Chorus of the Dead

Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Perishing gloomily,

Spurr'd by contumely,

Ainsley followed Walter into the hallway where they found Cook on her knees at the base of the stairs. She clung to the stair handrail and rested her head on it as she wailed.

"What is it?" Walter asked.

"The scullery," she barely got the words out through gulps of air and sobbing, "She's in the scullery."

Ainsley ran first, bounding down the kitchen stairs and passed the crying servants who were too traumatized to say or do anything to help. Ainsley found the body of Mary, bloody and lifeless, on the cobblestone floor of the scullery. She lay with a gaping wound on her head, one hand clutching her stomach as if the wound was nothing compared to the pain she felt from her illness. The smell of bile wafted from one of the nearby buckets where the girl must have thrown up moments before her death.

Ainsley was leaning over the corpse just as Walter entered. "Good god!" Walter placed his arm over his mouth and nose seconds after he entered the sour smelling room. The mix of bile, blood and recent death had no effect on Ainsley. "What is it?" Walter demanded, hovering at the door.

Ainsley surveyed the scene, lifting Mary's limp arm from her stomach to see if she hid anything. He glanced over the room and saw the implement, a cast iron fire poker lay a foot from the body, sitting in a ring of blood.

Margaret slipped past Walter, who hadn't the stomach to enter, and met Ainsley in the small, confined room. She lifted her skirts from the pool of blood and crouched down next to her brother. "Something is not right. The girl was sick."

"She wasn't dying quickly enough." Ainsley explained, the only possibility becoming crystal clear. "The poison was taking too long."

"Who could have done this?" Walter spoke from behind the threshold.

"Anyone," Margaret replied without hesitation.

"Upstairs everyone!" Ainsley yelled at the group that stood sobbing at the far end of the kitchen. "No one leaves this house," he ordered as he marched past Walter and into the main kitchen. Ainsley removed his jacket swiftly and began to roll up the white sleeves of his dress shirt. "Send one of the servants for the constable and magistrate. Send someone you trust." Ainsley removed his tie and looked at Walter. "Go, now!"

Walter left the kitchen at Ainsley's command, running up the stairs to the main floor.

"Ainsley, what is happening?" Margaret leaned in on the table. She closed her eyes momentarily.

"Someone killed that poor girl because she knew something about who killed Josephine and Walter Sr. Whoever it was tried to poison her first but cornered her there and bludgeoned her to death because it was taking too long. That girl knew something and she almost told us, do you remember? She almost told us what happened before Walter showed up." Ainsley pounded his fist on the worn wood table that was between him and Margaret. "Damn!"

"She told us the murderer is female. She kept saying 'she bid me to do it. She told me to give it to the doctor'. " Margaret rounded the corner of the table. "The murderer is one of the women. It has to be Elizabeth or Mrs. Lloyd."

Ainsley nodded in agreement. "Mrs. Lloyd was with us the entire time. Elizabeth had been excused."

"But how did Elizabeth get passed the servants here. They must have been preparing dessert." Margaret and Ainsley glanced over the plates of pudding at the other end of the table, near the base of the kitchen stairs. A crumpled pile of mint leaves was set in amongst the plates, with a few already garnished with sprigs of the herb.