Mingled With Venom
Gladys Mitchell
Bradley 54
A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
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Contents
Chapter 1: Three Houses in Cornwall
Chapter 2: Family Dinner
Chapter 3: Headlands
Chapter 4: Campions and Seawards
Chapter 5: Hallucination or Fact?
Chapter 6: The Smugglers’ Inn
Chapter 7: Threats and Legacies
Chapter 8: Speculations and Near Certainties
Chapter 9: Death of a Matriarch
Chapter 10: Unexpected Ending to an Inquest
Chapter 11: Last Will and Testament
Chapter 12: Arrested and Charged
Chapter 13: Monkshood
Chapter 14: Family Matters
Chapter 15: A List of Suspects
Chapter 16: What’s in a Name?
Chapter 17: Gamaliel’s Law
Also by Gladys Mitchell
speedy death
mystery of a butcher’s shop
the longer bodies
the saltmarsh murders
death at the opera
the devil at saxon wall
dead man’s morris
come away death
st. peter’s finger
printer’s error
brazen tongue
hangman’s curfew
when last i died
laurels are poison
the worsted viper
sunset over soho
my father sleeps
the rising of the moon
here comes a chopper
death and the maiden
the dancing druids
tom brown’s body
groaning spinney
the devil’s elbow
the echoing strangers
merlin’s furlong
faintley speaking
watson’s choice
twelve horses and the hangman’s noose
the twenty-third man
spotted hemlock
the man who grew tomatoes
say it with flowers
the nodding canaries
my bones will keep
adders on the heath
death of a delft blue
pageant of murder
the croaking raven
skeleton island
three quick and five dead
dance to your daddy
gory dew
lament for leto
a hearse on may-day
the murder of busy lizzie
a javelin for jonah
winking at the brim
convent on styx
late, late in the evening
noonday and night
fault in the structure
wraiths and changelings
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd., 52 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3EF
© 1978 by Gladys Mitchell
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Copyright owner.
ISBN 0 7181 1689 5
Phototypeset by Granada Graphics Ltd. Printed and bound by Redwood Burn.
“A hoop of gold to bind thy brothers in,
That the united vessel of their blood,
Mingled with venom of suggestion…
Shall never leak, though it do work as strong
As aconitum…”
Henry IV, Part 2, IV, sc.4
Chapter 1
Three Houses in Cornwall
^ »
‘A full family reunion can be a very chancy business,’ said Maria Porthcawl.
‘This one looks like being a chapter out of Ivy Compton Burnett,’ said Fiona Bute. ‘Mrs Plack has already thrown a fit of hysterics and retired to her bed with a migraine at the thought of all the cooking involved.’
‘Madre has left me to issue the invitations. Surely she must know better than to seat Rupert and Diana at the same table. They haven’t spoken a civil word to one another for years.’
‘They need not sit next to one another.’
‘Then what about Gamaliel? Does she know he’s black?’
‘I doubt whether she even knows of his existence. Anyway, it’s a legal adoption, so he counts as one of the family. Then there are Quentin and Millament, Diana’s twins.’
‘But they’re only twelve years old. Surely they won’t be expected to dine with the rest?’
‘If she said everybody, she meant everybody.’
‘Well, let’s hope some of them won’t be able to come. What with Parsifal’s allergies, Diana on a diet and Bluebell being a vegetarian, no wonder Mrs Plack has taken to her bed! It’s enough to send any self-respecting cook to the madhouse, not to mention Garnet’s antisocial habit of trying all his food on his dog before he touches it himself.’
‘It is because Parsifal collects strange herbs for Blue to cook, but as for coming, they’ll all turn up if they know what’s good for them. Nobody knows yet who is mentioned in the Will.’
‘Oh, goodness, give her a chance! She’s only just over seventy. She isn’t going to die just yet.’
‘Everybody has to go at some time or other and she takes big chances scrambling about on the cliffs the way she does.’
‘I wonder whether I could fiddle the invitations a bit.’
‘In what way?’
‘Make a judicious selection and not invite them all.’
‘Those who weren’t invited would find out. Off you go. Get the job done and the cards delivered. The notice is short enough as it is. It is only a question of cards, not letters, I suppose?’
‘Cards, yes. I shall be as formal as the printed message allows. The more off-putting the invitations sound, the more likely they are to be turned down.’
‘Don’t you believe it!’
‘Just wishful thinking, that’s all. Is your own future secure?’
‘Is yours? We may be giving the best years of our lives, as the saying goes, but nothing in this world is a certainty. She takes us both for granted, and that is no advantage when it comes to receiving benefits.’
Maria was the daughter of seventy-five-year-old Mrs Leyden. She was a widow of fifty-two and had been known to refer to herself as her mother’s unpaid housekeeper, but this was an unfair assessment of her position in Romula Leyden’s household. She did pretty much as she pleased most of the time and was generously treated, although her mother had never approved of her marriage to Vannion Porthcawl, an actor who was far more often out of work than in it, and Romula had made no secret of her satisfaction when, having lived long enough to see his twin children, Garnet and Bluebell, reach the age of twenty, he obtained a part in a London pantomime, got drunk on the strength of this and was run over by a bus in Oxford Street and killed. Maria had lived at her mother’s house in Cornwall for the ten years which succeeded this accident.
Fiona Bute, aged thirty-five, was nominally the secretary, but was, in fact, a protégée. Romula had been disappointed in both her own children: Maria had made a marriage which deeply displeased her and Basil had fathered an illegitimate child. What was worse, in Romula’s opinion, was that neither he nor the woman had ever wanted to be married but had lived happily together until the woman died. When this happened, Basil begged his sister Maria to bring up his boy Rupert with her own two children, and unable to live without his lover, he put an end to himself by blowing his brains out.
Bereft, as she saw it, of both her offspring—for she had never had both of them together in her house after they had formed what she regarded as their disastrous partnerships—Romula had taken unto herself the orphaned child of a second cousin, so that Fiona Bute found herself in the position of adopted daughter. When, forgiven after her husband was dead, Maria returned to the maternal fold, Fiona went out of her way to make a friend of her. This was first because, with Maria’s advent, she wondered whether her own standing with her protector was likely to be put in jeopardy, and later on because the two women genuinely liked one another. Between them the house ran smoothly.