Cecily turned to Joe. “Well done, Commissioner! It’s never easy lancing a boil. Bystanders inevitably risk being contaminated by the effluent. I will say it—since James, in his rush of soft hearted solicitude neglects to—we’re grateful that you have wielded the scalpel. Grateful that you have proceeded through to the truth with such delicacy and concern for the reputations in question. No heavy boots, no handcuffs. Only friends of the house here present to witness the misguided girl’s downfall.”

Her sharp look around the table was unmistakably a swearing to silence on the part of everyone, their understanding nods a guarantee of the reinstatement of her son’s reputation and career.

Joe watched the pious sorrow gathering, listened to the murmured compassion being offered to Truelove and his stomach curdled. Only Adelaide was looking puzzled and angry. She got to her feet in a marked manner and murmured something to Cecily as she went by on her way to the door.

Joe followed her clicking heels and managed to cut her off before Ben could open up for her. He hissed, “Stop right there, Adelaide. Don’t leave me alone with these swine! They may need you to sew their balls back on before the evening’s over!”

CHAPTER 24

Joe turned to Ben.

“Did you bring it, man?”

Ben picked up a brown paper package from behind a plant pot and handed it to Joe.

Joe turned his attention back to the gathering. They fell silent, eager to hear him apply the soothing ointment of compliance and understanding. A police officer, a high-ranking one destined for the top position at the Yard, a man now shown to have the confidence and trust of a minister of Truelove’s promise, was a man they would listen to.

He stayed on his feet between them and the door.

“First things first: Miss Joliffe, for whose fate I observe you all to be exhibiting so much sympathy, is as we speak, on her way to enjoy a cup of cocoa with Adam Hunnyton. She will have already heard an apology for the treatment she has just received at our hands. That scene was enacted with her knowledge and consent, her contribution voluntary. It was, nevertheless, an unpleasant experience. I hope one day she will find it in her to forgive me. I know she will never forgive you, Truelove.”

He paused for emphasis. “Yes, you, Truelove! That was a farce, not a pantomime, you have just witnessed. But the first act only. A scene played out to reveal to me—and to all in this room—the depths to which the Truelove household was prepared to stoop to protect its own. Its reputation, its very existence have been—still are—at stake. With one woman dead already, two more women’s lives and happiness were to be sacrificed without a second thought to keep a Truelove in place and in affluence. That’s what this is all about. You have shown yourselves in your true colours. I’m now going to hold up a mirror so that you can see yourselves in all your dishonour.”

Pompous rhetoric, perhaps, but calculated. An Englishman, even a rogue, still had his attention caught by a challenge to his honour.

Jaws dropped, two men leapt to their feet uttering threats. Again, the only thing that saved Joe from a revolt was curiosity. Wives tugged their husbands back down into their chairs, clucking and fussing. What on earth was this fiendish policeman going to come out with next? They had to know.

Alice McIver, more prescient than the rest, spoke sharply to her husband: “Don’t interrupt, Mungo! He’s just smashed up the wristwatch, now he’s going to pull it in one piece out of someone’s ear.”

Alexander managed a delighted grin. “She didn’t do it, did she? Ha! Told you so! You’ve been having us on, Sandilands! Poking us with a stick to see which way we’d jump.”

“No, she didn’t do it, Alex. Dorcas Joliffe is entirely innocent of any attempt on Lavinia. The only thing she has been guilty of is trusting James Truelove. The man who connived at the murder of his own wife. Lavinia produced no heir and had, after many years, dished out the last of her fortune. Her character and conduct were increasingly showing themselves unsuited to life at the side of a man of Sir James’s political ambitions. She had become a worthless hindrance to the Truelove line. With her off the scene, James, still youthful and destined for a glowing future, could attract a rich, socially adept woman of childbearing years. He had one such in mind.

“But how to manage it without drawing down suspicion on himself? The notion of allowing his wife to follow her own stupid fantasy to its inevitable grisly end occurred to a Truelove mind that disastrous weekend. There was even a love-lorn student on hand to take the blame, should anything go wrong and blame become a feature of the case. Dorcas Joliffe, in her blind attachment to her mentor, was a useful insurance policy. As was a recently appointed and ambitious Assistant Commissioner of Police. Conveniently, he was known to have connections with the Joliffe family and could be depended on to deflect suspicion from the Trueloves while ensuring that the blame-carrier escaped any serious trouble at the hands of the law. How thoughtful … How neat!

“Grace was the only one who tried to avert a tragedy. Unfortunately, in her dilemma, she sought advice from not Dorcas but from one she trusted and who knew something about horses. I’ve discovered that in this household, everyone considers himself or herself an expert. But in this case, the authority consulted had access to a very ancient source of information.”

Joe slammed the brown paper parcel down onto the table and slid out of it a leather-bound book.

“Dr. Hartest. Please be so good as to open this tome at page three hundred and seven, will you, and read out the recipe you’ll find there.”

Adelaide reached forward and took the book. “It’s something called The Accomplisht Ladie’s Companion,” she said, mystified.

Mrs. Bolton gasped and glowered at Ben, who was beginning to look a little shaken.

“And here it says: Receit for the bating of horses. A sovereign receit for keeping a horse in its rightful place. Will stop a horse in its tracks on the open road. Caution: will rouse ire and acute ill-temper in the creature if used against it in a confined space. Require your servant to collect together the following ingredients …” Adelaide looked up, sickened. “They’re all listed if anyone wants to see them … Stoat’s liver, cat’s urine, rat’s blood …”

“We’ll never know at whose instigation the ingredients were collected together. No difficulty in harvesting the essential one—the stoat remains. These were freely available to anybody walking about the estate, where they were regularly displayed on a spiked fence by Goodfellow. In the few hours available to our conspirator, the recommended maceration time in noxious fluids had to be ignored. Not a problem to a mind unimpressed by magic, a mind that saw through the hocus pocus to the essential effective ingredient. I’d have harvested half a dozen stoat livers, added a few rat entrails for bulk and stirred up the whole mess with a touch of urine from a house chamber pot. Perhaps our modern-day apothecary can inform us? I do know from Grace herself that the authority she consulted was …” Joe turned, not for cheap emphasis, but to do the accused the courtesy of looking her in the eye. “You—Cecily, Lady Truelove.

“And you, in turn, Cecily, consulted and conspired with your trusted friend and retainer, Enid Bolton.

“The plan devised by the two women was known to Truelove …” Joe asserted a fact for which he had no evidence and left a pause in which Truelove might have registered a denial. He did not, in the end, have the gall to leave his mother and his housekeeper to carry the can. “They arranged for James to be seen by the servants crossing over to spend the night at the Dower House.”