-"
"A sham." The vicar spoke with a weary distaste, darkened with anger.
"And the cipher document?" She recalled that some of its pages had a watermarked date of 1809, suggesting that it was over eighty years old, while others were unmarked. But the author of the document might have found a cache of old paper, and while the writing looked brown and faded, a sepia ink might have been used to make it appear so.
' 'If you and Mathers are right in your accusation, one must suspect that the cipher document is also a piece of fakery." Agitated, the vicar heaved himself out of the chair and began to pace back and forth in front of the fire. ' The truth of the matter is that Westcott has made fools of all who trusted him. The Order of the Golden Dawn is a hoax and a fraud."
"But what could Dr. Westcott gain from such an action? Money?"
"Something worth more to him than money," the vicar replied. "Repute. Public acclaim. Power over others." He spoke with increasing passion. "Self-aggrandizement. Self-magnification. These are powerful motives. People kill for far less. A modest deception is nothing to balk at."
"Who knows about Mathers's accusation?"
"Only you, I, and Mrs. Farnsworth," the vicar said. "Both your aunt and I felt the matter should be held strictly confidential, and that some sort of committee should be convened to inquire into it."
"And how does Mrs. Farnsworth view the situation?"
"I do not know, for Sabrina went to see her after she visited me. I would not be surprised if Mrs. Farnsworth discounted Mathers's indictment. She and Westcott are close friends, some even say…" He paused in his pacing and cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Excuse me for offending you, my dear. Some say they are lovers. And Mathers has been a pest since the beginning. He has challenged Westcott's authority on several occasions. Worse, he regularly harasses people for money for his work in Paris."
Kate recalled the conversation she had overheard at Mrs. Farnsworth's. Mathers had been "that miscreant Mathers,"
who had made "unprincipled charges." At the time, she had understood nothing of the exchange, except that the doctor was furious at Mathers and Mrs. Farnsworth anxious to smooth things over. Now, however, the situation was much clearer.
"Do you believe that Mrs. Farnsworth might want to conceal Mathers's accusation?" she asked.
The vicar resumed his pacing. "I would expect her to. She has a great deal at stake in the success of the Order. She has suffered financial reverses, to the point where she has only the house on Keenan Street and one servant. Members of the temple in Colchester contribute heavily to her support, and are also assisting her in her efforts to reestablish her acting career. If the organization is discredited, the members will be disappointed and angry, some even furious. Their support for her will certainly dissolve."
Kate could easily understand. If members of the Order believed that Mrs. Farnsworth and Dr. Westcott were lovers, they might even believe that she had been a partner to the fraud. That would be the end of the temple, and of the soirees that attracted such well-known people as Oscar Wilde, Willie Yeats, and Conan Doyle. No wonder she rejected Mathers's accusation.
The vicar paused once more in his pacing. "Your discovery of the inconsistencies in the letters is crucial. That proof will no doubt persuade her that it is best to expose the fraud now, whatever the personal consequences, for it is bound to come out eventually. I shall have to speak to her in a day or two." He turned to Kate. ' 'But there are matters of more immediate consequence that must be tended to, Miss Ardleigh-Kath-ryn, if I may?"
Kate nodded gravely. "I suppose you are speaking of the funeral arrangements."
The vicar's expression was infinitely sad. "Yes, of course. But in the meantime, the estate must be managed, decisions must be made. Since you are your aunt's heir-"
Kate gasped.
"You did not know?"
Wordlessly, Kate shook her head.
"Yesterday, she altered her will, removing her former major beneficiary-"
"Her sister?"
"Yes. Sabrina had come to look upon you almost as a daughter, Kathryn. She wanted you to have Bishop's Keep and sufficient means to support it and yourself, even if you should choose to marry."
Kate bowed her head as the enormity of the realization washed over her, overwhelming her in a torrent of feeling- amazement, incredulity, gratitude. The magnitude of her changed circumstances was utterly beyond belief. Then she remembered something, and raised her head.
"In her last conscious moments, my aunt spoke of a child. She called her Jocelyn. Dr. Randall insisted that she was delirious. You have known Aunt Sabrina for a long time. Do you know anything of a child?"
The vicar stood before her, hands clasped behind his back. His eyes were distressed, but his mouth was gentle. "Kathryn, I cannot discuss this matter with you at the present time. I very much regret that I cannot be more forthcoming."
"I understand," Kate said, although she did not. If Aunt Sabrina had a daughter, why had she left the Ardleigh estate to a niece?
Who was Jocelyn Ardleigh?