Behold Here's Poison Read online

  ‘Oh, I do hope I haven’t done that?’ said Randall in a voice of gentle concern.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ stated Mrs Lupton fairly, ‘I was telling your Aunt Harriet that you ought to be informed when you arrived. Not that I consider you have any cause for complaint. You are not more nearly concerned than Gregory’s sisters. Please do not imagine that you need give yourself airs just because you happen now to be the head of the family! There will be time enough for that when we have heard your uncle’s Will read. Which reminds me, Harriet, that I must arrange with Mr Carrington when it will be convenient to him to come down here. In the ordinary course of events I suppose he would come immediately after the funeral, but in this case I am of the opinion that the sooner he comes the better.’

  ‘I am glad of that,’ said Randall. ‘He is coming on the day after tomorrow.’

  Mrs Lupton eyed him with something approaching loathing. ‘Do I understand that you took it upon yourself to make this arrangement without a word to anyone?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Randall.

  At this moment a not unwelcome interruption occurred. Mrs Matthews came into the room. She extended a gloved hand towards Randall, and said: ‘I saw your car, and so guessed you were here. Janet, too! Quite a little family party, I see. I wonder if you thought to order any fresh cake, Harriet dear? I seem to remember that there was not a great deal yesterday. But I’m sure you did.’ She dropped her hand on to her sister-in-law’s shoulder for a moment, and pressed it. ‘Poor Harriet! Such a sad, sad day. And for me too.’

  ‘I understood that you had been shopping in town,’ said Mrs Lupton.

  Mrs Matthews gave her a look of pained reproach. ‘I have been buying mourning, Gertrude, if you can call that shopping.’

  ‘I do not know what else one can call it,’ retorted Mrs Lupton.

  Randall handed Mrs Matthews to a chair. ‘How tired you must be!’ he said. ‘I find there is nothing so fatiguing as choosing clothes.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Matthews, sinking into the chair, and beginning to draw off her gloves, ‘it was not so much choosing, as taking anything that was suitable. One doesn’t care what one wears at such a time.’

  ‘You have a beautiful nature, dear Aunt Zoë. But I feel sure that exquisite taste cannot have erred, shattered though we know you to be.’

  Mrs Matthews fixed her soulful eyes on his face, and replied gravely: ‘Not shattered, Randall, but in a mood of – how shall I express it? – melancholy, perhaps, and yet not quite that. Gregory has been much in my thoughts.’

  ‘Let me beg of you, Zoë, not to make yourself ridiculous by talking in that affected way!’ said Mrs Lupton roundly. ‘You will find it very hard to convince me for one that Gregory has been in your thoughts, as you call it, for as much as ten seconds.’

  ‘And I’m sure I don’t know why he should be!’ added Miss Matthews, a good deal annoyed. ‘I lived with Gregory all my life, and what is more he was my brother, and if he was in anyone’s thoughts it was in mine, which indeed he was, for I have been sorting all his clothes, wondering whether we should not send most of them to a sale. Though there is an old coat which might very well be given to the gardener, and no doubt Guy would be glad of the new waterproof.’

  ‘My thoughts were rather different, dear,’ said Mrs Matthews. ‘I was in Knightsbridge, and found time to slip into the Oratory for a few moments. The peace of it! There was something in the whole atmosphere of the place which I can hardly describe, but which seemed to me just right, somehow.’

  ‘It must have been the incense,’ said Miss Matthews doubtfully. ‘Not that I care for it myself, or for joss-sticks either, though my mother used to be very fond of burning them in the drawing-room, I remember. Though why you should go into a Roman Catholic Church I can’t imagine.’

  ‘Nor anyone else,’ said Mrs Lupton.

  Janet said large-mindedly: ‘I think I can understand what you mean, Aunt Zoë. There’s something about those places, though one can’t approve of Roman Catholics, of course, but I can quite imagine how you felt.’

  ‘No, dear, you are too young to understand, mercifully for yourself,’ said Mrs Matthews, disdaining this well-meant support. ‘You do not know anything of the dark side of life yet, and pray God you never may!’

  ‘Oh, mother!’ groaned Guy, writhing in acute discomfort.

  ‘If all this grossly exaggerated talk refers to Gregory’s death I can only say that I never listened to such nonsense in my life!’ declared Mrs Lupton.

  Randall lifted one long, slender finger. ‘Hush, aunt! Aunt Zoë is remembering that she is a widow.’

  ‘Damn you!’ muttered Stella, just behind him.

  ‘Yes, Randall, I am remembering it,’ said Mrs Matthews. ‘Now that Gregory has passed on I realise that I am indeed alone in the world.’

  Randall made a gesture towards his scowling cousins. ‘Ah, but, aunt, you forget your two inestimable Blessings!’ He glanced down into Stella’s wrathful eyes, and said softly: ‘That will teach you to say damn you to me, my sweet, won’t it?’

  Under cover of Mrs Lupton’s and Miss Matthews’ voices, both uplifted in indignant speech, Stella said: ‘You’re a rotten cad!’

  He laughed. ‘Temper, Stella, temper!’

  ‘I wish to God you’d get out, and stay out!’

  ‘Think how dull you’d be without me,’ he said, turning away. ‘Dear, dear, surely my beloved aunts are not quarrelling?’

  The dispute ended abruptly. ‘Do you mean to stay to tea, Randall?’ snapped Miss Matthews.

  ‘No, Stella has expressed a wish that I should get out and stay out,’ replied Randall, quite without rancour.

  ‘Stella, dear! I’m sure you didn’t mean that,’ Mrs Matthews said.

  ‘What a thing it is to be head of the family!’ murmured Randall. ‘I am becoming popular.’ With which parting shot he blew a kiss to the assembled company, and walked out of the room.

  He left behind him a feeling of tension which the succeeding days did nothing to allay. The family was uneasy, and the intelligence, conveyed to Stella by Dr Fielding, that the organs of Gregory Matthews’ body had been sent to the Home Office for analysis was not reassuring. The suspense set everyone’s nerves on edge, and the visit of Mr Giles Carrington, of the firm of Carrington, Radclyffe, and Carrington, to read the Will on Friday had the effect of causing a great deal of pent-up emotion to explode.

  Everyone had nursed expectations; everyone, except Randall, was disappointed. Mrs Lupton was left a thousand pounds only, and an oil painting of her brother which she neither liked nor had room for on her already overcrowded walls, and was inclined to regard it as an added injury that she was referred to in the Will as Gregory’s beloved sister Gertrude. Neither of her daughters was mentioned, and it was insufficient consolation to discover that Guy had been similarly ignored. Stella, in a codicil dated three weeks previously, was to receive two thousand pounds upon her twenty-fifth birthday on condition that she was not at that time either betrothed or married to Dr Fielding. The bulk of the estate was inherited by Randall, but a disastrous provision had been made for Mrs Matthews, and for Harriet. Gregory Matthews, with what both ladies could only feel to have been malicious spite, had bequeathed to them jointly his house and all that was in it with a sum sufficient for its upkeep to be administered by his two executors, Randall and Giles Carrington.

  While Giles Carrington, who was a stranger to them, was present the various members of the family had for decency’s sake to control their feelings, but no sooner had he departed than Mrs Lupton set the ball rolling by saying: ‘Well, no one need think that I am in any way surprised, for I am not. Gregory never showed the faintest consideration for anyone during his lifetime, and it would be idle to suppose that he would change in death.’

  Randall raised his brows at this, and mildly remarked: ‘This document is not a communication from the Other Side, I can assure you, aunt’

  ‘I am well aware of that, thank you, Randall. Nor would