Chapter 22
Twenty-two
Rafe
Hands proudly on the shoulders of his two wards, Rafe waited while his wife greeted Patience, the new mother, on Monday morning. Rafe was escorting his family to the manor schoolroom. Henri was apparently escorting his wife in the opposite direction, to his new shop.
Unlike tall and buxom Patience, Verity was unimposing in size, but in her beribboned bonnet and new sprigged muslin, she was every bit as beautiful. Rafe was a fortunate man.
Proudly carrying their infant, Henri nodded at the children. “I was orphaned by war and have no notion how to be a father. You and your wife will have to be my example.”
Rafe knew Verity was disappointed that they had yet to create a child of their own, but their wards filled their hearts and days. “They all grow in their own ways. Mostly, you need to keep them safe.”
As if his words had unlocked Pandora’s Box, Hunt’s normally stoic steward, wreathed in a storm cloud, sprinted up the drive. He stopped in relief at finding Rafe so easily. “Meera fears we have another case of poisoning. She needs a witness.”
Meera and Walker were not known to panic without reason.
Standing amid the riotous rhododendrons and greening hedges, with two wide-eyed towheads watching worriedly, Rafe wanted to shout his frustration at the gray heavens. He’d first been roped into the position of bailiff because of the poisoning of Verity’s beloved governess.
“Who?” he demanded, to get the worst over. He pushed the children to follow the women, who sensibly hurried toward the safety of the manor.
“A Mrs. Young, one of Lavender's seamstresses. Elderly, frail. Meera wants to be told she's wrong.” Already dressed to start his day as the manor steward, Walker was impeccable in spotless linen and striped waistcoat, but his dark face wore the concerned frown of a family man.
“Who would poison an old woman? She doesn't even own her cottage, does she?” Henri asked, also recalling the governess’s death.
“She rented from the bank. Son died in battle, daughter in childbirth, years ago. Older sister died of influenza last year,” Walker recounted from his trove of knowledge.
“Button maker, not seamstress.” Rafe finally placed the name, “She was with Lavender and Kate on Saturday, discussing the shop. Tiny thing.”
Walker shot Rafe a look. “Said the giant. She was stooped but average.”
Rafe had to concede the point. Walker led them to one of the smaller, medieval cottages on the main thoroughfare, just short of the town green.
The thatch had been patched years ago. The cross beams had weathered to cracked, blackened wood.
The ancient leather door hinges hung by a thread. The place needed to be leveled.
The yard was a weed patch groomed by a goat that bleated at their entrance. It needed feed and milking. “Who found her?”
“Neighbor. Heard the goat and got nosy.” Walker shoved open the door. The old pegs holding the planks together had nearly rotted from their holes. Women were never taught how to use tools to repair, and the bank did nothing to maintain their properties.
Meera Walker greeted them, wiping her hands in her apron. Her toddler sat in front of a cold hearth, shaking a stuffed poppet. “She grows mushrooms. The back garden is sprouting several spring varieties.”
Not casting a look to the bed cupboard where the deceased lay, Henri followed Walker through the one-room cottage to the back door, asking, “Who knows anything of mushrooms?”
“I do,” Meera replied in irritation. “Hers aren't poisonous. She sells them at the mercantile. In all the years she’s grown them, no one has ever died.”
“Stay on the flagstones,” Rafe warned. “That's soft soil. There may be footprints.” He turned to Dr. Walker. “Why do you think she was poisoned?”
“That's the difficulty, of course. Her sheets exhibit classic mushroom poisoning symptoms: sweating and restlessness. She emptied the contents of her stomach and evacuated her bowels without leaving bed, which indicates unconsciousness or perhaps paralysis. But she knew mushrooms. It seems unlikely that she would have eaten toxic ones.”
She showed him the pot on the cold hearth and the scattering of raw fungi parts that hadn’t been cleaned up.
“It’s difficult to say what she fixed or when.
If Saturday was the last time anyone saw her, these may have been sitting here for two days.
I can test them, but I have little experience in toxic mushrooms.”
“But you are certain she did not die of a heart ailment or old age or—” Rafe could think of a dozen causes of death.
“The cause could be many things, agreed. The poison quite possibly exacerbated any weakness. Most mushrooms are not immediately toxic and may take days, but she was old and no doubt had other infirmities, any one of which might have been fatal. And if this is all she had to eat for two days. . .”
Desperate for fresh food, everyone had been eating mushrooms lately. If they were poisonous. . . Rafe tried to remember if he’d served them recently. In the shepherd’s pie, perhaps.
Unfortunately, they had seen poisoning before. The whole village knew how the governess had died. “Others who ate the mushrooms might only be made ill? And they possibly were fatal to Mrs. Young because of age or illness?”
Meera nodded. “I will run tests, of course, but mushrooms and ale are all I have to work with. The symptoms are vague. I need to read more on the various types of fungi available at this time of year. I’m familiar with their raw state and what’s in the garden, but there are a lot of similarities between the poisonous and edible ones. ”
Rafe followed Henri and Walker to the garden door but stopped to ask, “Do the woods around here contain poison mushrooms?”
“If enough are ingested, yes, of course. I would think she'd have recognized those.” Meera remained behind with the child.
The backyard was completely shaded by yews and a single ancient beech.
As in most yards on this side of the road, the garden gate opened onto a path that ran along the stream at the bottom of the manor hill.
The locals used this pathway as much as the road.
This time of year, the stream ran high, but Hunt had built a series of small dams to control it.
Anyone could have entered the garden at any time and most likely wouldn’t have been seen.
“The stones aren't level.” Walker pointed at the cracked and aging flagstone path from door to gate. “Someone unfamiliar with the path slid into the muck and left a partial print. Child or woman, hard to say.”
“Could the print be Mrs. Young’s?” Henri asked, reasonably enough.
Muck. Polite word. Rafe wrinkled his nose at the stench. “The only shoes I saw inside were rather large men’s boots, probably for walking out here. Where did she obtain this. . . muck? Some of it is reasonably fresh.”
“When we clear the stables, we compost it behind the barn. Patience uses it in the gardens once the manure dries sufficiently. What we don't use goes to anyone who asks.” Walker turned back toward the cottage. “Jack does the same at his stable.”
Rafe nodded. He and Verity did the same, using the manure from the inn’s stalls now that they were rented out. Their plot was still small and didn’t require much.
“So the footprint might simply belong to whoever carries the pails for her?” Escaping the stink, Rafe returned inside. The others followed.
“I'll ask if she's had any carried down recently.” Walker cleaned his polished boots off on a scraper. “But it rained the other night. It would have erased any old prints. This one is fresh.”
Reluctantly, Rafe studied the lifeless body of the button maker. She'd died contorted in pain. It could still have been natural. Just because Meera didn't like the mess. . .
Voices outside warned the neighbors were gathering.
Rafe studied the washbasin and meager cupboard. She had one bowl and one teacup. “I'll ask, see if any of the neighbors noticed visitors.”
Henri studied a shelf of old gewgaws and a Bible on a table. “She could have nothing of value worth killing over. Murder is a senseless deduction.”
“We have a madman on the loose,” Walker reminded him. “What if she saw something he didn't want seen?”
“Like him using a pea-shooter?” Rafe suggested. He hadn’t wanted to question the manor boys. He hoped Hunt had. “Where did Oliver and Davy find theirs?”
Henri kicked a loose board in the old oak cabinet and replied, almost in amusement. “Our little geniuses made them. They found one crushed behind the stable, worked out the purpose, found an old bamboo fishing pole in the attic. . .”
“Inventive imps,” Walker finished.
“So Morgan threw away his pea-shooter and ran?” Rafe suggested, working it all through his mind. “And now he poisons the woman who saw him?” That didn’t fit what he’d learned so far, but he had to keep an open mind.
Walker uttered expletives. “We still have those rags he shed. I'll have the dogs leashed and send out another search party. Rafe, you'll lead?”
Rafe had trained the manor hounds as he'd trained his own. Hunting men was little different than vermin. “Two packs, if we can,” he suggested. “One starting at Kate’s, converging on the middle.”
But Morgan could be well outside any perimeter he chose by now. They could only search so far in a day.
“If he's mad enough to kill old women, no one is safe. Maybe we ought to gather everyone at the inn and surround it with armed guards.” Walker’s normally stoic demeanor barely hid his rage and disgust. He had a child to protect now.
“Not a completely reasonable solution.” Meera picked up their son. “But I think we'll be sleeping at the manor until Morgan is found.”
Rafe wouldn't argue with a mother's need for security— But he’d seen Morgan’s tattered boots. That had not been his footprint in the muck.