Eat, Drink and Be Buried (2 page)

“It's evidently strong enough to resist a lance hitting it at the combined speed of two horses—and that must be nearly a hundred miles an hour. A wonder it doesn't go right through you.”

He grinned, pleased to be able to expose a few secrets. “The tip is rubber and the lances are sprung.”

“Sprung?”

“Yes, there's a spring inside them that cushions the shock. The lance squeezes into itself, like one of the old telescopes. You don't notice that in all the excitement.”

“It's exciting all right. You had that crowd breathless.”

He smiled proudly. “We put on a good show. Best in the country, lots say.”

“Even the helmet, with what I thought was your head inside it, rolled away very convincingly. Ended up with the gory end exposed, too.”

“Helmet's weighted at the top to make it do that. Leave nothing to chance, that's our motto.”

The man I had thought to be a doctor came back into the tent. “Don McCartney,” he said. “I know who you are. Saw you when you arrived yesterday. Sorry I had to rush out just now but we had a problem with one of the horses.”

“Horses get better attention than we do,” grumbled Eddie, but he was apparently not as callous in that direction as he pretended as he went on, “Not Primrose, is it?”

“She's his favorite,” grinned McCartney.

“No she's not,” Eddie retorted hotly. “She's the only horse that doesn't step on me when Sir Harry knocks me off.”

“None of them step on you. You're too small.”

Eddie snorted, made a mock fist at McCartney, and swaggered out. McCartney watched him go. He was late middle-aged, with the bearing of a military man.

“Have to take care of the horses too, do you?” I asked.

“I spent twenty-five years in the Guards, in the cavalry,” he said, confirming my guess. “So I know a bit about horses. Primrose had a limp when she came off after this show but she's okay. Just a momentary strain. Happens often.”

He had a strong face and a firm jaw. “Must be an interesting job,” I said to draw him out more.

“When I was with the Guards, we had a photographic unit attached to us for a while. We made some training films, couple of recruiting films too. When the film studio at Elmtree wanted to use a couple of our squadrons, I got assigned to liaison.

“We worked out a few stunts, you know the kind of thing—men shot by arrows, falling off horses. The horses needed training as much as the men. When I retired, I heard about a job going here. Did some stunt work at first, then got promoted to this.”

“You do a fine job,” I said. “I was convinced that the Black Knight would need his head sewed on for tomorrow's performance.”

“Took us a while to work out that trick.” McCartney smiled.

“You must get the occasional fainter in the crowd when that head rolls.”

“Very occasional—and not only women.” He picked up the discarded portions of the suit of armor and hung them on a wall rack. “Haven't been able to teach those two dwarfs to keep the dressing room tidy,” he complained. Turning to me, he asked, “Going to be around long?”

“Just a few days. I'm working on revising the menus, as you know. We're going to start introducing some of the new dishes right away, then add a few more. It may mean working with some new suppliers in the case of foods you haven't served before. Might take a little time to get them acquainted with exactly what we want. We'll be putting on some medieval banquets for special events. Then there's the kitchens, they'll be called on to cook some dishes that are new to them.”

“Not going to get too revolutionary, are you?” he asked, smiling.

“Oh, no. There won't be any elephant ears or larks' tongues.”

From another part of the tent, voices were being raised. I saw McCartney frown. The voices subsided. “That's good to hear,” he continued. “The customers have enjoyed the food, although I know the committee has decided that we could bring in more people if we offered some interesting old foods, well, new foods which at the same time were—you know what I mean—traditional.”

“That's right. Previously, the food was different but not excitingly so. Now we want to really get people interested in eating what people ate in the Middle Ages. But we're bringing it up to date by making use of modern knowledge of tastes and flavors.”

“I suppose that's what Miss Felicity had in mind when she started the Plantation,” McCartney said.

“I saw the Plantation when I was given a tour, oh, ten years ago, when this whole idea was being put into practice. It had only just been planted then and I haven't had the chance to visit it this time.”

“Oh, you will. She'll be anxious to have you make more use of it.”

The voices came again. They were more strident now but I couldn't make out any words. I saw McCartney's eyes flicker in that direction. Was it some recurrent discipline problem? I wondered.

They grew yet louder and reached the point where McCartney could hardly ignore them any longer. “You'll have to excuse me,” he said. “May be something that needs my attention.” He was about to walk out when a flap in the section of the tent separating it from the rest opened.

A skinny young man with close-cropped hair came halfway through. “You'd better come, Mr. McCartney.” His voice was tense. “Kenny's ill.”

McCartney was curt. “Ill? What do you mean, ill?”

“He's in real agony, Mr. McCartney,” the young man said nervously. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “You'd better come look at him.”

He withdrew, holding the flap open, and McCartney hesitated, frowned, then followed him. I went along too. McCartney threw a glance at me over his shoulder and I expected him to tell me to stay there, but he said nothing.

We hurried through a tent section with portable racks full of costumes and shelves heaped with boots, hats, leggings. Through another flap, and we were in a section similar to the one we had just left. Parts of a suit of armor lay on the floor and I recognized it from the scarlet, black, and gold emblem on the breastplate as having been that worn by Sir Harry Mountmarchant in the jousting tournament.

That was secondary, though. Loud moans were coming from a cot where a young man was writhing in pain. His face was bathed in sweat and his hooked fingers clutched his abdomen. In a sudden paroxysm, his body jerked clean off the cot, then subsided. He wriggled and twisted, now trying to hold one knee which was obviously hurting him, then sagged as if utterly exhausted. His breathing was deep and harrowing. His eyes gazed unfocused.

“What's the matter with him?” McCartney demanded roughly.

“I don't know. He's been like this since he came off the field.”

McCartney looked down at the figure on the cot. The young man was less active now, just twitching spasmodically, seemingly worn out. He still moaned, though, and was trying to mutter something.

McCartney was frowning. “What the devil was he doing on the field?” he wanted to know.

“He was Sir Harry.”

McCartney's face was like thunder. “It was supposed to be Mr. Pochard out there.”

“I know,” said the hapless young man who was caught in the crossfire. “But he wanted to go into the village and he got Kenny to replace him.”

McCartney glared at him. For a moment, he appeared more concerned with a breach of rules than with Kenny's condition. “Have you called Dr. Emery?” he asked.

“He's on his way.”

“I have some first-aid experience,” I said. “Let me look at him.”

I didn't wait for an answer. Kenny's pulse was slow and faint. His breathing was heavy, deep, and irregular. I pulled up one eyelid. The pupil was contracted. As I allowed the eyelid to close, I was aware of an odor in one of the exhalations. It was not a familiar odor but I had the feeling that it had some similarities…but to what? I could not make any identification and, anyway, the important thing right now was to maintain his body temperature, which was low.

“Get a blanket,” I ordered. “Keep him warm.”

The young man hurried out and was back immediately with an army blanket, which he threw over the still-convulsing body. McCartney stared down at the face on the cot.

A voice called out, questioning. “It's Dr. Emery,” said the young man eagerly. “I'll get him.”

The doctor was gray-haired and gray-mustached, calm and brisk in manner. He took Kenny's pulse, looked at his eyes and his tongue, measured his blood pressure, then put a stethoscope on his chest.

His face gave away nothing but his voice was grave as he said, “I'll phone for an ambulance. He needs hospital attention.” He was feeling inside his bag and pulled out a syringe and a vial just as McCartney asked, “Anything you can do for him, Doctor?”

The injection seemed to calm the breathing, and it eased the twitching, but all color had left the face that was still beaded in perspiration. The doctor hurried out.

“We don't have a doctor here but Dr. Emery is on call from the village at all times,” McCartney explained. He seemed to want to talk. “I still don't understand why Kenny replaced Richard Harlington.”

“He wanted to go into the village,” I suggested. “Something urgent probably.”

McCartney made an dismissive sound. “Went in to see that girl more likely.”

“He has a girl in the village?”

“Yes. Sir Gerald has tried to break it up, even forbade Richard from seeing her, but it doesn't do any good. He slips away at every opportunity.”

“Kenny is a regular substitute as Sir Harry?”

“We have three of them play Sir Harry—Richard, Kenny, and another stuntman, Frank Morgan.”

“Isn't it a bit unusual to have a lord's son doing a dangerous job like that?” I asked bluntly.

“It really isn't dangerous. It's choreographed to the tiniest move. Anyway, Sir Gerald has tried to get Richard to stop, but he's a headstrong, reckless young man and won't listen.”

He looked down at Kenny. “His breathing is slowing, isn't it?”

“Yes, but that might be the doctor's injection, slowing down his body systems.”

“What's wrong with him, do you think?”

I hesitated before answering. It made him look at me abruptly. “What is it? Do you know?”

I still hesitated, then I said, “He has all the symptoms of having being poisoned.”

K
ENNY DIED AN HOUR AFTER
reaching the hospital. Don McCartney was in the breakfast room of the castle early and met me with the news. He was with two others at one end of a table. He left them and motioned me to join him at the other end.

“We don't have to tell you that we are discussing ways to keep as much of a lid on this as possible,” he said to me.

I nodded. “I can understand that.”

“The Hertfordshire police are sending some people,” McCartney said. He looked haggard, probably from lack of sleep. He rubbed a hand over his face. “I didn't get much sleep last night,” he said, confirming my guess. “The hospital called about one this morning to say Kenny had died an hour earlier. They said they had finally been obliged to terminate all efforts at resuscitation.”

“Did they say anything about the cause of death?” I asked.

“No,” McCartney said flatly. He glanced at the others, then turned back to me. “Look, we might as well get this into the open now. It'll have to come out when the police interrogate us anyway.”

“What's that?” I had a pretty good idea what was coming.

“You said last night that Kenny had all the symptoms of having been poisoned.”

The table was quiet. McCartney regarded me quietly and expectantly.

“I don't know how many people have been briefed on who I am and why I'm here—” I began and Don McCartney waved a hand.

“Nearly everybody at the castle knows. We don't like to have unidentified strangers wandering around.”

“You have a lot of people working here,” I continued. “I didn't know how far my job had been broadcast. So then you know that my business is food. I'm here to readjust the menus so as to make them more authentically medieval and more enjoyable. I get jobs like this and, once in a while, complications set in.”

“Complications?” McCartney said sharply.

“Food has become a very big business. Look at the popularity of restaurants, see how many books, magazines, and television programs there are about food, and consider how much more important a part of our lives it has become. When something becomes that important, lots of money gets to be involved. Rewards are high, motives are strong.”

“So you've run across cases of poisoning before?”

“One or two. I know what the most common symptoms of poisoning are and Kenny's seemed to fit in.”

McCartney sat back in his seat. “That's a relief.”

“Is it?” I asked. “Maybe it suggests something more sinister.”

“You mean Kenny was deliberately poisoned?” McCartney was openly skeptical.

“Richard was supposed to be Sir Harry last night. At the last minute, he decided he had to go to the village and see his girlfriend. Kenny replaced him.”

“So are you saying that someone wanted to poison Richard?” McCartney rephrased his question.

I shook my head. “I'm not saying anything till the police get here, and then I'm going to be careful.”

“That's wise,” McCartney said. “The first thing we need to know is what the official cause of death was. After we get that, it may be time for theorizing. I understand that a police inspector called Devlin is coming.”

“Know him?”

He shook his head. “We get the occasional pickpocket and a rare break-in,” he explained. “They give us extra security for some special events too, so we talk to various members of the Hertfordshire police, but we don't know this one.” He stood up to go. “I'll let you get on with your breakfast,” he said. “I suppose you might as well carry on as if everything was normal.”