Page 79 of A Devilish Element
The remaining two gentlemen stood at once. Eliza too was half out of her chair. Henrietta fell into a swoon.
“Bell!” Jane cried, seizing up her napkin to offer Linfield it, only to then use it to wipe the splatter from her face. Linfield seemed blind to their reactions.
The physician had hardly moved a foot when Linfield disgorged a second gout of blood.
“What’s happening to him?” Jem still stood with his hands raised, uncertain as to where to put them. “Ulcer?”
The doctor shook his head, as if afraid to make his diagnosis. His brows were drawn into deep furrows, and he seemed as bewildered as the rest of them over what to do. “I think he’s been…” He shook his head again, as if he couldn’t equate what was happening before him with what his mind was telling him. Jem didn’t want to fill in what he suspected Bell had been about to say either, but the evidence was there before them. The scarlet splatter was too bright against the table linen. Linfield’s bilious hue, the haze of wrongness around him.
Jane howled and clutched her belly as if she too were about to cast up her assets. “No, no. This can’t be.”
As if awaiting the cue of her cry, Linfield buckled at the knees. Both Jem and Bell failed to catch him. Instead, they watched horrified as he bounced off both the table and his chair before landing with a thud, dragging the table linens with him. Only Eliza had the presence of mind to grasp the cloth as it slithered away, jostling the bone China and all the dishes into an ear-splitting clatter.
Bell followed his patient down to the floor.
Jem too bent to his knees, “Tell me what I can do? There must be something… Will a drink help?”
Bell cut him off with a succinct shake of the head. “It’s too late.” He withdrew his hand from his patient’s pulse point in his throat. “He’s gone.”
“What?” That could not be so. It could not be… “Are you sure?” he blurted. A nonsensical question. Bell knew his art, and he could see there was no breath left in Linfield’s chest, which left him staring at his former patron’s slumped and bloodied corpse uncomprehending, until Jane shoved him aside. A sob erupted violently from her mouth.
“No. No, he cannot be. He cannot. Doctor, you must do something. How can he be dead? He was well just two minutes ago.” Her tears began to spill thick and fast. “Do something.” She clutched at Bell’s coat front and the ends of his periwig, but there was nothing to be done. Linfield was already past help.
“I’m sorry. Lady Linfield, please,” Bell attempted, his atrocious bedside manner failing to rise to the occasion. To be fair, he looked almost as distraught as Jane, and every bit as addled as Jem felt. He did manage to free himself of her insistent grip and straighten his hair. “Madam, there’s no remedy I can give. I’m sorry, but your husband is with his God now.”
She howled. Howled like a banshee. Like the old Lady Cedarton was rumoured to have done before she leapt from the wreckage of the Lady’s Tower. A moment later, she was risen to her full height and spitting red-eyed ire at them all as the shock melted away her usual meekness. “Who has done this? Which of you has taken him from me?”
Heads swivelled in her direction, each of the stares more wild-eyed than the last. Jem saw only shock in their faces. If one among them was guilty, then they were hiding it well. George slapped his own cheeks as if to rouse himself from a daze. Bell uneasily shifted his weight from one sole to the other, Eliza stood too still, and Henrietta, having roused from her faint of her own accord, perhaps having realised she was no one’s centre of attention, turned her bottle of smelling salts between her fingers as if she anticipated needing them again promptly.
“One of you has done this. You have tormented me and poisoned him. Drugged his food, his wine…”
“I cannot think what you mean to imply.” Henrietta set her hand firmly on her son’s forearm. Jem suspected she did it to prove to herself that her offspring remained alive and vital, but the touch served to single him out.
“You,” Jane accused.
“Not I,” he insisted. “’Tis one of you. Level your accusatory stares elsewhere.”
“You did quarrel most vociferously, George. It’s natural that would make people suspicious.”
“Let go of me, mother.” George shook off her grip. “That matter was settled between us. We’d reached an accord, and I am hardly the only one among us with whom he had a quarrel. Who among us had not felt the lash of his spite? Perhaps, madam,” his gaze settled firmly on Jane, “you considered the slight of his afternoon activities too great to tolerate and chose to show your displeasure. You are right at his hand, in a prime position to taint his drink, after all, and likewise, Mr Whistler, who has done nothing but scowl at him since we sat down to dine.”
Jem couldn’t deny it was so, all too conscious of the malicious thoughts he’d been entertaining. Thoughts borne of anger, but which he’d never have acted on. And thoughts didn’t kill people, only deeds did that, and looking around at them, they all had motive, each and every one of them.
Jane retaliated with further accusations of her own, and she and George got into a spat.
“Stop this,” Bell called over them. “A man has died. Can we not manage a little decorum?” They continued to lob accusations around him. “Lord Bellingbrook must be informed, and the magistrate summoned.” He rang for a servant, and Mrs Honeyfield answered, her jaw swollen out of all proportion. “The master is dead.” Bell informed her. “Please instruct his valet. Word must be sent to Bellingbrook at once, and who is the justice of the peace in these parts? The coroner?”
No one paying any attention seemed certain.
“Which is the nearest large estate? Send someone there, they will surely know. Meanwhile, I will preserve the body.”
Now the initial shock was done, Bell seemed to have found his feet and spun into the same sort of efficiency he’d done after that fateful day of the carriage race. Jem too vividly remembered the bend of the woman’s neck and his own longing to correct all that lay askew. Linfield’s body lay blood splattered, his mouth open and scarlet ringed. He reached for a napkin, meaning to wipe away the mess, but Bell stayed him with a hand to his shoulder.
“Don’t.”
He relinquished. It didn’t seem right that his tormentor could be gone. He kept expecting him to blink or break into a twistical grin, and roar with laughter over their alarm. Instead, he remained still. Jem formed his fingers around Linfield’s. Their warmth was already leaving them.
Above him, Jane continued to spit accusations. “Snakes. Maggots. Leeches. Why are you here?” she cried, wound into hysteria. Tears scored her cheeks. “Who among you has deprived my son of his father?”
