“But those who investigated the crash said the railway was at fault,” I pointed out. “The board had to stop that service and pay out to the families.”
“They did.” Mrs. Gamble acknowledged this with a nod. “You know what I received? Ten pound.” Her lip curled. “Ten pound, for the loss of me husband and me beloved little boy, while Lord Covington marries Mr. Morris’s widow and brings her to this great house. She loudly says her husband was innocent of all that blood. That Lord Covington was too. Both those men were dead by the time I was able to be hired here, but I could get at her.”
I said nothing as her words rang out, her grief and rage filling the space. “I understand,” I said quietly. “It’s a helpless feeling, when we can’t protect our children. When we should protect them. But you killed an innocent, Mrs. Gamble. One who tried to protect her child.”
“Mrs. Hume didn’t have no children,” Mrs. Gamble insisted.
“She did. She kept it very private.” I let Mrs. Gamble contemplate that for a moment. “Last night I was made to realize how anger and sorrow, nursed for years, can emerge as bitter hatred. How they can twist a good person inside until there is nothing left of her. I also realized how dangerous vengeance can be. One death avenged can lead to revenge for that one, and on it goes. It must stop, Mrs. Gamble.”
“She ought to pay.” Large tears formed in Mrs. Gamble’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “Her ladyship’s husband cost me my man, and my son, and she goes on and on about how good her husband was, what a grand thing it is to run a railway. I got ten pound for me flesh and blood, and she and those like her reaped a huge reward. She deserves to die.”
“She lost both her husbands, and now a stepdaughter,” I reminded her.
“She should lose it all.”
Mrs. Gamble dashed her teacup to the table. It shattered, splashing me with warm tea and shards of porcelain. I rose quickly and stepped away, and Mrs. Gamble snatched up the plate of lemon cake and flung it to the floor. The plate broke into several pieces, the cake spattering across my boots.
“Yes, I did it, Mrs. Holloway,” she said, climbing to her feet. “I ground up the rhodies like you said, and laced her ladyship’s favorite foods with it. I was patient—when I was first hired here, I’d sneak up to the dining room and watch what she did at table, how she took the top portion of every dish like it was her due, and the rest of the family sat back and let her. Lady Covington must have the first, and best, of everything. I watched and noted and started to experiment. I put in only a little at first so if the wrong person took the food, they wouldn’t die. But she ate the poisoned fish or piece of chicken I’d coated with herbs mixed with the rhodies and grew ill. It was a happy day when the experiment succeeded. I wasn’t quite prepared to kill her at first—it pleased me to see her sick and miserable. She needed to suffer, like I had. I’d have kept on like that, but she then decided her illness was from more than her digestion, and she had to go and bring you in. By then, I wanted her to die. Her being sick weren’t enough anymore. She was supposed to eat all that lemon cake I packed in the hamper. She couldn’t stop praising it, first good word she’s ever had about my cooking—and it were your recipe. It ain’t my fault that Mrs. Hume, who I now learn was a hussy after all, gobbled down the lot.”
Mrs. Gamble rushed around the table but not to attack me. She headed for the back door, trying to make her escape.
I could not seize her in time, but I did not need to. That door flew open, and Inspector McGregor, followed by Symes, Daniel, and Caleb, barreled into the room, Symes wearing a thunderous expression.
Mrs. Gamble snarled and headed for the back stairs, but Jonathan darted out from the servants’ hall and caught her. Mrs. Gamble fought him, and Caleb and Daniel rushed to Jonathan’s aid.
“Mrs. Silas Gamble,” Inspector McGregor intoned as she struggled against the three men, “I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Mrs. Jeremiah Hume. I will inform your mistress, who will help you find a solicitor.”
“I don’t want nothing from her,” Mrs. Gamble shouted. “I want her dead.”
After she screamed the word, the fight went out of her. She collapsed into Caleb, who was trying to put cuffs on her wrists. Jonathan held her upright, a look of surprising compassion on his face.
“Take her out, Constable,” Inspector McGregor said to Caleb. “Yes, Mrs. Holloway, I heard it all.”
“So did I, by Jove,” Jonathan said. “I nipped down here for a bit of quiet and to pinch something from the larder. Then Gamble starts raving about railway accidents and how she tried to poison my mother.”
“I hope you did not eat the lemon cake,” I said in alarm. “Inspector, you should gather up the remains. There is rhododendron poison in it.”
Mrs. Gamble glared at me as Caleb and Daniel guided her to the back door. “Why wouldn’t you eat the bloody cake, Mrs. Holloway? You’d have died when you got home and saved me a world of trouble.”
“Because I’ve made a dozen batches of it since Lady Covington demanded the recipe,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “I’ve quite gone off it.”
27
Thank you.” Lady Covington, in her cavernous and silent parlor upstairs, clasped her hands held against her abdomen. “You have relieved my mind as well as saved my life. I’d thought I was a madwoman.” She waved me to a chair. “Please sit, Mrs. Holloway. Lady Cynthia. I cannot express my gratitude enough.”
She’d softened a long way since I had come upstairs to explain what the commotion downstairs had been about. Daniel had departed with Inspector McGregor and Caleb, all of whom I’d summoned via James. I’d had no wish to confront a murderer without them on hand both to hear her admit her guilt and arrest her.
Jonathan had ushered us upstairs to where his mother sat in the parlor with Harriet and Lady Cynthia, and he’d filled in my story with excitement.
“She deliberately came to this house with intent to kill me?” Lady Covington asked now. Jepson carried in a tea tray, which she set on the table before Lady Covington. Her lips were set in anger, as usual, but she didn’t sneer at me as fiercely as before.
“She did,” I said. “She was willing to wait as long as it took to procure the post. Poor woman. Her tragedy broke her.”
“I think Mrs. Holloway is jolly brave,” Jonathan declared. “She sat down with a murderess and drank tea she poured.”
“It came from the same pot, and I waited for her to drink first,” I said. “I suspected the cream and sugar, but those were fine as well. I didn’t eat the cake, because while she nibbled a crumb, that crumb could have come from a previous slice, or she knew such a tiny amount wouldn’t hurt her.”