Page 84 of A Devilish Element
“I don’t recall anyone tampering with his glass, but I was at the other end of the table, and not inclined to pay him attention.”
“I don’t understand it,” Jane said, worrying her lips. “Weren’t we all drinking the same stuff? I swear my glass was filled from the same bottle, and Mr Whistler’s too, and perhaps Mr Cluett’s. He was drinking a lot. In fact, I think everyone was. Surely if something had been added to one of the bottles, then we would all have been affected.”
“Not a lot of the food got eaten,” Eliza observed. “So, it seems unlikely to have been something in that.” She’d had no appetite, Bell never touched meat, and Jem had spooned a few things onto his plate, but she couldn’t say for definite whether he’d eaten them or not. And surely poisoning the food indeterminately was far too risky, also one would have had to have access to it before it reached the table. That meant going down to the kitchens or intercepting it en route, something that would easily be determined with only a quick interview with Cedarton’s handful of servants. But they’d all gone in to dine at the same time. She’d sat down last, and she couldn’t recall anyone leaving to use the chamber pot.
“The Cluetts both ate heartily, but then if it was one of them, you’d think they’d be more circumspect about what they touched, and I think George had a bit of everything. I do think it was most likely them though. Don’t you, Eliza? Didn’t you see how quickly George was to defend himself and accuse me? But then that doesn’t make sense. They wouldn’t risk poisoning themselves, would they?”
“Maybe it wasn’t anything on the table.”
“You mean someone could have got to him earlier? Oh, yes!” Jane’s eyes gleamed with sudden fervour. “Then I bet it was Henrietta. I bet she rouged her lips with it and then when she—”
“That is rather fanciful. It would hurt her as much as him if she put something on her lips.”
“But just because it is fanciful does not mean it’s not possible.”
True enough. Jane seemed very taken with the idea, but perhaps that was down to her still harbouring ill-feelings over catching Henrietta with her mouth around Linfield’s prick.
“What if it’s all connected?”
“If all what is connected?” Jane asked.
“Everything. The ghosts, the bed fire, the quarrels, Linfield’s death.” Too many inexplicable things had occurred for them not to be related.
Jane nudged her arm. “I know that expression, you’re cogitating again. Share your thoughts with me.”
“I have nothing to share. I don’t have any answers, Jane, nor even a working theory. I just think it’s all related, Old Lady Cedarton appearing to you, your bed inexplicably burning, Linfield’s death, even maybe the reason why you came to Cedarton to begin with.”
“Are you suggesting this is all to do with…” She spread her fingers across her stomach. “It can’t be. Nobody knows, and nobody ever will.”
That was not what she had meant, rather Linfield’s reason to sojourn in the Yorkshire countryside in a half-ruined castle cut off from its neighbours by frost and mist.
Then again, who was to say those two things weren’t also connected? Matters felt so jumbled, it wouldn’t surprise her at all to discover they were.
George lurched into the room at that moment, causing Jane to cry out, and Eliza to place herself between Mr Cluett and her friend. “Is there something you wish to say to Lady Linfield, Mr Cluett?” She was forced to put a hand to his chest to keep him from bowling her over. Now far beyond the stage of maudlin drunkenness he’d displayed earlier, George’s eyes blazed with tyrannical menace.
“Lady Linfield my arse,” he blasphemed, shoving his blotchy red face up close to Eliza in a manner that caused her eyes to water as a result of the alcohol fumes on his breath. “’Tain’t a legitimate marriage. You might have sworn it afore the Lord, but that doesn’t change matters. Happens his lordship was already bound. I know. I’ve seen the record. Might be that he tore it from the parish record book, but it still happened. Was still witnessed and officiated.”
“That’s a hideous thing to say. You’re lying,” Jane protested. “He’s only been gone a moment. I can’t believe you’re being this horrid.”
“Good riddance,” George snarled. “I hope the Devil has him dangling on the prongs of his pitchfork.”
“What is it you want?” Eliza asked, both curious and determined to temper the level of drama occurring. “Or have you simply come to create mischief?”
“I’ve come for what’s mine, and I’ll have it, if you don’t want the world to know your marriage is a phoney one.” He nodded his head at Jane as he spoke.
“Don’t heed him, Jane. Your marriage is valid. He means only to menace you, the same as all drunks.”
“Happens I may have had a tipple or two.” George rocked on his heels, before making a swipe in Jane’s direction that fell far short of his target. “It don’t change the facts. She ain’t really Lady Linfield. Can’t be. He weren’t free to have her. Yer can dispute it all you wish; I have the paper what says it plain. Married he was, last spring, to Janie Faintree, not Jane Morley, recorded by Thomas Jenkins, curate, in the presence of two witness all appropriately documented with their marks.”
Eliza shoved him back from her person.
“That cannot be so. I don’t believe you. Eliza, it can’t be,” poor Jane sang.
Worryingly, she feared it might be.
“Where is your proof, Mr Cluett?”
George patted his coat front, appraising them of an inside pocket. “Right where it’s safe, that’s where. If you want it from me, and for me to hold my tongue, then I’ll make you the same offer I made him. The deeds to the Berkley Square property that he swindled from me, in exchange for my silence.” He made a turning motion before his lips, then cast away the imaginary key. “Otherwise, I’ll ruin you as surely as he’s ruined me. Everyone who matters will know that you’re a fraud, and that he was a bigamist. Your brat will be baseborn. The bastard brat of a dead bigamist. I’m sure he’ll grow into a fine and respected citizen.” His grin was entirely made of spite.
