“Without the divorce she’d still be alive?”
“That’s what my guts tell me. I can’t separate the two, even if the divorce action only caused her to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong man.”
“And that’s why you say that if she hadn’t taken up with Woodruff she’d still have been alive?”
“Yes.” She was emphatic. Suddenly the façade seemed to give way. “I know what you two think. You think I’ve no feelings at all. But I have, damn you, I have. I liked Rhoda. Admired her. She was everything I wasn’t, had everything I hadn’t, so you could expect me to be as jealous as hell of her. But I wasn’t. And I’m already missing her . . . look, blast you, since I heard she was dead I’ve been about as much good as . . . as a colour-blind snooker professional. So now you’ve heard what you wanted, get out.”
She reached for her cigarette packet. It was empty. In silence Reed put his own packet in front of her.
“Keep those,” he said quietly. “And before you go back to your office, slip into the ladies. Your mascara is a bit blotched.”
*
“He’s a ripe bastard,” said Green as they left the college, “but not quite as bad as you’d led me to believe.”
“He’d toned it down a bit from last night.”
“When he realized you weren’t your average Mister Plod?”
“Maybe.”
“Meaning you don’t think so?”
“Meaning that finding we are not, in his eyes, numb-skulls, could be one explanation or part of it.”
“He’s shrewd, you reckon?”
“No.”
“A bloke like him, a professor, not shrewd?”
“That’s why I said it could be one explanation or part of it. If he was all that shrewd, his tactics last night would never have been employed—until he knew the lie of the land—or they would have been carried over this morning.”
“Consistency?”
“Exactly. There’s a cab, Bill . . .” Masters raised an arm. “Scotland Yard, please.”
“So he’s not consistent. But he’s clever, astute even.”
“Agreed. But is he wise? Sagacious? Gifted with acuteness of mental discernment? I think a lack of consistency in attitude would argue against that.”
“So what is he?”
“A bit of a paradox, I’d have said. He appears to be a muscular, practical man. But he’s an academic.”
“A muscular academic.”
“There was a bit of bluster about him.”
“Okay, full of academic bluster.”
Masters grinned. “That’s about as close as we shall get for the moment, I suppose. Smacks a bit of muscular Christianity, doesn’t it?”
“Except that I don’t suppose he ever goes to church.”
The cab deposited them at the Yard.
As they went to the senior mess bar, Green asked: “Now what about this afternoon, George?”
“I want to do a bit of reading, Bill. I also want to hear from the sergeants.”
“Before you decide whether to go to Chichester?”
“Yes. Come on, I’ll stand you a drink.”
While Masters was buying, Green went to the gents. When he came back he told Masters he had seen the sergeants, who wanted to report on their meetings with Heddle and Golly Lugano.
“In that case we’d better confer immediately after lunch. What they have to say may determine what we do later. I am assuming that they wouldn’t have asked to speak to us before four unless they’ve got something they think is important?”
Green took a large gulp from his tankard before replying. “They seemed a bit agog.”
“Ah! All excited like?”
“Actually, a bit subdued. Reed was grumbling about having lost a packet of fags.”
*
Masters and Green listened carefully to the report from Reed and Berger, both of whom had emulated Green in mastering the habit of almost total recall when aided by the notes they had made. So Masters got a fair picture of the interviews.
“Drink,” he said when the sergeants had finished. “We didn’t notice it. The smell I mean.”
“Dissipated,” grunted Green. “Up that dirty great chimney in the sitting room.”
“Did any of you notice signs in the sitting room—or the bedroom?”
“Signs, Chief?”
“Empty glasses, bottles . . . the usual end of party mess.”
All stated they had seen no such signs.
“The kitchen, Chief. We didn’t go out there. She could have cleared away.”
“Not likely,” grunted Green. “If the stink of booze was so strong, it meant those characters would be half-seas over by the time they staggered upstairs. Too far gone, at any rate, to fancy clearing up a mess.”
Masters sat thoughtful for a moment or two. Then Reed asked: “The drink, Chief? It’s important?”
Masters came back with a jerk. “Their alcoholic state? Very important. Very important indeed.”
“Can we know why?” asked Green. “Or would that be telling?”
“What? Oh, I see. These two were killed by a noxious gas.”
“We don’t know that for sure, do we? Couldn’t they have eaten some arsenic.”
“The medics think not. I’ll tell you why they think so. Had they ingested arsenic—in any form taken through the mouth—it would have gone straight down and irritated their stomachs and guts so much that they would have vomited to glory.”
“Which they didn’t,” admitted Green. “But that begs another question. Drunks usually puke, too. Which again they didn’t. So my guess is they weren’t kalied either.”
“I’m going to disagree, Bill. I think they were drunk. Dead drunk, almost. They had to be for all this to work as it did.”
“We’re not with you, Chief.”
“How do drunks breathe?”
“The same as anybody else,” retorted Green.
“The pattern of their breathing,” insisted Masters. “Initially—when they first become blotto—their breathing is very deep and stertorous.”
“Got it!” shouted Green. “If they were killed by a gas, they had to take it in in great gulps for it to kill them.”
“Right.”
“And they’d have to be blotto not to be wakened up or become aware of the stink of the gas.”
“Right again. Go on.”
“If they breathed deep, and took in a lot of gas, it would kill them by attacking their . . . what? Their lungs?”
“Yes.”
“It would attack their lungs and stop them breathing before it could get down to attacking their guts to make them puke.”
“Admirably put, Bill. It means there was a high enough concentration of gas to kill them quickly so long as they were unaware they were being gassed and so long as they breathed deeply. Because, once they were approaching death—and this applies to drunks as well as, or so I should imagine, people who have been poisoned—their breathing becomes shallow.”
“You’ve got it, George,” congratulated Green.
“Steady, steady. We’ve got one little point. There’s a hell of a lot more to ferret out yet.”
“When you know how it happened . . .”
Masters shook his head. “All we’ve got is one small medical fact—a mechanical fact, if you like. We don’t know how the gas got into the room, where it came from or who introduced it.”
“A pipe through the keyhole,” grunted Green. “It’s been done before. A canister of gas and . . .”
“Where does one get canisters of arsine?”
Green looked surprised. “Can’t it be made and caught in a container? Most gases can—with retorts and what not?”
“I’m sure most gases can be collected with suitable chemistry apparatus.”
“Carvell. He’s got a laboratory.”
“True. But it’s ten to one he has none of the apparatus you’re talking about. Scads of microscopes for examining slides, bunsen burners for d
oing borax bead tests, charcoal blocks . . .”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Simple tests for identifying minerals. All to do with colour and streaking and such like. It’s not a stinks lab.”
“I see. Or at least I think I do. So the prof didn’t make a nice bottle of gas there.” He stopped suddenly. “Bottle gas . . .?”
“Not arsenical. And none there.”
“No, I suppose not.”
Reed asked: “So what now, Chief? We know they were blotto when they bought it.”
Masters stocked his pipe, every movement deliberate. “It doesn’t hang together,” he said at last. “If they got as drunk as we imagine they did, where did they do the actual drinking?”
“Meaning it needn’t have been at the house at all?” queried Green. “At the local pub, perhaps?”
“I think not.”
“So do I,” agreed Green. “For one thing, if they’d been supping up in the local boozer, Bert Robson would have discovered it by now, and if he turned anything up at all about their movements he’d have been on the blower to tell us—just to show how good he is. And . . .” Green looked round triumphantly, “. . . they wouldn’t have been able to drive the car back along the lane, get between those two huts at the gate and then put the barouche safely in the garage.”
“Do we know it was safe?” asked Berger. “We didn’t examine it to see if it had been pranged.”
“The locals did,” retorted Green. “If there’d have been a mark on it they’d have told us.”
“All good points, Bill,” admitted Masters. “And they apply to any suggestion that they might have had a drinking bout further afield, only more so, because they’d have had an even longer drive back.”
“So they drank at home, Chief?”
“We none of us saw any signs in the sitting room, and I can’t think that if they were so drunk they would have cleared up.”
“In the dining room, perhaps then?”
“The fire had been in the sitting room. The ashes were still there. But I must admit, the dining room sounds a possibility. We must check. We must check this whole business of drink, in fact.”
“It’s bothering you, isn’t it?” asked Green.
“Yes. How did they manage to get upstairs, to undress and then get into bed if they were really stinko profundo? Did anybody notice any clothes lying on the floor in the bedroom?”
Everybody agreed they had seen no signs of disarray in the bedroom.
“Perhaps Heddle was wrong, Chief,” said Berger.
“If he was,” said Green, “how are we going to explain the business of them just lying there and dying. Arsine would distress them so much they’d have wakened up, wouldn’t they, George?”
“I would have thought so. Sleep is a funny thing. Anything out of the ordinary can disturb it. I know that after Wanda has put young Michael to bed she insists that we talk in normal tones, have people in or the telly on. No whispering. She thinks—and I believe she’s right—that a totally quiet house would waken him.”
“She must be right,” said Green. “In a house the size of yours nobody can get away from any noise that’s made and yet the young choker sleeps through it. Strong fumes and the stink of garlic would make anybody cough and sit up.”
“And,” said Masters, “I’m inclined to believe young Heddle. Everything he has told us, and we have checked, has been proved true, so I can see no earthly reason why he should make up this story about the strong smell of drink.”
“That’s what we think, too, Chief,” said Reed.
“So,” said Masters, decisively, “we’ll go down to Abbot’s Hall and Chichester and try to sort the business out.”
“Now?”
“In half an hour’s time. Bill, will you try to contact Robson and let him know we hope to be at the house at about four thirty?”
“And back to Chichester for six?”
Masters nodded and turned to the sergeants. “I’ll be ready at three. Get your report written up while it’s still fresh in your mind. There are some bits of it we haven’t discussed, but we may well have to later.”
“Right, Chief.”
When he was alone, Masters went to his coat and took the mineralogy book from the pocket. He sat at his desk to consult it. Then he rose to take another book from the shelf. A few minutes later he was leaning back in his chair, smoke rising from his pipe while he dealt with the mental problem he had set himself.
*
As the car made good time west, Green grew restive at the lack of conversation.
“What’s up?” he demanded at last. “Or has the cat got everybody’s tongues?”
Masters turned to him, where he sat, in the nearside rear seat. “Thoughts, Bill,” he said quietly.
“Yours or mine?”
“My own, naturally, but I should be pleased to listen to any relevant ones from you.”
“Fine. Normally . . . and I say that in the full knowledge that we never proceed normally . . . we try to get the three usual needs of a case. Means, opportunity and motive. So far we’ve got none of them.”
“We know the means,” protested Berger. “Arsine.”
“Don’t let’s play clever beggars, lad. We don’t know where the arsine came from nor how it got into that bedroom. We don’t even know whether it got there by accident or design. And what’s more, there’s nothing so far to give us any hint.”
Masters asked: “You do agree they were gassed in the bedroom, and not somewhere else?”
“I’m banking on it.”
“Why?” asked Berger.
“Because the bedroom stank of garlic. Because if they’d been gassed somewhere else they wouldn’t have been able to get upstairs to bed in good order. And if his nibs is right about the drunken breathing . . .”
“I think we can rely on that, Bill.”
“Right. So don’t let’s start unnecessary hares about them being gassed in some other place.”
“I agree. Please go on.”
“No means,” grunted Green. “No opportunity for anybody to have killed them either—so far, that is. Two people alone in an isolated house on a wild night? Who’s going out there to do them in? And don’t say it could be some tramp, because the job is obviously too sophisticated for a spur of the moment job. And there’s another thing. As far as we know, nobody expected those two to be down at Abbot’s Hall that Monday night. Everybody expected them to go there on Tuesday, after the divorce.”
“All that is true, Bill. So what is your answer?”
“I haven’t one. The thing just doesn’t hold together. Either we’re on the wrong track or . . .”
“Or what?”
“It’s a damn good job that Carvell dame was an open-air fiend, otherwise she might not have lived as long as she did.”
“How’s that?” asked Berger.
“Meaning she could have been poisoned in that room any night she went to bed with the windows closed. The first time she did, she died.”
“You reckon it was an accident, and that there’s something in the plaster or under the floorboards that gives off arsine?” Berger sounded highly sceptical as he asked the question.
“Why not lad? Some paints have arsenic in them. Has there been any painting done there recently?”
“Using paint that was a bad mix, you mean?”
“Mistakes have been made before, lad.”
“It’s a thought,” agreed Masters.
Green turned to him. “George, you’re not the only one who can read a book, you know. After I rang Chichester I did a bit of research myself. Not much, because there wasn’t time. But I found an American book in the library, and it said that many colouring materials, mordants . . .”
“Who?” demanded Berger.
“Mordants.” Green turned again to Masters. “I had to look that up myself, that’s why I didn’t get very far with my research. Apparently mordants are substances used for fixing colours in dyeing materials
and in adhesive compounds for fixing gold leaf.”
“I didn’t know that, Bill.”
“No? Well, besides colouring materials and mordants, this chap mentioned rodent poisons and insecticides. So you see there could be any amount of arsenic about that house that we don’t know about. And if there’s arsenic, there could be arsine, I reckon, because gases can be given off quite easily, can’t they?”
“Under certain conditions,” agreed Masters.
“Shall I tell you one I know about?”
“Please do.”
“Fungi,” said Green cryptically.
“Poisonous toadstools?” asked Berger.
“No, you berk. The book I was reading said that ethyl arsine and similar vapours are released from arsenic compounds by the action of various fungi.”
“Again something I didn’t know,” admitted Masters.
“So,” said Green triumphantly, “perhaps what we’re looking for is still there and has been for some time. What I mean is, it could be something like dry rot that has gradually crept into the floor joists and started releasing the poison and the stink of garlic. If damp has got in. After all, it’s an old house.”
“Those fungi that grow on timber give me the creeps,” said Reed from the driving seat. “Dirty great things as big as dinner plates. I had some on one of the trees at home. I wouldn’t touch them, even with gloves on. I hacked them off with a spade and put them on a bonfire.”
“Quite right, too, lad. As I’ve just said, they can be killers.” Green turned back to Masters. “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly does. Have you finished demolishing what little bit we have of a case?”
“Not quite. Besides having no means and no opportunity, we have no known motive.”
“And no suspect,” added Berger.
Green helped himself to a crumpled Kensitas.
The Monday Theory Page 12
