Chapter Fourteen #2
Bargain struck, I tie the blanket closed and carry the stiffening dog through to the slate-lined room.
The difference in temperature sends a ripple of gooseflesh up my forearms. As I bend to place Mutton on the floor, I spot one of the little dishes I’d set out for the mice.
Wiping my eyes on a sleeve, I crouch down to check on it.
A little of the poison is gone, but not disturbed as it would be by a large dog – only the rodents have been at this one.
But suddenly I have to know which dish did it.
Because it must be my fault. I’ve carelessly left one out where he could access it.
Taken in a frenzy, I check all the dishes that I can remember setting out.
Some full, some empty, but none with the look of having been found by Mutton.
The potting shed, then? The door is still closed tight when I get there, but I check inside anyway.
Everything as I’d expect it to be. The dried plants hanging from hooks.
Fresh pots of germinating tomatoes, chillies, aubergines and sweet peppers.
Sacks and crates. The yellow and red tin of poison is still on its high shelf, lid in place.
No – wait. I step closer, feeling the frown grow on my forehead.
The tin’s moved. Hasn’t it? A smidge to the right – I can see by the ring of dust at its base.
As if another person has been in here. Not Mutton’s doing, obviously.
But somebody other than me. I shake my head.
No use being paranoid. I haven’t looked at the shelves in a while: this could have happened any time.
Could have been Tom, looking for something, moving things around.
Could have been me, and I just forgot. Still … where did Mutton find that arsenic?
The next day, Tom and I dig a grave for the dog out in the orchard. The weather has warmed up, so the ground isn’t too hard – a small mercy, as he was a big old boy and we have a fair job to do. Might as well be digging the grave for a man.
Everyone comes up from the house to see him off.
Reacher has put on a black mourning suit, which may have seemed like cruel satire if it weren’t for the fact I know he loved Mutton as much as the rest of us.
Tom lowers the blanketed bundle softly into the open hole, then sprinkles a handful of earth over it with great ceremony.
As my companions swap memories of the dog, my mind drifts, running back over the bowls of rat poison.
I must have missed one in my sweep. The certainty chafing at my conscience.
Think. Did I check the drawing room? I can’t remember, but as I stand listening to the fond reminiscences, I become more convinced that I overlooked that one.
So, once the small funeral is done, and after Tom and I have mounded the remaining dirt back into the grave, I head inside.
Knock my boots on the scraper and enter through the back door.
Down the passage, into the main hall, then the drawing room.
A crunch underfoot. I look down and see a china plate, fissured under my toe.
More plates around. An upturned tea-tray.
Of course: Mrs Allen would have left it out for Arabella and me yesterday but, with the chaos over Mutton, we forgot all about it.
Nobody will have been in here since. The tray would have been left on this side table – at the perfect height for a dog’s curious nose to knock it down.
The food has been gobbled up, just breadcrumbs remaining, a greasy smear on the rug where it must have fallen.
I look down at this all with a slow horror in my guts.
Tell myself not to rush to a conclusion.
Double-check the dish of rat bait. It’s undisturbed, the same as the others.
So this tray was Mutton’s last meal. Which means that it must have been the source of the arsenic.
Yet the meal hadn’t been set out for him. No, this was meant for me and Arabella.
Again, I try to reel myself back. This doesn’t necessarily mean anyone was trying to poison us.
Food can become contaminated in all sorts of ways.
Besides, no one but Harfold’s inhabitants would have had access to the drawing room: me, Arabella, Tom, Mrs Allen and Reacher.
My stomach churns. I think of Reacher’s fury the other evening.
He’s desperate to inherit Harfold. But what would he have to gain from it now?
After all, Arabella has already signed the manor over to me, and sent off the deed to be formally recognized.
If I die without a will, I imagine that means the house would pass to my next of kin – to Mam and Dad.
Unless Reacher really is sure that the deed’s invalid; that, in the event of Arabella and me meeting a tragic demise, it will be ignored, and Harfold will go to him as it always would have.
Or maybe it’s not about Harfold at all: could it be as simple as petty revenge?
Someone’s wronged you and, in the heat of the moment, you want to hurt them back.
Nothing in your mind but the desire to inflict suffering.
And it’s so easy to slip a little arsenic into a plate of food.
Mix it with the butter, stir it into the milk jug.
Multiple ways to do it. It takes less than you’d think to kill even a human.
He could have crept into the kitchen while Mrs Allen was away, or else waited till the tea-tray was already sitting vulnerable in the empty drawing room.
Then what? Encourage the police to rule it a double suicide …
Or place the blame on the Allens. Suspicion would immediately turn to the person who prepared the food.
I can picture it clear as day, but surely Reacher isn’t so desperate that he’d harm his own cousin … Then I have another thought. Arabella’s food, always sliced into tiny, harmless chunks. Reacher would’ve been able to target just me.
Well, I’m not going to wait around for him to try again.
It’s a full moon tonight, so Arabella will be off out to look for her hare. I wait till she leaves to confront Reacher. Don’t need her overhearing this just yet.
He’s in his study when I find him, skulking like a rat in its nest. He doesn’t stand as I enter, but does lift his eyes over me. Notes my thunderous expression. How I shut the door firmly behind me.
‘Go on, then,’ I say. ‘What’s your next plan?’
He opens his mouth. Smooths his collar. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘Smother me in my sleep, maybe. Or is that too hands-on for you?’
‘Miss Morgan, what are you talking about?’ The act isn’t quite convincing.
A bead of sweat on his brow. The study curtains have been drawn against the night, and only a single lamp burns on the tabletop, sending his shadow looming up the wall behind him.
The decanter of Scotch is already out today, standing off to one side with an array of glasses.
Without waiting to be invited, I walk over and take the armchair opposite, leaning forward to fix him in my gaze.
‘You’ve been stealing from Arabella for years, haven’t you?
That’s why she has no money; it’s all been syphoned off into your own bank accounts.
Hidden behind fake invoices, investments you’ve pretended aren’t paying returns.
A secret deal with Gerrish.’ Under the table, the spider has caught something – a silverfish, I think.
Spinning it up in a neat little bundle, round and round.
Ready to drink up its innards. ‘You’ve made sure she hasn’t noticed by keeping her dependent on you, by propping up this bloody curse delusion.
She told me, you know, how it was you who first put the idea in her head.
Who encouraged her. And now here I am, standing in your way, and you can’t bear that – so now what?
You’re trying to kill me! To keep her all to yourself? ’
Reacher blinks at me, then swallows. Stands up.
‘What’re you doing?’ I ask, immediately on edge.
‘Calm down, I am not about to knock you over the head. I simply want to make sure that we are speaking in private.’ He sidles past me, scooting around the copper tub of seashells to crack open the door and peek out.
A sickly sweet, unwashed smell crawls off him.
‘Bellsy? No?’ Closing it again, he turns the key in the lock.
‘You’ve forgotten something,’ I say, as I cast around for a way to defend myself. The decanter looks good and heavy.
‘Oh?’ Reacher settles back into his seat, crosses his arms idly over his stomach.
‘The deed’s already in my name,’ I remind him. ‘So it’s pointless to kill me – Harfold wouldn’t pass on to you either way.’
He makes an uncertain humming noise. Opens one of the desk drawers and roots around. Pulls out a crumpled piece of paper and places it down, directly under the lamp so it seems to glow. Even upside down, I recognize the deed to Harfold.
‘How’d you get that?’
‘This?’ Reacher taps the paper with one finger, then shrugs. ‘Bellsy never sent it off.’
‘What do—’
A mocking smile. ‘You may be tending to Arabella’s garden, but that doesn’t make you a member of the family.’
This taunt misses its mark, since I know how insecure Reacher is about his own position in the genealogy: he’s the one who wants so desperately to be a legitimate Lascy, to claim his inheritance to Harfold. ‘Trust me, I wouldn’t want to be,’ I tell him.
‘Really?’ Eyes narrowing, shrewd. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, how you are always sending letters to your parents, but they never write back to you.’ A pause, tilting his head to watch me. Knowing he’s caught me. ‘Why is that?’
I open my mouth to tell some story, but nothing comes out.