Spotted Hemlock
Gladys Mitchell
Bradley 31
1958
A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
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Contents
chapter one: rhubarb
chapter two: phantom horseman
chapter three: posted as missing
chapter four: echoes of highpepper
chapter five: the corpse speaks in riddles
chapter six: case history
chapter seven: machinations of a paternal aunt
chapter eight: a lamb to the slaughter
chapter nine: discrepancies
chapter ten: phantom holiday
chapter eleven: identification of a lady-killer
chapter twelve: see naples and die
chapter thirteen: nobody asked for bloodhounds
chapter fourteen: the counterfeit patient
chapter fifteen: piggy comes cleanish
chapter sixteen: a confusion of students
chapter seventeen: the gentlemen raise their voices
chapter eighteen: squeak, piggy, squeak
chapter nineteen: the grey mare’s ghost
chapter twenty: painter’s colic
To Patricia and Joe Rowland with love
St. Martin’s Press New York
spotted hemlock. Copyright © 1958 by Gladys Mitchell. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Mitchell, Gladys, 1901-1983 Spotted hemlock.
I. Title.
PR6025.I832S6 1985 823'.9I2 85-12513
ISBN 0-312-75350-0
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd.
First U.S. Edition
10 987654321
SPOTTED HEMLOCK
chapter one
Rhubarb
‘Nothing has ever moved me more than the sight of this splendid vegetation.’
The Swiss Family Robinson
^ »
Rhubarb?’ repeated Lord Robert. ‘I hardly think so. I could enquire, of course.’
The occasion was the summer dance given by the students of Highpepper Hall, a place recognised by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries as an approved institution for the training of gentlemen-farmers. Lord Robert, the younger son of a duke, whose inheritance consisted largely of piggeries and tillage, was in residence at the Hall for thirty weeks of the year, and spent most of this time as a gentleman and what he could spare of it as a farmer.
Noblesse oblige, plus a three-line whip from his Common Room chairman, had been instrumental in bringing him on to the dance-floor to do his part in entertaining a bevy of somewhat beefy beauty from Calladale, an agricultural institution for women, situated in a pastoral countryside some twenty-five miles from Highpepper. The no-man’s-land between the two colleges had seemed sufficiently wide to discourage private and unnecessary fraternisation between the men and the girls. It proved, however, that the majority of the gentlemen-farmers possessed cars, and it was a sobering thought that the dances given alternately by the two colleges marked an unavailing attempt on the part of the authorities to sublimate conditions against which all disciplinary action had proved useless. The heavy weapon of rustication and the heavier one of expulsion were used sparingly at Highpepper, and fines had proved but a challenge to the young men to break those particular rules which appeared to have a monastic bias.
Lord Robert’s partner, beneath some ill-advised make-up, was a fresh-faced, healthy girl of nineteen. She was at Calladale on a scholarship plus a very inadequate grant, and, although she was doing her best to disguise the fact, she was feeling both flattered and alarmed at finding herself in the arms of the aristocracy. She had introduced the abortive rhubarb-motif in a desperate attempt to provide common ground for discussion, for Lord Robert’s interests, on the whole, hardly coincided with her own.
‘You can grow it anywhere,’ pursued the misguided girl.
‘Oh, really?’
‘Only, of course, it needs good rich manure.’
‘Oh, quite.’
‘Or you can force it. In a greenhouse, you know, or a cellar or shed. You put the roots in boxes and cover them loosely with soil and straw. Or you can put an old bucket with a hole in it over the top of the crowns and mulch well, all round, with plenty of stable dung. I suppose, as all of you at Highpepper go hunting in the season, you’re very well off for dung, so, if you ever did think of growing rhubarb…’
‘Oh, quite,’ said Lord Robert. ‘What about some coffee and a bite? There’s a running buffet next door.’
The subject of conversation which had failed to strike an answering note in the breast of the noble lord had made some slight appeal to a commoner named Soames, who had also danced with the girl.
‘It would be rather a rag,’ he said meditatively to his friend Preddle when the dance was almost over.
‘What would?’ demanded Preddle. ‘I’m much too exhausted to rag. Gome on up to my room. I’ve got a bottle of Scotch. I really need a restorative after rockin’ and rollin’ those truly dreadful girls. Why do they seem to get heavier and uglier and clumsier every term?’
‘Mother Nature would know,’ said Soames, taking the stairs two at a time. ‘Anyway, you’re quite right about ragging them. It would be a waste of time and trouble. Are you going down tomorrow or leaving it until the weekend?’
‘Oh, weekend, I think. My people are going to Cannes on Saturday, and I’ll have more scope with them out of the way.’
The two young men gained Preddle’s room and Soames sank luxuriously into an armchair while his host rummaged among sports gear for the whisky. Relaxed and comforted,. the friends maintained silence. Preddle poured out the second drinks and Soames lighted a pipe. Then Preddle said:
‘What was on your mind? What rag?’
‘Rhubarb. Plant it all over Calladale on top of dead rats.’
‘Crude, old boy.’
‘All ragging’s crude, if it comes to that.’
‘Where would we get so many crowns?’
‘Order them on the College notepaper, of which I achieved a few useful sheets while I was waiting for Sellaclough the other day. There was a whole rack stuffed with headed stationery on his desk, so I helped myself. Never know when it might come in useful. The nurserymen will think the rhubarb’s an official order from College, and bung it along like nobody’s business.’
‘Bung it along? Yes, and where to? You’d need a lorry to do a job like that.’
‘Old Brown goes down tomorrow. We could have the rhubarb crowns delivered at his house and unloaded there, just inside North Gate. We’d have to be on hand, of course, to reload it into the boots of people’s cars and run it over to Calladale at dusk. We should need half-a-dozen extra chaps, not more, to help with the carting and planting. Don’t want too many people in a rag.’
‘What about the dead rats?’
‘Old Benson.’
‘Yes, of course. But we’ll miss the cream of it, you know.’
‘You mean we shan’t be there when the girls dig it all up? No, but you can’t have everything, and we’ll hear about it all right.’
There came a tap at the door. It opened and disclosed the wistful countenance of their tutor, Mr Gardien.