‘I should think so.’ He turned to Masters. ‘Gastric emptying time—that is from stomach to intestine—is very short. Muscle movement, mass of material, gases—they all force the food through very quickly. I mean the period is so short that the usual liquids like water or lemonade or the beer you’ve got there would go straight through. So if the victim were to take a very insoluble substance it would be too far through before the stomach juices had time to get to work on it.’
Masters grimaced. ‘What you’re telling me is that it wasn’t a tasteless, insoluble poison at all?’
‘I’m afraid so. Sorry to splash the vinegar on your chips, but there it is.’
‘Don’t apologize. If you’ve put me right, you’ve helped. At least I know what I’m not looking for.’
‘Rather you than me. Have a refill.’
As Masters accepted his newly filled glass, he said: ‘Some things must be insoluble, and yet are taken as medicines. I’m thinking of oily substances. Castor oil, for instance. Oil isn’t soluble in water.’
Meg Meeth said: ‘You’re getting on the ball. The route through the body is stomach, intestine, large intestine and then through the liver, into the bloodstream, to be filtered out by the kidney and away in the usual manner. Castor oil is inert and non-irritant. But the body acids split it up rather quickly in the small intestine into glycerine and ricinolic acid. And this latter is highly irritant to the mucous membranes—hence its purgative action. This is one of the actions that can take place, and which you will have to consider. But don’t try to claim that castor oil is either tasteless or the type of substance that could get by unnoticed when mixed with a bowl of sugar.’
Masters laughed. ‘I was only thinking of the principle.’
‘Keep on thinking. You’ll need to if you’re going to crack this one.’
Her husband said: ‘Don’t bet on it that he won’t. After all, with our help . . .’
Masters got to his feet.
*
As they walked back the short distance to Throscum House, Green said: ‘You didn’t hear what she told me about the last time her husband called on Mrs Partridge, professionally.’
‘When I was talking to Meeth in the hall? I could hear the two of you were having a high old time in the room while we were waiting for you.’
Green said: ‘There’s no need to be narky. She’s a fine woman.’
‘A smasher.’ As they came to the gate they could hear the beat of the band. All the windows of the ballroom were open, and the gay laughter and happy shouts could be heard quite clearly.
‘D’you want to hear what she told me, or not?’
‘If it’s so good—yes.’
‘Evidently Mrs Partridge had flu. She sent for Meeth, who was met, when he called, by one of the female staff who was looking after Partridge. They went into the room together and Meeth saw Mrs P had one of the poodles on the bed with her. He said to the other woman: “You get one of these bitches out of here and I’ll look after the other one.”’
Masters said: ‘I’ll forgive you for laughing. I suspect the story is apocryphal, but none the less amusing for all that. I can see Meeth doing it, too. But it raises a query—if it is true.’
‘What, for instance?’
‘Would you keep a doctor who spoke about you or addressed you in those terms?’
‘Not bloody likely.’
‘Don’t you think Meeth would know that the likely result would be the immediate transfer of his patient to another doctor?’
Green sucked his teeth. ‘He wasn’t born yesterday. D’you think he wanted to be shut of her?’
‘I’d like to know. If he did, it must have meant there was trouble between them of some sort.’
‘Oh, I dunno. Doctor-patient relationships often go a bit sour if the patient doesn’t co-operate.’
‘But Mrs Meeth said she loathed Mrs Partridge and was pretty scathing about her in general. If that’s what she felt, what did her husband think of his patient?’
‘The same, probably.’
‘Could you find out why? It would be an excuse to call on the lady doctor again.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Please.’
‘O.K. Although I don’t see what you’re getting at.’
‘Neither do 1. But check up on one specific point for me, will you? The little anecdote you’ve just told took place during Meeth’s last domiciliary visit to Throscum House. Find out when that was and if Mrs Partridge has ever made a surgery call on Meeth since then. Can do?’
‘You’re the boss.’ Green looked at his watch by the light streaming through the open main door of Throscum House. ‘Half ten. Feel like a last one before bed?’
Masters turned into the door. ‘On those two cowboys of ours. See if you can catch the eye of one of them and invite them into the bar to buy us a drink.’
*
Hill said: ‘There’s more basic raw material round here than I’ve ever met in my life. I could have been fixed up for tonight ten times over. You two don’t know what you’re missing.’
‘Be you age,’ Green said. ‘It’s because we know precisely what we’re missing that you two are there instead of us.’
The ordinary bar was almost empty. The steady drinking was being done at the bar in the ballroom. The four were able to take a secluded corner table. Brant called Garry over to take the order. When the drinks had arrived and the bar-tender was back behind his counter, Masters said: ‘Apart from the opportunities already mentioned, what else have you learned?’
Brant, wearing a cow-puncher’s hat down his back, eased the thong round his Adam’s apple and said: ‘She attended the Thursday night dances as regular as clockwork. Never missed. And quite a lot of the casual hops they hold most nights of the week. Especially Olde Tyme on Mondays. She liked the round waltz.’
‘Who said so?’
‘The drummer. It cost me a pint to find out.’
‘She was definitely at the masked ball last Thursday?’
‘So he said. Dressed in black with lots of scalloped frills—all different lengths from the waist to the floor—edged with silver. She had her hair done up like Pompadour and had a black mask studded with diamanté. But he said it was easy to see who it was. Evidently there was no disguising her bosom and the amount of it she was prepared to show. She said she painted her upperworks and back with something he called wet-white. Used to put it on with a two-inch brush. That’s what he said. Honest. One of the maids who helped her told him.’
Green said: ‘She was pulling his neb. Two-inch brush! They dab it on with cotton-wool or powder puffs. When I did those raids on strip clubs I saw one of those girls doing it all over. She said it looked clean under the spotlights. And by god, she needed it. She hadn’t had a real wash since the midwife did her, that one.’
‘Have it your way,’ Brant replied. ‘That’s all I got. Except that she seemed all right at the end of the party. Oh—and I was told to ask the dance professional to confirm that last part if I didn’t believe it.’
‘Did the drummer say why you should ask the professional?’ Masters inquired.
‘No. But from the way he said it I gathered the dancing boy was in the habit of seeing a bit more of her after the ball was over.’
Masters turned to Hill. ‘Anything to add?’
‘Not much. I had a word with one of the girls behind the bar. They give lots of prizes on these carnival nights. Seventy or eighty of them. Nothing much, of course. Just boxes of sweets and chocolates. Evidently it’s not the value of the prize that counts, it’s the winning . . .’
Green growled: ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake, get on.’
‘O.K. Mrs Partridge liked winning prizes, and the staff running the dances always made sure she got at least one, otherwise she was pretty nasty about it.’
‘You mean she got mardy if she didn’t walk off with one of her own do-dahs? No wonder somebody saw her off.’
Masters said: ‘Is that all?’
�
��Sorry, Chief,’ Hill replied. ‘With this crowd a week ago’s a long time. They can’t remember that far back. There’s too much going on.’
‘Maybe. But did you establish whether Mrs P won a prize last week?’
‘Yes. Two. The one they fiddled her and a genuine spot prize.’
‘Thanks. Well, I’m going to bed. You two had better get back to the revels and see if there’s anything else to be had. But don’t make a row when you come back to the bungalow.’
As they walked along the main road of the camp—well lit by ordinary lamp standards augmented with strings of coloured lights and floodlights gilding flowering bushes, Green said: ‘Have we got anywhere?’
‘The doctors gave us something to think about.’
‘There’s a whole campful of people here. Are you forgetting them?’
‘Largely, I think. I don’t believe ordinary holidaymakers come to a place like this armed with the equipment necessary for murdering the owner. I feel sure we’ll find the culprit among the permanent staff or her family.’
‘Stepdaughters?’
‘That’s who I meant. But I wonder if she had any other family—of her own? Not by marriage. That’s something the lads can ferret out tomorrow.’
‘The stepdaughters are coming for the funeral. They should know.’
‘I expect so. But first off tomorrow I want to have a look round her flat.’
Green grunted. ‘We should have done it earlier. Tonight.’
‘What? And missed seeing your lady doctor?’
As he ribbed Green, Masters opened the bungalow door and switched on the passage light. He noticed Green was frowning slightly.
‘What’s wrong? Light hurting your eyes? Or . . . no! I’ve got it. You’re worried lest the Meeths are implicated, aren’t you?’
Green said churlishly: ‘Yes, I am. Once or twice tonight I thought they showed just a bit too much knowledge about poisons and toxins. As if they’d been more than average interested in them recently.’
‘Meeth said his wife was interested in forensics.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, the best thing you can do is find the right answers to the questions we talked about and hope that what you get helps to eliminate them.’
Chapter Three
Masters was awake at six. There were none of the Tannoy calls that wake holidaymakers—much to their annoyance—at some other holiday camps. But there was a choir of birds. The area must have been something of a sanctuary because, judging by the volume of their song, there was a chorus of hundreds. This, and the lovely morning, jerked Masters out of bed. By half past six he was walking around the Throscum estate. He was interested in what he saw. The holiday camp was obviously an almost self-contained community. The slope of the hill falling down towards the village—running, as Constable Benham had said, down to his back fence—was given over to a kitchen garden. The vegetables, well laid out in rows as straight as guardees on parade, looked healthy. Already, at this early hour, while the dew was still heavy upon the plants, two gardeners were moving along the rows, selecting and cutting. A plastic cloche sixty feet long had been removed from a row of lettuce, left to straighten up in the early sun ready for last-minute cutting. Long rows of greenhouses with vents open and panes whitewashed on the south ridge against the heat of the day showed tomato foliage thick against the glass. Masters felt sure he could smell the distinctive odour that seems characteristic of no tomatoes except English home grown. He avoided a gaggle of geese, left to roam before being penned up for the day. The leader was menacing. Masters had no desire to try conclusions with him.
After a short space laid out with quoit courts, a croquet lawn and a crown green he came to the great sprawl of building which he guessed must be the former American officers’ mess. At the back a kitchen was open, and an appetizing smell of fried bacon came to him on the morning air. He wandered close, saw the rows of dustbins in a whitewashed bay: the notice which said this was the place where the camp staff food was prepared and eaten. He followed the narrow path round. Between the arms of the building, hidden from the camp proper, were rows of linen lines. As he walked, two women came from what he assumed to be the laundry, carrying a red plastic basket full of sheets. He guessed they were already spin dried, and were now going out for airing and sweetening in the sun. He went round to the front and in through the main door with nobody to question him.
Throscum obviously made full use of this particular building. Liquor stores, food stores, cold room, bedding stores, furniture stores, cutlery room, crockery room, linen room. Staff canteen, staff TV room, staff bedrooms. He hadn’t realized just how complex the running of a camp such as this could be.
He went out into the open again. The long front wings on either side of the main door had been rejigged to make the rooms into a series of shops and kiosks. At one end a games store where campers could borrow or hire equipment. He grinned to himself as he noted that it was here that Green would be able to fit himself out with hired swimming trunks. Next door to this a small travel bureau with bus trip posters pinned to the shutters. Next, already open, a newsagent shop with heaps of unsorted dailies on the front shelf and books—paperbacks to suit all tastes—in the background. A few lurid magazines in racks were already hanging by the door, and in the dim interior Masters could just make out an elderly man, busy at some chore. An ice-cream kiosk. A soft-drinks bar. Souvenirs. A general grocery. A sweet shop. Masters looked in them all—as much as he could—and remembered his conversation with Compton the night before. Every item was Devon this or Devon that. The photography kiosk sold transparencies of Devon. The ice cream—inevitably Devon. All the sweets were of the ‘home-made’ variety. Pound boxes of Devon cream toffee, treacle toffee, Throscum hand-made chocolates, toffee apples, rock, peppermint creams. Through the window he could see them. He wondered which firm had agreed to make these items in a form so obviously amateurish that they seemed authentically home-made. The shapes were irregular, the sizes different. No machine programmed to produce them could have turned them out. They were as different from the usual thing as a hand-rolled cigarette is from the tailor-made variety. He glanced into the next shop. The tobacconist. Here, discretion had been used. Only the well-known brands. No Warlock Flake, he was sorry to see.
He cut down towards where he judged the coast to be. A bridle path through a thicket, a few yards of rough grass and then, surprisingly, a single-track railway spur, little used judging from the thin coating of rust on top of the rails. He wondered about this track. For what purpose had it been laid? He turned left along it. After two hundred yards he had the answer. It curved through another thicket, and once clear of this, ran on down a short way to an old quay, built of heavy timber. Beside the quay, literally leaning against it, was a small coaster. Black hulled with brown varnished upperworks and a red band round the funnel. Masters, who knew little of ships, judged it to be about three hundred tons—but he had no means of knowing how right he was. He wandered closer. The small ship was high and dry on the mud, and keeled over lovingly towards the quay. From a distance, Masters saw a seaman in a chef’s hat appear at a doorway and then step out to peg a pair of underpants to dry on part of the rigging. The water, dirty brown, had cut rivulet channels in the mud, and a narrow stream, yards away from the ship, was flowing swiftly towards the open sea, sparkling in the sunlight as it went.
Masters looked at his watch. He’d been out an hour. He decided he could do with breakfast, and started to return by the side of the property opposite the one he had used on the outward journey. He soon came to the two hedged meadows Mundy had mentioned. The Throscum management was making full use of them: making them earn their keep. They ran side by side; the westerly one given over to tents, the easterly to caravans. Evidently all forms of holidaymaker were welcome at Throscum. Masters wondered how arrangements were made for these last two categories to pay for the amenities of the main camp for which the bungalow residents obviously contributed so much more in overall cha
rges.
He arrived at the bungalow to find the others awaiting his return. He said to Hill: ‘Do we just stroll into the dining-room and eat our fill? Or do we do it like hotels and give our room numbers?’
‘Neither. We’re supposed to have coupons—meal tickets of the basic value. Tear off one for the appropriate meal and pay the extra if we run over the score.’
‘I haven’t got one.’
‘We’re privileged. They’re not bothering about us till Saturday lunchtime when the new week starts. After that we’ll have to toe the line.’
‘Who says so?’
‘That little girl in reception. I had a word with her about it last night. And you don’t pay in cash, either. You buy books of currency tickets that are valid anywhere within the camp.’
‘We paid cash for our drinks.’
‘Oh, they’ll take cash in all the shops and bars. But the dining-room waiters don’t—except for tips.’
Green said: ‘It’s quite a racket. All goods paid for before they’re bought. I should think a place like this piles up quite a bit of capital in advance.’
‘You pay for everything before you get it,’ Brant said. ‘The visitors have to settle up before their holiday starts. No bad debts that way, and more time to earn interest on the money you take in.’
‘Right. Let’s go. I’ve earned my breakfast this morning. So let’s make hay while the going’s good.’
*
As they rose from the breakfast table, Green said: ‘I’ll have some time to wait before I can see Mrs Doctor Meeth. She’ll be holding surgery. So I’ll come with you to see the flat.’
Masters agreed. He turned to Hill. ‘Find out the form about the funeral and the stepdaughters’ arrangements and then join us upstairs.’
Green unhooked the soft red cotton rope looped across the staircase. The treads were wide, the carpet thickly underfelted, the banister rail and newels square-cut and heavy. It was a staircase down which to come for an impressive entrance. It muted conversation in the way a cathedral does. At the turn the stained-glass window with the Stipple-Houndsby crest and motto. Green said: ‘What does that load of old gibberish mean?’ Masters, who’d had a chance the night before to construe it, said: ‘Right is the guiding star of a noble mind—that’s if I’ve translated mentis honestae correctly.’
Sweet Poison Page 5
