by Ruth Rendell
‘May one ask how?’
‘One may. And you’d have known too if you’d bothered to take a proper look at that book of Corinne Last’s. Under the recipe for shaggy cap stew it said, “For drinkables, see page 171.” Well, I looked at page 171, and there Miss Last gave a recipe for cowslip wine and another for sloe gin, both highly intoxicating drinks. Would she have recommended a wine and a spirit to drink with those fungi if there’d been the slightest risk? Not if she wanted to sell her book she wouldn’t. Not unless she was risking hundreds of furious letters and expensive lawsuits.’
Burden had flushed a little. Then he too began to laugh.
After a little while they had coffee.
‘A little logical thinking would be in order, I fancy,’ said Wexford. ‘You said this morning that we were not so much seeking to prove murder as attempted murder. Axel Kingman could have pushed her off that balcony, but no one saw her fall and no one heard him or anybody else go up to that flat during the afternoon. If, however, an attempt to murder her was made two weeks before, the presumption that she was eventually murdered is enormously strengthened.’
Burden said impatiently, ‘We’ve been through all that. We know that.’
‘Wait a minute. The attempt failed. Now just how seriously ill was she? According to Kingman and Hood, she had severe stomach pains and she vomited. By midnight she was peacefully sleeping and by the following day she was all right.’
‘I don’t see where all this is getting us.’
‘To a point which is very important and which may be the crux of the whole case. You say that Axel Kingman attempted to murder her. In order to do so he must have made very elaborate plans – the arranging of the meal, the inviting of the two witnesses, the ensuring that his wife tasted the stew earlier in the same day, and the preparation for some very nifty sleight of hand at the time the meal was served. Isn’t it odd that the actual method used should so signally have failed? That Hannah’s life never seems to have been in danger? And what if the method had succeeded? At post-mortem some noxious agent would have been found in her body or the effects of such. How could he have hoped to get away with that since, as we know, neither of his witnesses actually watched him serve Hannah and one of them was even out of the room?
‘So what I am postulating is that no one attempted to murder her, but someone attempted to make her ill so that, taken in conjunction with the sinister reputation of non-mushroom fungi and Hood’s admitted suspicion of them, taken in conjunction with the known unhappiness of the marriage, it would look as if there had been a murder attempt.’
Burden stared at him. ‘Kingman would never have done that. He would either have wanted his attempt to succeed or not to have looked like an attempt at all.’
‘Exactly. And where does that get us?’
Instead of answering him, Burden said on a note of triumph, his humiliation still rankling, ‘You’re wrong about one thing. She was seriously ill, she didn’t just have nausea and vomiting. Kingman and Hood may not have mentioned it, but Corinne Last said she had double vision and black spots before her eyes and . . .’ His voice faltered. ‘My God, you mean . . . ?’
Wexford nodded. ‘Corinne Last only of the three says she had those symptoms. Only Corinne Last is in a position to say, because she lived with him, if Kingman was in the habit of rinsing plates as soon as he removed them from the table. What does she say? That she doesn’t know. Isn’t that rather odd? Isn’t it rather odd too that she chose that precise moment to leave the table and go out into the hall for her handbag?
‘She knew that Hannah drank because Hood had told her so. On the evening that meal was eaten you say Hood called for her at her own request. Why? She has her own car, and I don’t for a moment believe that a woman like her would feel anything much but contempt for Hood.’
‘She told him there was something wrong with the car.’
‘She asked him to come at six, although they were not due at the Kingmans’ till eight. She gave him coffee. A funny thing to drink at that hour, wasn’t it, and before a meal? So what happens when he suggests calling in at a pub on the way? She doesn’t say no or say it isn’t a good idea to drink and drive. She takes so long getting ready that they don’t have time.
‘She didn’t want Hood to drink any alcohol, Mike, and she was determined to prevent it. She, of course, would take no alcohol and she knew Kingman never drank. But she also knew Hannah’s habit of having her first drink of the day at about six.
‘Now look at her motive, far stronger than Kingman’s. She strikes me as a violent, passionate and determined woman. Hannah had taken Kingman away from her. Kingman had rejected her. Why not revenge herself on both of them by killing Hannah and seeing to it that Kingman was convicted of the crime? If she simply killed Hannah, she had no way of ensuring that Kingman would come under suspicion. But if she made it look as if he had previously attempted her life, the case against him would become very strong indeed.
‘Where was she last Thursday afternoon? She could just as easily have gone up those stairs as Kingman could. Hannah would have admitted her to the flat. If she, known to be interested in gardening, had suggested that Hannah take her on to that balcony and show her the pot herbs, Hannah would willingly have done so. And then we have the mystery of the missing brandy bottle with some of its contents surely remaining. If Kingman had killed her, he would have left that there as it would greatly have strengthened the case for suicide. Imagine how he might have used it. “Heavy drinking made my wife ill that night. She knew I had lost respect for her because of her drinking. She killed herself because her mind was unbalanced by drink.”
‘Corinne Last took that bottle away because she didn’t want it known that Hannah drank, and she was banking on Hood’s keeping it dark from us just as he had kept it from so many people in the past. And she didn’t want it known because the fake murder attempt that she staged depended on her victim having alcohol present in her body.’
Burden sighed, poured the last dregs of coffee into Wexford’s cup. ‘But we tried that out,’ he said. ‘Or I tried it out, and it doesn’t work. You knew it wouldn’t work from her book. True, she brought the shaggy caps from her own garden, but she couldn’t have mixed up poisonous fungi with them because Axel Kingman would have realized at once. Or if he hadn’t, they’d all have been ill, alcohol or no alcohol. She was never alone with Hannah before the meal, and while the stew was served she was out of the room.’
‘I know. But we’ll see her in the morning and ask her a few more questions.’ Wexford hesitated, then quoted softly, ‘“Out of good still to find means of evil.”’
‘What?’
‘That’s what she did, isn’t it? It was good for everyone but Hannah, you look as if it’s done you a power of good, but it was evil for Hannah. I’m off now, Mike, it’s been a long day. Don’t forget to put your car away. You won’t be making any emergency trips to hospital tonight.’
They were unable to puncture her self-possession. The languorous Klimt face was carefully painted this morning, and she was dressed as befitted the violinist or the actress or the author. She had been forewarned of their coming and the gardener image had been laid aside. Her long smooth hands looked as if they had never touched the earth or pulled up a weed.
Where had she been on the afternoon of Hannah Kingman’s death? Her thick shapely eyebrows went up. At home, indoors, painting. Alone?
‘Painters don’t work with an audience,’ she said rather insolently, and she leaned back, dropping her eyelids in that way of hers. She lit a cigarette and flicked her fingers at Burden for an ashtray as if he were a waiter.
Wexford said, ‘On Saturday, October 29th, Miss Last, I believe you had something wrong with your car?’
She nodded lazily.
In asking what was wrong with it, he thought he might catch her. He didn’t.
‘The glass in the offside front headlight was broken while the car was parked,’ she said, and although he thought how easily s
he could have broken that glass herself, he could hardly say so. In the same smooth voice she added, ‘Would you like to see the bill I had from the garage for repairing it?’
‘That won’t be necessary.’ She wouldn’t have offered to show it to him if she hadn’t possessed it. ‘You asked Mr Hood to call for you here at six, I understand.’
‘Yes. He’s not my idea of the best company in the world, but I’d promised him some apples for his mother and we had to pick them before it got dark.’
‘You gave him coffee but had no alcohol. You had no drinks on the way to Mr and Mrs Kingman’s flat. Weren’t you a little disconcerted at the idea of going out to dinner at a place where there wouldn’t even be a glass of wine?’
‘I was used to Mr Kingman’s ways.’ But not so used, thought Wexford, that you can tell me whether it was normal or abnormal for him to have rinsed those plates. Her mouth curled, betraying her a little. ‘It didn’t bother me, I’m not a slave to liquor.’
‘I should like to return to these shaggy caps. You picked them from here on October 28th and took them to Mr Kingman that evening. I think you said that?’
‘I did. I picked them from this garden.’
She enunciated the words precisely, her eyes wide open and gazing sincerely at him. The words, or perhaps her unusual straightforwardness, stirred in him the glimmer of an idea. But if she had said nothing more, that idea might have died as quickly as it had been born.
‘If you want to have them analysed or examined or whatever, you’re getting a bit late. Their season’s practically over.’ She looked at Burden and gave him a gracious smile. ‘But you took the last of them yesterday, didn’t you? So that’s all right.’
Wexford, of course, said nothing about Burden’s experiment. ‘We’ll have a look in your garden, if you don’t mind.’
She didn’t seem to mind, but she had been wrong. Most of the fungi had grown into black-gilled pagodas in the twenty-four hours that had elapsed. Two new ones, however, had thrust their white oval caps up through the wet grass. Wexford picked them, and still she didn’t seem to mind. Why, then, had she appeared to want their season to be over? He thanked her and she went back into the cottage. The door closed. Wexford and Burden walked out into the road.
The fungus season was far from over. From the abundant array by the roadside it looked as if the season would last weeks longer. Shaggy caps were everywhere, some of them smaller and greyer than the clump that grew out of Corinne Last’s well-fed lawn. There were green and purple agarics, horn-shaped toadstools, and tiny mushrooms growing in fairy rings.
‘She doesn’t exactly mind our having them analysed,’ Wexford said thoughtfully, ‘but it seems she’d prefer the analysis to be done on the ones you picked yesterday than on those I picked today. Can that be so or am I just imagining it?’
‘If you’re imagining it, I’m imagining it too. But it’s no good, that line of reasoning. We know they’re not potentiated – or whatever the word is – by alcohol.’
‘I shall pick some more all the same,’ said Wexford. ‘Haven’t got a paper bag, have you?’
‘I’ve got a clean handkerchief. Will that do?’
‘Have to,’ said Wexford who never had a clean one. He picked a dozen more young shaggy caps, big and small, white and grey, immature and fully grown. They got back into the car and Wexford told the driver to stop at the public library. He went in and emerged a few minutes later with three books under his arm.
‘When we get back,’ he said to Burden, ‘I want you to get on to the university and see what they can offer us in the way of an expert in fungilogy.’
He closeted himself in his office with the three books and a pot of coffee. When it was nearly lunchtime, Burden knocked on the door.
‘Come in,’ said Wexford. ‘How did you get on?’
‘It’s not fungologist or fungilogist,’ said Burden with triumphant severity. ‘It’s mycologist and they don’t have one. But there’s a man on the faculty who’s a toxicologist and who’s just published one of those popular science books. This one’s about poisoning by wild plants and fungi.’
Wexford grinned. ‘What’s it called? Killing for Nothing? He sounds as if he’d do fine.’
‘I said we’d see him at six. Let’s hope something will come of it.’
‘No doubt it will.’ Wexford slammed shut the thickest of his books. ‘We need confirmation,’ he said, ‘but I’ve found the answer.’
‘For God’s sake! Why didn’t you say?’
‘You didn’t ask. Sit down.’ Wexford motioned him to the chair on the other side of the desk. ‘I said you’d done your homework, Mike, and so you had, only your textbook wasn’t quite comprehensive enough. It’s got a section on edible fungi and a section on poisonous fungi – but nothing in between. What I mean by that is, there’s nothing in your book about fungi which aren’t wholesome yet don’t cause death or intense suffering. There’s nothing about the kind that can make people ill in certain circumstances.’
‘But we know they ate shaggy caps,’ Burden protested. ‘And if by “circumstances” you mean the intake of alcohol, we know shaggy caps aren’t affected by alcohol.’
‘Mike,’ said Wexford quietly, ‘do we know they ate shaggy caps?’ He spread out on the desk the haul he had made from the roadside and from Corinne Last’s garden. ‘Look closely at these, will you?’
Quite bewildered now, Burden looked at and fingered the dozen or so specimens of fungi. ‘What am I to look for?’
‘Differences,’ said Wexford laconically.
‘Some of them are smaller than the others, and the smaller ones are greyish. Is that what you mean? But, look here, think of the differences between mushrooms. You get big flat ones and small button ones and . . .’
‘Nevertheless, in this case it is that small difference that makes all the difference.’ Wexford sorted the fungi into two groups. ‘All the small greyer ones,’ he said, ‘came from the roadside. Some of the larger whiter ones came from Corinne Last’s garden and some from the roadside.’
He picked up between forefinger and thumb a specimen of the former. ‘This isn’t a shaggy cap, it’s an ink cap. Now listen.’ The thick book fell open where he had placed a marker. Slowly and clearly he read: ‘The ink cap, coprinus atramentarius, is not to be confused with the shaggy cap, coprinus comatus. It is smaller and greyer in colour, but otherwise the resemblance between them is strong. While coprinus atramentarius is usually harmless when cooked, it contains, however, a chemical similar to the active principle in Antabuse, a drug used in the treatment of alcoholics, and if eaten in conjunction with alcohol will cause nausea and vomiting.’
‘We’ll never prove it.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Wexford. ‘We can begin by concentrating on the one lie we know Corinne Last told when she said she picked the fungi she gave Axel Kingman from her own garden.’
Old Wives’ Tales
They looked shocked and affronted and somehow ashamed. Above all, they looked old. Wexford thought that in the nature of things a woman of seventy ought to be an orphan, ought to have been an orphan for twenty years. This one had been an orphan for scarcely twenty days. Her husband, sitting opposite her, pulling his wispy moustache, slowly and mechanically shaking his head, seemed older than she, perhaps not so many years the junior of his late mother-in-law. He wore a brown cardigan with a small neat darn at one elbow and sheepskin slippers, and when he spoke he snuffled. His wife kept saying she couldn’t believe her ears, she couldn’t believe it, why were people so wicked? Wexford didn’t answer that. He couldn’t, though he had often wondered himself.
‘My mother died of a stroke,’ Mrs Betts said tremulously. ‘It was on the death certificate, Dr Moss put it on the death certificate.’
Betts snuffled and wheezed. He reminded Wexford of an aged rabbit, a rabbit with myxomatosis perhaps. It was partly the effect of the brown woolly cardigan and the furry slippers, and partly the moustache and the unshaven bristly
chin. ‘She was ninety-two,’ Betts said in his thick catarrhal voice. ‘Ninety-two. I reckon you lot must have got bats in the belfry.’
‘I mean,’ said Mrs Betts, ‘are you saying Dr Moss was telling untruths? A doctor?’
‘Why don’t you ask him? We’re only ordinary people, the wife and me, we’re not educated. Doctor said a cerebral haemorrhage,’ Betts stumbled a little over the words, ‘and in plain language that’s a stroke. That’s what he said. Are you saying me or the wife gave Mother a stroke? Are you saying that?’
‘I’m making no allegations, Mr Betts.’ Wexford felt uncomfortable, wished himself anywhere but in this newly decorated, paint-smartened house. ‘I am merely making enquiries which information received obliges me to do.’
‘Gossip,’ said Mrs Betts bitterly. ‘This street’s a hotbed of gossip. Pity they’ve nothing better to do. Oh, I know what they’re saying. Half of them turn up their noses and look the other way when I pass them. All except Elsie Parrish, and that goes without saying.’
‘She’s been a brick,’ said her husband. ‘A real brick is Elsie.’ He stared at Wexford with a kind of timid outrage. ‘Haven’t you folk got nothing better to do than listen to a bunch of old hens? What about the real crime? What about the muggings and the break-ins?’
Wexford sighed. But he went on doggedly questioning, remembering what the nurse had said, what Dr Moss had said, keeping in the forefront of his mind that motive which was so much more than merely wanting an aged parent out of the way. If he hadn’t been a policeman with a profound respect for the law and for human life, he might have felt that these two, or one of them, had been provoked beyond bearing to do murder.
One of them? Or both? Or neither? Ivy Wrangton had either died an unnatural death or else there had been a series of coincidences and unexplained contingencies which were nothing short of incredible.
