“They want us to do the dirty work, in other words.”
Pierce grinned. “On the nose, sir.”
A jaunt to Richmond to clear up a problem among the upper classes was not what Fellows wanted at the moment. He’d meant to finish his report, go home, bathe, sleep, pack, drop in at his mother’s to say hello and good-bye, and then board a train. He had a week’s leave coming. His half brother, Cameron Mackenzie, had suggested Fellows stop in at the races at Newmarket next week. Fellows, though still uncomfortable with his newfound family, didn’t mind the horse races. Any man might enjoy himself at a racecourse. He’d planned to go to the seaside and stare at the water a while, then make his leisurely way to Newmarket for the racing meet next Monday.
But he was a policeman first, and if he had to postpone his trip, then he did. Policemen didn’t get days off.
Fellows rubbed his hair again. His face was already dark with new beard, and then there was the blood all over him. He didn’t feel in any way fit to face a house party of people convinced a man who’d died of overeating and apoplexy had been murdered.
But there was nothing for it. “We go,” Fellows said in a hard voice. “It’s our job.”
Sergeant Pierce lost his grin. “We?”
“I’ll need my dutiful sergeant for this one. Let me go wash my face, and we’ll be off. Fetch your hat.”
Fellows took some grim satisfaction from Sergeant Pierce’s crestfallen look as he headed off to the washroom to make himself presentable.
***
“He’s dead, all right,” Sergeant Pierce said an hour or so later.
He and Fellows knelt next to the body while a doctor called Sir Richard Cavanaugh stood nearby and gave them his medical opinion in the most condescending way possible.
“Histotoxic hypoxia,” Sir Richard said. “See his blue coloring? Prussic acid, most likely. In the tea, I would think, a fatal dose. Would have been quick. Only a few moments from ingestion to death.”
Fellows disliked arrogant doctors who presumed ahead of the facts, but in this case, the man was probably right. Fellows had seen death by prussic-acid poisoning before. Still, he preferred to hear conclusions from the coroner after a thorough postmortem, not to mention a testing of food and drink the victim had taken, than speculations by a doctor to the elite.
Fellows ordered Pierce to gather up what was left of the broken teacup with the liquid inside, and also the full teacup that stood next to the pot on the table. He had Pierce pour off the tea still in the pot into a vial for more testing. Fellows scraped up cream from a pastry that had been smashed on the ground, and the remains of the plate that had held it, handing all to Pierce.
He left Pierce sealing up the vials with wax and had a look around the tea tent. Unfortunately too many people had trampled in here; the place was a mess. The grass was filled with footprints—ladies’ high heels, gentlemen’s boots, servants’ sturdy shoes—all overlapping one another.
The local police sergeant stood well outside the tent as though washing his hands of the affair. Fellows approached him anyway. The fact that the local police had sent no one higher than a sergeant meant the chief constable wanted to keep well out of the way. He wondered why.
“Your thoughts, Sergeant?” Fellows asked the local man.
The sergeant shrugged, but the man had a keen eye and didn’t look in the least bit stupid. “The doc says poison in the tea, and I don’t disagree. The young lady they think did it is in the house—my constable’s on the lookout up there. She’s an aristo’s daughter, though, so the lady of the house didn’t want the likes of us questioning her. Says we had to wait for you.” The sergeant gave Fellows a dark nod. “Better you than me, if you don’t mind me saying so, guv.”
He meant better Fellows lost his job for arresting a rich man’s spoiled daughter, which was exactly what could happen. Fellows’ Mackenzie connections might be able to save him from a lawsuit by the girl’s father, but his career could be over.
Not that Fellows wanted to go begging, hat in hand, to his half brothers for their charity. An invitation to the races was one thing. Owing a monumental obligation to Hart Mackenzie was another.
“Go help Sergeant Pierce,” Fellows growled at the man. “I’ll need statements from everyone. Who was where and what they saw—in minute detail. Understand?”
The sergeant did not look happy, but he saluted and said, “Yes, sir.”
Fellows left him behind and made for the house and the aristocrat’s daughter. He reflected as he approached the large house that running down a killer six feet three and weighing eighteen stone was much more satisfying than having to face a silly girl who probably didn’t understand what exactly she’d done. She likely felt herself perfectly justified in poisoning a man who’d annoyed her. She’d be highly strung and more than a little mad, or else too stupid to realize the consequences of her actions.
Fellows looked up at the giant brick house trimmed in white, strategically positioned for a view to the river at the bottom of a meadow. The very rich lived here, the sort who existed in their own world, with their own rules; no outsiders need enter.
He climbed the marble steps at the rear of the house and stepped into the dim coolness of its interior. Mrs. Leigh-Waters, the lady of the house, hurried toward him from the front hall. She was a large-bosomed woman with hair pressed into tight, unnatural curls, and was garbed in a gray bustle gown that made her look a bit like a pigeon.