Taquisara Part 26

The big grey Maltese cat came in through the still open door, in the hope of cream at the tea hour, as usual. The creature rubbed itself along Elettra's skirt while she was lighting the spirit lamp under the urn, which contained water already almost boiling.

"Will you kindly call the count?" said Matilde, addressing the maid.

Elettra left the room, and Matilde settled herself to make the tea, as women do, raising her elbow a little on each side and then dropping them again, bending her face down to see whether the lamp were burning well, opening the teapot, pouring a little hot water into it, opening and shutting the tea-caddy, and settling each spoon in each saucer in a dainty and utterly futile way.

The cat rubbed its grey sides against Veronica's skirt and against her little slipper, as she sat there, one knee crossed over the other. The young girl bent down and stroked it, and hesitated, looking at the tea-table, and not wishing to disturb the things to take a saucer for the cat until the tea was made. As she bent down, Matilde took her handkerchief quietly from her pocket and laid it quite naturally in her lap. Veronica, being on the other side of the table and the urn, could not possibly see what she did.

Gregorio came in. Elettra had opened the door from without, for him to pa.s.s. She stood on the threshold a moment, and looked towards the table, to see whether anything had been forgotten. Then she closed the door, and went away, leaving the three together. The water boiled almost immediately; and Gregorio was just sitting down when Matilde poured the water out of the teapot, and part in the tea. She filled the pot, and leaned back in her chair to allow it to draw a few moments.

The silence was intense during several seconds. Only the purring of the cat was heard, as Veronica, letting her arm hang down without stooping, gently rubbed its broad head. It pushed itself under her hand, bending its back to her caress, turned quickly, and pushed its head under her hand once more, doing the same thing again and again.

Matilde sat upright, lifted the cover of the teapot an instant, and then began to move the cups. Veronica, whose thoughts were intent upon the animal she was touching, and which, as she knew, was begging for cream, immediately leaned forward, and took from under the silver cream jug a saucer which Elettra had especially brought for the purpose. She poured a little cream into it, and, bending down, placed it on the lower shelf of the tea-table, and gently pushed the cat towards it.

Matilde saw her opportunity, while Veronica was stooping; and in that moment she distributed the three lumps from her handkerchief in the three cups before her, and at once began to pour tea into the one containing the largest lump. The cat, for some reason, wished the saucer to be set upon the floor; and Veronica still bent down, until it sprang lightly upon the lower shelf, and began the slow and dainty operation of lapping the cream.

During all this, Gregorio, anxious to seem unaware of anything extraordinary, and not really knowing how his wife meant to put the poison into the tea, was nervously looking away from her, sometimes towards the window, at the fast-fading light of the grey afternoon on the opposite house, and sometimes at Veronica's head as she bent down.

When she looked up, Matilde was holding out her cup to her, having put some cream into it and a lump of real sugar to really sweeten the tea.

Veronica thanked her, drew a little nearer to the table, held her cup on her knee, and took a thin slice of bread and b.u.t.ter, which she proceeded to eat, stirring the tea slowly with her left hand.

Matilde meanwhile filled the other two cups, and handed one to her husband, who took it in silence, unsuspectingly.

"I can never understand why the tea we make here is better than mine,"

she said, smiling. "It is the same tea, of course. But it certainly is better in your room."

"Is it?" asked Veronica, carelessly and looking down at the cup she held on her knee, while she slowly stirred the contents.

As though to verify Matilde's a.s.sertion, she bent a little, raised the cup, and tasted the liquid. It was still too hot to drink, and she stirred it again on her knee. She noticed that although it had been sweet enough to her taste, there was a lump of sugar, not yet dissolved, still in the cup: she never took but one piece, and her aunt had evidently put in two.

Still holding the cup on her knee, where Matilde could not possibly see it, she quietly fished the superfluous piece of sugar out with her teaspoon, and bending down again she deposited it in the saucer from which the cat was lapping the last drops of cream. She noticed that it was only dissolved at the corners, but she had observed before that one sometimes finds a lump of sugar which remains hard a long time. The cat would eat it, for it liked sugar, as some cats do.

Then she filled the cat's saucer again. By that time what she had was cooler, and she drank some of it.

"It is certainly very good tea," she said thoughtfully. "I think you probably make it better than I do."

As she drank again, Gregorio's unearthly laugh cracked and jarred in the room. But neither he nor his wife had seen what Veronica had done. They were staring hard at each other, and for the second time Matilde felt that her brow was moist.

CHAPTER XV.

The Maltese cat died before six o'clock. The poor creature suffered horribly, and Elettra carried it off to her room that Veronica might not see its agony. But Veronica followed her maid. Elettra had laid the beast upon a folded rug on the floor and knelt beside it. It seemed half paralyzed already, but when Veronica knelt down, too, and tried to caress it, the cat sprang from them both in sudden terror. It stood still an instant, wagging its head while its shoulders contracted violently. Then it glided under the chest of drawers to die alone, if possible, after the manner of animals of prey. The girl and her maid heard its rattling breathing and its convulsions: its body thumped against the lower drawer. Then, while Veronica listened and Elettra bent, candle in hand, till her face touched the floor, to see it and get it out, all at once it was quiet.

"Get up," said Veronica, nervously, for she was fond of the creature.

"Help me to move the chest of drawers out. Then we can get it out."

"It is dead," answered Elettra, still on the floor, and thrusting her long, thin arm under the piece of furniture. "But I cannot pull him out," she added. "He is so big!"

She got upon her feet, and together, without much difficulty, the two dragged the chest of drawers away from the wall, and then bent down behind it, with the candle, to look at the dead animal.

"It is quite dead," said Elettra. "Poor beast! What can have happened to it?" Veronica was really sorry, but of the two the maid had been the more fond of the cat. "It must have eaten something."

Elettra looked up, suspiciously, and Veronica drew back a step, half straightening herself. Her foot touched something close to the wall. She stooped again and picked up the package of rat-poison which Matilda had hidden under the chest of drawers on the previous night. She looked at it closely. It had evidently not lain long where she had found it, for there was no dust on it, and the coa.r.s.e paper had an unmistakably fresh look. The indication of the contents was written upon it in ink, in illiterate characters.

"It is rat-poison!" exclaimed Veronica. "The cat must have eaten some of it! How did it come here?"

She looked at her maid curiously.

"The cat could not have wrapped it up and folded in the ends of the paper," observed Elettra.

"That is true."

They looked at each other, in considerable astonishment. Then they talked about it. Veronica asked whether Elettra had complained that there were mice in her room, and whether some stupid servant, having a package of rat-poison at hand, had not stuck it under the chest of drawers, not even thinking of opening the paper. Elettra was suspicious.

"At all events, Excellency," she said, "remember that you found it, and that it was carefully closed."

Suddenly, as they were speaking together, Veronica's face changed, and she grasped the corner of the piece of furniture convulsively. Though she had taken the poisoned lump from her cup in time to save her life, enough had been dissolved already to make her very ill.

Again there was dire confusion and fear in the Palazzo Macomer, by night. It was a wholesale poisoning. Veronica, Matilde, and Gregorio were all seized nearly at the same time.

Several of the servants left the house within half an hour after it was known that their masters were all poisoned. Within a fortnight, Bosio Macomer had killed himself and there had been two poisonings. Matilde's maid and a housemaid, the cook, and the butler went quietly to their several rooms, took the most valuable of their own possessions, and slipped out. They felt that the house was doomed, with every one in it.

But some one had gone for the doctor, and he arrived in a short time.

Matilde, to whom all the proper antidotes had been given on the previous day, might have taken them at once, but in the first place, weak and still suffering the consequence of the first dangerous experiment, she was almost unconscious with pain, and secondly, if she had taken an antidote herself, it would have seemed strange that she should not administer it to Veronica, or at least send some one to the young girl to do so. Gregorio lay howling with pain in his room. But Matilde had warned him that it would come, after they had left Veronica's room together, and he knew that everything depended on his not hinting at the truth.

The doctor came to Matilde first. Far away, at the other end of the house, Elettra was with Veronica. She had known what they had done for the countess on the preceding evening, and while the servants were screaming and running hither and thither through the apartments, like scared sheep, the woman had quietly got oil and warm water, and was giving both to her mistress. She knew that a footman had gone for the doctor. When Veronica had first been seized with pain, Elettra had thrust the package of poison into her own pocket, and it was still there.

By the time the antidote began to act, Elettra believed that the doctor must be in the house. Not wishing to leave Veronica even for a moment, she rang the bell. But no one came. The woman suspected that the doctor had gone first to Matilde, and she decided in a moment that it was better to leave her mistress alone for two or three minutes than not to have the physician's a.s.sistance at once. She hastened to Matilde's room.

As she pa.s.sed a half-open door the package of poison in her pocket struck against the door-post and reminded her of its presence, if she needed reminding.

The doctor was bending over Matilde, who seemed very weak. As Elettra entered, she saw that there was no one else in the room. A drawer in a piece of furniture stood open as Matilde had left it, and as Elettra pa.s.sed, she dropped the package in, and with a movement of her hand covered it with some folded handkerchiefs, from a little heap, shutting the drawer with a quick push. Neither Matilde nor the doctor saw her do it. As Elettra spoke to the doctor, the countess started at the sound of her voice. She thought the maid had come to say that Veronica was dead.

Almost violently the woman dragged the physician away with her, and Matilde smiled in the midst of her sufferings.

It would be useless to chronicle the details of the night and of the following morning. The three poisoned persons were almost recovered within twelve hours. Of the servants who had fled, Matilde's maid was the first to come back when she learned that no one was dead.

As the night wore on towards dawn, and the countess learned that Veronica was alive and not at all likely to die, she silently turned her face to the wall and tore her pocket-handkerchief slowly with her teeth.

In the morning, when the doctor was there, the maid was alone in the room, arranging things as quickly as she could, and hoping that in the confusion of the previous night, her absence might not have been observed. In the drawer, amongst the handkerchiefs and other things, she came upon the package, looked at it in surprise, turned it round and round, and read the words written on it. Then, thinking that she had discovered the clue to the attempted wholesale murder, and that she might obtain pardon for her defection, she came to the bedside and held it up to the doctor. He, too, looked at it, and read the words.

Matilde's heavy eyes opened, and then stared as she recognized the package. She thought that of course it had been found in Elettra's room, and was sure of the answer, when she put the question to her maid.

"Where did you find it?" she asked faintly.

"In the drawer, here, Excellency."

"In the drawer!" cried Matilde, starting up, and leaning on her elbow, as though electrified. "In the drawer? Here, in my room? Why--it was--"

Her head sank back, and her eyes closed. She had nearly betrayed herself, for she was very weak.

"It was not there yesterday--I am sure of it," she said feebly.