by Tessa Arlen
Griff looked over his shoulder. “I think this calls for another beer!” he said and lifted his voice. “Mrs. Evans?”
She appeared like a jack-in-the-box from the kitchen. “Yes, sir?”
“Two more . . . Blondies, is it?”
“Right away, sir.”
“No, no,” I said. “Really, I’ve had enough.”
“Oh no, no, you haven’t!” Griff nodded to Mrs. Evans.
Eyes shining, he lifted the second page to his lips and kissed it. “Our theories, or rather your theory, is correct, Poppy,” he said. “There are substances that do not kill, but they do disorient the mind, and many of them if eaten take effect between one to two hours later.”
I was almost out of my chair, but the arrival of Mrs. Evans with two glasses in her capable hands made me keep my seat and bite back any exclamations.
She put our Blondies down on the table and said not to mention it as we thanked her.
“What does it say?” I asked, ignoring the beer.
He smiled, took a sip of beer, and leaned back in his chair, thrusting his legs out in front of him and folding his arms behind his head.
“It says we were right.”
I felt a little shiver of horror curl the hairs on the nape of my neck. “Please, Griff, no more suspense, just tell me!” I said, and I lifted my glass and waved it in salute.
“Do you need a sandwich or something?” he asked.
“No, I had an enormous lunch with Sir Basil.”
“About five hours ago!”
I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I said. “Please, just tell me what is in your letter from Cadogan.”
He cleared his throat and launched in. “After our dinner at the Travellers Club, Cadogan went off and had a chat with a colleague of his who is writing a thesis on plants that cause hallucinations.”
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Samuel T. Coleridge sprang instantly to mind. “Like laudanum and opium.”
He laughed and tilted his chair back on its hind legs. “Yes, exactly that sort of thing.”
If you know about Coleridge and opium, why didn’t you think of that earlier? Ilona chipped in.
“What does he say in his letter?”
He lifted the page and read: “There are several plant derivatives that produce a state of euphoria, and/or hallucinations, and if taken in larger doses cause heart palpitations and confusion ranging from disorientation to blacking out!”
“And they are slow acting?”
“Not always. Sometimes the body tries to purge them.”
I exhaled disappointment. “It wouldn’t have been any of those, then.”
He picked up the second page and skimmed through it. “No, but there are some plants whose leaves, pods, or roots, when dried and consumed”—he waved the close-written paper at me—“yes, it says here, smoked or eaten, that have a particularly pleasant sensation, or hallucinations which take effect immediately.”
Disappointment drenched all my hopes. “But immediately is no good to us and neither is pleasant.”
He leaned forward and tapped me on the top of the head with his letter. “Hold your horses, ma’am. But if they are eaten, especially in a large dose, then the unpleasant side effects crop up. Imagine for instance that you are flying a plane, and suddenly you don’t know where you are. You don’t know which side up you are. Your heart is racing and you see things that are not supposed to be there. The more you panic, the worse it gets.”
I drew in a deep breath. Now we were getting somewhere!
“Griff!” I rapped on the table with my knuckles. “Please tell me that none of these plants act instantly.”
He closed his eyes and laughed, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “Do you know that sometimes you remind me of a schoolteacher I had in my freshman year? I promise you no one messed around in her geography class.”
Starchy, put in Ilona.
I lifted my hands palms upward and made a pleading face. “Please,” I begged, “will you stop ‘messing around,’ whatever that means, and tell me?”
He righted the chair and took a long drink of beer. “My, that’s good! Didn’t you Brits drink ale for breakfast centuries ago?”
“Griff!”
“Where was I? Ah yes.” He scanned the page. “If their roots were ground to powder and inhaled they act instantly, same as when the leaves and stems are dried and smoked like tobacco. But the effect comes on far more slowly if they are eaten. Some seeds and compounds, say, like opium, can take an hour or two to kick in if they are eaten.” He looked down at the second page and read for a minute. “But opium tastes really bitter and it doesn’t blend well with food.”
“What about in something like Camp coffee?”
“But how could you dose a pot of coffee so only one person drinks a cup?”
“We should make a list of different plants and the effect they have.”
He smiled as he handed me the page. “We don’t need to. It’s here. Six mind-altering plants. Six of them, including poppy: Papaver somniferum. The opium poppy. Did you know that about your name, by the way, that you were named after a plant that causes beautiful dreams?”
God knows how often I had hoped that Griff had beautiful dreams about me. But my anxiety about Zofia made me desperate for real facts. “After the last war, lots of girls of my age were called Poppy.”
He shrugged his shoulders and took another sip of beer. “Let’s go through this list. We might find one that could have been used on Edwina and Letty. I think we are really onto something.”
TWENTY-TWO
GRIFF DRAGGED HIS CHAIR AROUND TO MY SIDE OF THE TABLE; he was so close to me I could smell the cedar soap he used to shave.
“Salvia,” I read obediently, “a species of mint from South America, contains salvinorin, which activates specific nerve-cell receptors. The effects are intense but short-lived and include changes in mood, body sensations, and visions. The leaf, dried and smoked, has a mild effect: a loosening of the inhibitions. Eaten in large quantities it intensifies hallucinations.” I looked up from the page straight into his eyes. He nodded encouragement. “Eaten in large quantities, what would that be? Three or four sandwiches or someone else’s breakfast as well as your own? Would having hallucinations make you crash a plane?”
“If I was flying a plane it would,” he said. He nodded me on, and I bent my head to read.
“This one sounds a bit disgusting to me. Ayahuasca—is that how it’s pronounced?—is a South American vine. Culturally important to the Amazonian peoples and used to generate intense spiritual revelations. Studies show significant psychological distress under the influence of the drug: heart palpitations, acute difficulty in breathing, and considerable disorientation. This one sounds perfect! Oh no, it doesn’t: ingestion is commonly followed by vomiting or diarrhea, which shamans believe to be the purging of demons. No, not that one.” I shuddered.
He finished his beer. “I find the next one interesting.” He bent over my shoulder. I could feel his breath on my neck. “Native to the Americas,” he read, “the tobacco plant bears distinctive large leaves that are a particularly concentrated source of nicotine. Nicotine is the chief active ingredient in the tobacco used in cigarettes, cigars, and snuff and might be addictive. Interesting, that, don’t you think? When ingested by mouth, nicotine is a highly toxic poison that causes vomiting and nausea, headaches, stomach pains, and, in severe cases, convulsions, paralysis, and death. Yes, I know it probably wasn’t used to poison Edwina and Letty, but it is interesting that smoking tobacco might be heavily addictive.”
I shook my head. “Most people who smoke say it relaxes them. It’s probably a different kind of plant. And anyway, there is the business of throwing up again.” I remembered Grable saying that Edwina drank to excess so often she was in danger of vomiting in public. Was she being poisoned
before we arrived to film her? But that didn’t explain Letty’s crash.
Griff squinted down at the cramped handwriting.
“His writing is difficult to read. Cocoa? No, coca. It’s a tropical shrub native to certain regions of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Its leaves contain the alkaloid cocaine and have been chewed for centuries by the Indians of Peru and Bolivia for pleasure or in order to withstand strenuous working conditions, hunger, and thirst. When ingested in small amounts, cocaine produces feelings of well-being and euphoria along with decreased appetite, relief from fatigue, and increased mental alertness. With prolonged and repeated use it produces depression, anxiety, irritability, sleep problems, chronic fatigue, mental confusion, and convulsions. Sounds like half the guys in my squadron are on this stuff!”
I remembered a girl at school telling us about her aunt. “After the last war, all the flappers and bright young things used to take cocaine at their parties. I’m sure people still use it. At least we know you can probably get it in this country. The other plants sound so obscure, so out of reach for the average Atta.”
“But we are not dealing with the average Atta, are we? These are the greater Attas.” Griff tapped his forefinger on the tabletop. “And last but not least is Datura stramonium. It grows throughout much of North and South America but is widely used in Africa as a cure-all for asthma and lung problems. It is a weedy annual plant with striking white tubular flowers and spiky seedpods. The leaves and seeds contain potent alkaloids that cause hallucinations. Used ceremonially by several indigenous peoples, datura acts as a deliriant and can produce intense spiritual visions. Users often report terrifying hallucinations and paranoid delusions under its influence and may experience prolonged side effects such as blurred vision after its use. It does not cause the body to purge upon consumption.”
“What does the asterisk note?” I asked.
“‘The Royal Horticultural Society has advised British gardeners to dig it up or have it otherwise removed, while wearing gloves.’ I guess that means it can be grown in England.”
He put his hand on mine briefly and shook it to emphasize what he said next. “And it takes a couple of hours for the effects to come on. What d’you think?”
“That’s it—that’s the one. It has to be something like that!” But it was a terrible thought. If datura had been used on Edwina and Letty, it would have been a terrifying experience.
He nodded in agreement. “But here’s the thing. All we need to know is that it was possible to cause both Edwina and Letty to be so disoriented and confused by a plant like datura that they crashed their planes. What we should really concentrate on, right now, is motive. And that is where you come in, Poppy, because you have spent your entire time here chatting away with all the people who were there the day Edwina was killed, and who were there at Letty’s last breakfast. So, spill the beans: who was most likely to want to eliminate Edwina?”
He was wise to start with Edwina as a victim because I’d considered the question thoroughly.
“Edwina was involved at one time with Sir Basil, so that could be a reason why Vera Abercrombie would want her out of the way. But then Sir Basil had a roving eye, so Vera probably would have had to murder all the glamour girls in the ATA. And then, if Sir Basil was embarrassed by Edwina’s continued pursuit of him, he might want to get rid of her too.”
“So not Vera?”
“Perhaps not. Hard to say. If Sir Basil told her that he was in love with Edwina and that he was leaving her, maybe that would be a good enough reason.”
Griff pulled a pen out of his uniform jacket pocket and turned over Cadogan’s letter to the blank side. He wrote: “Vera Abercrombie”; a pause, and then: “Don’t think of them in order of probability, just say whoever comes into your head who might have a motive,” he instructed, his face serious.
“Then if I count everyone except the film crew, you, and I, there are five possible suspects,” I said as I considered. “So, the second Attagirl to consider would be Grable—I mean Betty Asquith: the tall natural blonde.”
“That’s right, the one with the posh accent!”
“During my evening at their cottage, Grable was the most outspoken about Edwina’s frailties. She didn’t have any problems in listing her faults. She had an argument about Edwina with Annie Trenchard, the quiet one, the one who landed her plane in a German airfield by mistake.”
Griff’s eyebrows went up. “Wait a minute, Annie who? When did she do that?”
I gave him a brief version of Annie’s adventure in a German airfield.
Griff wrote down the two names. He wrote “Grable” as if she didn’t really feature, but his handwriting was bolder as he wrote down “Annie Trenchard.”
“Grable is one of those girls with lots of boyfriends, who has an exciting social life,” I explained. “Perhaps she was jealous of Edwina’s popularity as the femme fatale of the group?”
“Jealous enough to murder her competition?” He laughed. “That’s crazy behavior. I think this Trenchard woman sounds more suspicious; she would be at the top of my list.”
I knew what he was going to say next.
“What does she say happened when she took off from the German airfield?”
“As soon as she realized her mistake, she flew back and landed in France at the first airfield she could see when the fog cleared. She made a forced landing, with barely enough petrol.”
“Fumes,” Griff said and scrubbed away at his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “Well now, I take it that her story of landing by mistake in an enemy airfield was not corroborated by anyone else?” It was a statement that caused him to think for a moment. “She glides in and lands unhurt, and it’s a miracle that she does. And she tells this adventure story to cover the fact that she had actually been to occupied Belgium and landed in an airfield there. There was no fog at the French airfield, but there was in Belgium.”
“What?”
Griff wrote a large number one next to Annie’s name. “I would have had some very stern questions for Miss Trenchard if I had been her CO”—his voice was grim—“after she came back from her improbable German adventure.”
I was staggered. It had never occurred to me that Annie would make up a misadventure to cover the truth. “You think she might be a spy?” I asked him.
“She might easily be. Think of the information she could share. It’s colossal. Maps, coordinates of all the major military airfields. Information on the various factories that make aircraft. Masses of intelligence that could end this war right now, with the Germans as victors.”
The thought chilled me to the marrow.
“Then why haven’t they bombed all the installations already?”
“They did; they brought Southampton to its knees, and the Supermarine factory in Woolton was obliterated. Now Supermarine has dozens of little factories hidden away all over England, just like all our scattered gasoline dumps.”
So that’s what you were doing in Southampton this afternoon: you were following up on stolen petrol. Was this why he had jumped on Annie as a possible suspect? I glanced up at his face. It was quite composed as he gazed down at Cadogan’s information.
I decided to move on with our suspect list.
“June Evesham,” I said. Griff was not listening; he was still mulling over the possibilities of Annie Trenchard as German spy. It didn’t matter if he was listening or not. June had no apparent motive for getting rid of Edwina, and she was still devastated by the death of her friend Letty. And no wonder; if she was the murderer, she had doctored Zofia’s breakfast, which had then been eaten by Letty. June’s anguish at killing her closest friend by mistake would be tremendous.
“Griff, write down June Evesham’s name,” I said.
“Motive?” He was still mulling over Annie Trenchard.
“I can’t think of one, but she disliked Edwina intensely. So, there mig
ht be a motive there. I have to dig some more.”
We contemplated our list. Griff read, “Vera Abercrombie, Betty Grable Asquith, I’m adding Annie Trenchard because if she is a spy and Edwina found out, that would be the perfect motive, and, as you say, Annie might have had to eliminate Zofia because she suspected Annie of Edwina’s murder. Next we have June Evesham. What about Zofia?”
“I think she might be the next victim. I think her breakfast was drugged, and then Letty ate it. But Zofia is a very self-contained woman; it’s hard to make her out. I don’t think she had a motive!”
“Either killer or victim.” He put a star next to Zofia’s name. “You said six. Who is the last one?”
“That’s right, I did—Sir Basil Stowe.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes. First of all, he’s a liar,” I said with complete conviction. “He even lies when he doesn’t really need to.”
A low whistle from my American friend. “Are you sure about that? Did you catch him in a lie?”
“I did. He said he knew my father really well, but it was quite clear to me that he might have met him once, or that he only knew of his name.” Griff’s head came up from the list he was making. “My father was a solitary man; he didn’t go in for sing-alongs with his fellow pilots,” I explained.
He hesitated and then said carefully in the gentlest tone, “But . . . how do you know he didn’t sometimes enjoy a pint or two in the company of his squadron?”
I sighed and remembered how I had pestered my grandparents, my uncle Ambrose, and any of my father’s old friends for stories about my father. What had he been like when he was a boy? Was he ever naughty at school—a rebel, perhaps, always in a scrape? And how often the answer would be “Clive? Oh no, he was a good pupil. The quiet sort. Never part of a group, always off on his own.”
“I set a trap for Sir Basil. I told him about a dog my father never owned, and he remembered it.”
“Faulty memory? Perhaps he was thinking of someone like your dad? The first war was decades ago.”
