I continued. “What I mean is, if someone who wanted to poison Lady Covington sneaked these leaves into your kitchen and mixed them with the chervil or the basil, you would notice.”
“Aye.” She frowned in puzzlement.
“I’ve thought and thought about how someone could be poisoning your food. They could gather the rhodie cuttings and grind them up with a mortar and pestle.” I waved a hand at hers, a utensil found in every kitchen. “The poison is rubbed onto the very top fillet or slice of meat or mixed into the top dollop of a vegetable platter. Lady Covington always takes the first helping of every dish—a person could watch for a time and see what piece she favors. The poison could be added to her food right here in the kitchen, or surreptitiously in the dining room as the dishes sit on the sideboard before a meal. Or the dumbwaiter could be stopped between floors and the poison added there.”
Mrs. Gamble stared at me, round-eyed. “How could it?”
“This house has many pipes and wires for bellpulls and gas and plumbing behind the walls. It’s a modern house, with conveniences not found in older homes in Mayfair.” I’d noticed last evening that the Berkeley Square house did not have a dumbwaiter—the overworked footman carried in and took out all the dishes. The duchess had reached for a silver handbell while Lady Covington had buttons she could use to summon whichever servant she wished. “The dining room here is five steps up from the main floor, and those steps run next to the central staircase. The dumbwaiter goes straight to the dining room, but there is a maintenance hatch through which one can access it in the servants’ back stairs.”
I did not offer to leap up and show her, and Mrs. Gamble showed no inclination for me to do so.
“Goodness,” she said. “Then anyone in the house could have done it. All the servants use the back stairs, and Mr. Jonathan and Miss Harriet run down here anytime they’re feeling peckish.”
“No,” I said slowly. “Not anyone.” I scanned the kitchen once more, noting the spacious feel of it, but also how quiet it was, how lonely. The faded photograph of the man tacked onto the wall surveyed us mournfully. “I realized, as I thought things through in my kitchen last night, that the person who would have the easiest time poisoning the food is you.”
Mrs. Gamble clenched her teacup and stared in bewilderment. “Me? If you are joking, Mrs. Holloway, it is in poor taste.”
“I admit, I highly suspected Jepson of doctoring Lady Covington’s powders,” I said. “But only some of them. The packet Lady Cynthia had tested was a simple laxative.”
“Her ladyship does have trouble with her digestion, it is true,” Mrs. Gamble said. “But it could not have been me, as you know, so please rid yourself of that notion. Whenever I cook food for Lady Covington alone, she’s as right as rain. No sickness whatsoever.”
“Of course not.” I nodded. “If a meal you made only for Lady Covington killed her, everyone would immediately suspect you. So those meals had to be perfectly good. You wanted the poison to seep in when she ate what everyone else did, so that it could be seen as accidental, or done by someone poisoning the food once it left the kitchen.”
This idea had come to me last night as I’d mused. The cook would have the easiest time poisoning the food, but of course, she’d be the first suspected. I’d stumbled over the fact that the meals Mrs. Gamble fixed for Lady Covington alone held no poison at all, but then realized it was very convenient that they did not make her ill. Someone other than Mrs. Gamble trying to kill Lady Covington would surely take the opportunity to poison any meal they could, especially one they’d not partake in. Jepson could have dropped the ground rhodies into a dish while she attended Lady Covington in her chamber. Harriet or Jonathan could pop in to visit their mother as she ate and introduce it to the food when she was distracted. Even George might have found an excuse to speak to Lady Covington when she took one of these private meals.
Mrs. Gamble had ensured that nothing happened to her mistress at all when she prepared the special dinners, deflecting all suspicion from her.
Mrs. Gamble sat very still, her hand with the teacup suspended. “That hamper on the train. It was supposed to be for her ladyship. She weren’t supposed to share it. So how, if I did nothing to what I made for her alone, did that food get poisoned?”
“Because you poisoned it,” I said bluntly. “Lady Covington had grown suspicious of her bouts of illness and, when she met me at the Crystal Palace, asked for my help. My friend Mr. McAdam coming around and asking you about it likely put the wind up as well. Lady Covington had heard of me helping solve a theft and a poisoning not far from this house. When I started poking about, asking you, Jepson, and Mr. Symes many questions, you realized I might expose you. And so you struck. Sending off a hamper of food that would be passed through several hands and could have been tampered with at any time. Meanwhile, you are shocked and protest your innocence.” I leaned to her, just missing the plate of lemon cake. “The horrible thing is, you didn’t mind if those Lady Covington shared the food with grew ill or even died. You murdered Mrs. Hume. She had a child, who is now both motherless and fatherless.”
“A child?” Mrs. Gamble drew back, stunned. “What are you talking about? She had no children.”
“Mrs. Hume had a little boy in secret, who will never understand what happened to his mother. Or perhaps one day he will. Will he seek revenge as well, I wonder?”
Mrs. Gamble’s shock gradually faded. She tapped my plate. “Eat the lemon cake, Mrs. Holloway, while you tell me this rigmarole. It will go to waste otherwise.”
I did not touch the fork. “Is that what it was about, Mrs. Gamble? Revenge?” I glanced at the photograph once more. Cooks were discouraged, even forbidden, depending on one’s mistress, from having personal belongings in kitchens. The man in the photograph must be quite dear to her.
I thought she would not answer me, which would be unfortunate, but at my last word, Mrs. Gamble’s artlessness fell away, and her voice went hard. “Yes.”
“Because of the railway accident?”
Mrs. Gamble’s chest rose with her quick breath. “The train that wrecked at Heyford. January twenty-second, 1875.” She said this without inflection, as though she’d repeated the facts time and again.
“You worked in a house in Oxfordshire, I remember you saying.” I gentled my tone. “Who did you lose in the crash?”
“My husband and my son.” Her voice was a rasp. “They’d gone to Oxford, to see my husband’s mum. They caught that train on the way home.” Mrs. Gamble gripped her teacup, rocking in her chair, her gaze faraway. “A few faulty wheels, they said. How could one set of wheels tip over an entire train? There was Lord Covington, who never had any family on that train, saying to people that it wasn’t the railway’s fault. Why, even Mr. Morris, who should have looked into such things, had been killed. The fault was with the brakeman who didn’t stop the train, his lordship claimed. The brakeman was hurt so badly he died too, and couldn’t answer for himself.”