The Wimbledon Poisoner

by Nigel Williams

  ‘We will never know,’ said Lustgarten, right on cue. ‘Was Rush the man who introduced four grains of veratrine into a selection of speciality rolls at Marks and Spencer, Lee Lane, in June 1985? Was it the disordered representative of order who made free with the picutoxin on Albert de la Fissolies’s first course of chargrilled polenta with chicken livers at a restaurant in Barnes in August 1987? The answer to these questions will never be known. Rush took them with him to the grave, just as he took the secret of the origin of his perverted passion for the lawful wife of Henry Ian Farr, or the precise pathology of his obsession with the case of the celebrated Victorian poisoner, Everett Maltby. Was Maltby in some way haunting the detective, as he had, in his own way, haunted Farr? Only one thing is certain – it is unwise’ – here Lustgarten, aware that he was about to deliver a bon mot to the camera, smirked – ‘. . . to interfere between husband and wife, even when they are trying to kill each other.’

  Henry stopped. Lustgarten was, as he seemed to be doing more and more these days, anticipating events. What was even more worrying was that very often he seemed to be absolutely right. He was becoming a kind of Tiresias for the media age. Even if he wasn’t right about this one, it was certainly true that Henry was in close proximity to a very deranged customer indeed. Rush certainly looked as if he was about to kill someone and, if it wasn’t himself, it was probably fairly sure to be Henry.

  Just as Henry thought this, Rush turned to him and, as if noticing him for the first time, said, ‘I should have killed you first!’

  ‘Do you think?’ said Henry, as politely as he could.

  ‘I should have killed you,’ said Rush, ‘that day I put the atropine in the punch. It would have been easy.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Henry, not wishing to antagonize the man, ‘that for you it would have been no problem at all. You obviously . . . know your stuff when it comes to poisons!’

  Rush looked at him narrowly. ‘Don’t patronize me!’ he said.

  ‘I’m not patronizing you,’ said Henry, ‘I just think that . . . well . . . when it comes to poisoning people you’re . . . first class! Obviously!’

  Rush sniffed. No one, thought Henry, not even a deranged psychopathic mass poisoner, is immune to flattery. As Rush walked on closer to the hedge that fringes the Wimbledon Windmill, Henry tried a bit more of it.

  ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘I thought I was a poisoner! I fancied myself at it. I can see now I was a complete amateur. I didn’t have a clue!’

  Rush was starting to scowl. Henry decided to change the subject. Get his mind off whatever his mind is on. Talk about something that will absorb him. ‘I was thinking the other day,’ he said, ‘about Charles Bravo, you remember the one? Who died on . . .’

  ‘Friday, 21 April 1876,’ snapped Rush, ‘after being in constant agony since the previous Tuesday, when he had consumed a dinner of whiting, roast lamb and anchovy eggs on toast.’ His lip curled slightly, ‘Don’t try and change the subject,’ he said. ‘We were talking about how I should have killed you.’

  Holding Sprott’s ashes high up above his head he moved towards Henry. Henry smelt once again that sour smell of onions on his breath, noticed the folds of skin on the neck, the ill-fitting collar, the watery blue eyes and that awful, yearning expression that seemed to be looking way, way beyond them, but was in fact looking only inside at the mess within him. He judged it best not to back away, but to stand his ground as one might with a dog that seemed threatening.

  ‘And how I still might,’ said Rush, ‘how I still might! You’ve had murderous thoughts in you, haven’t you? You deserve to die! Don’t you? Don’t you? Don’t you?’

  Henry coughed. ‘I think,’ he said, sounding rather pompous, ‘I could learn to be a useful member of society!’

  Rush put one clawlike hand on Henry’s shirt. He shook his head. Once again Henry had that uncomfortable feeling that this man, only this man, knew precisely what he was feeling, knew the worst things about him, the things he never told anybody, the things he couldn’t start to put into words.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Rush, ‘oh no, no, no. It’s too late for that caper. You’re going to die, Henry Farr. You’re going to die, die, die!’

  43

  One of the chief drawbacks of poison as a murder weapon is that it does require the collaboration of the victim. Short of forcing a tomato sandwich down Henry’s throat or suddenly breaking off to suggest a visit to a nearby Thai restaurant, Rush did not really have much going for him. He could, Henry supposed, try and jab a syringe in him and, indeed, he was waiting for him to make a sudden movement; but the detective, seemingly exhausted by his monologue, stood quite still in the damp grass, the ashes of his victim in his right hand. And then, slowly, wearily, he groped in his pocket and produced his pipe.

  Henry backed away a little. It might, conceivably, be a dual-purpose pipe, a blow as well as a suck job. From his inside pocket Rush was taking something from a square box and he was squeezing it into the bowl and . . .

  He was putting tobacco in it. He was lighting the tobacco. He was smoking it. Henry breathed out slowly. He looked up at the windmill – the rear end of it, lit from below, looked like a space capsule, the small, rear sail resembling a propeller rather than anything else. The light only faintly touched the four larger sails, waiting in the black sky for some signal that would never come.

  ‘I,’ said Rush, in one of those abrupt changes of mood that seemed to accompany his overtly lunatic side, ‘am a member of the Wimbledon and Putney Commons Conservation Society!’

  ‘Really?’ said Henry, trying to sound interested.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Rush, ‘I’m in and out of the Ranger’s office. I’m in and out of the windmill.’

  He seemed to have completely forgotten about poisoning for the moment, and if the extermination of Henry was high on his list of priorities he gave no sign of the fact.

  ‘It was in a house next to this windmill,’ said Rush, ‘that, in 1907, Lord Baden-Powell began writing his book Scouting for Boys!’

  Henry, of course, knew this. Just as he also knew that in 1840 Lord Cardigan fought a duel just below where they were now standing, watched by miller Thomas Dann, his wife, Sarah, and their fourteen-year-old son, Sebastian. Just as he knew that Lord Spencer, the evil bastard who tried to sell off Wimbledon Common for building land in 1864, converted the mill into six small cottages, or—

  It was curious, thought Henry. In a way Karim Jackson had a point. There was nothing, at first sight, more fascinating than local history. ‘Oh,’ you said to yourself, ‘just here, in 1846, so and so was beheaded, or just there, over where they’ve put the new telephone box, there was a pitched battle between some Jutes in 389! Fascinating!’ But it wasn’t. It was actually completely and totally boring. Who, really, when you came down to it, gave a stuff about local history? Or Wimbledon for that matter?

  He gazed at Rush (who was still droning on about the windmill), almost grateful to the man. This, thought Henry, is how I look to other people. How absolutely appalling!

  ‘In 1893 the miller, John Saunderson,’ Rush went on, ‘was empowered to carry out repairs. He completely rebuilt the roof of the—’

  ‘SHUT UP!’ said Henry.

  Rush stopped. His lower lip began to tremble.

  ‘I’m not interested,’ said Henry, ‘I’m not interested. I’ve had it. I’ve had it up to here. What do you expect me to do with all this information? I’m not interested. Any more than I’m interested in you telling me about my wife and prancing around as if it’s clever and funny to go round poisoning people. Well it isn’t. Anyone can stick a bit of prussic acid in an apple. A child of two could do it. It’s boring and stupid and useless. And it’s also wrong. It’s inadvisable. It’s something that on the whole we should try and avoid. And it’s dull, Rush, it’s very dull! No one thinks it’s clever or funny! It’s dull!’

  Rush was beginning to look a little like Billykins on the day of Donald’s funeral. But Henry, who was begi
nning to discover the bracing effects of morality on the system, continued in almost sadistic tones, ‘I’m not sure I believe you, anyway. Any of this stuff. Isn’t it some sick fantasy? I can’t see you or anyone else really doing all the things you claim. I think this is just a pathetic way of trying to make yourself interesting. The Wimbledon Poisoner? Come on! It’ll never do. There are real and horrible things in the world and you and I are nothing to do with them. The Wimbledon Poisoner? Come on! Come on! Come on!’

  He stopped.

  From his trousers Rush had taken a small, glass phial. Henry was not sure what it was but, bearing in mind the man’s recent testimony, it was a fair assumption that it was not likely to be particularly good for you. Henry’s nervousness must have showed in his face, and the policeman, clearly convinced that he was at an advantage, held it as high as the bag of powdered dentist, and began to wave it in Henry’s face.

  ‘See!’ he hissed. ‘See!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry, ‘I see!’ Then he said, ‘I think you ought to see someone. A psychiatrist.’

  So long as he wasn’t a Jungian, Henry felt sure he would be sympathetic. Mind you, from the way Rush was carrying on it would probably not be long before he was crossing over to the Other Side, where he could, were he so minded, have chats about his dreams with Jungian Analyst with Winebox, not to mention Sprott, Loomis, Coveney and all the other people he had helped to speed to eternal bliss.

  ‘See!’ said Rush again. ‘See! See what I have here!’

  Actually, thought Henry, Rush was not reachable by any method of analysis yet known in the Western world. He was in the grip of the kind of dementia that could only really be assuaged by hiring Earl’s Court and getting a few hundred thousand people together to clap and cheer at every remark made by the sufferer.

  ‘We have so many English poisons,’ he was saying, ‘yew, yew, yew. Yew with its toxic alkaloid, taxine. And laburnum bark. Laburnum bark. And do you know what the country people call aconitum napellus, which is the flower that makes your pupils dilate and your chest ache and ache . . . they call it monks-hood. And they call hyoscyamine henbane. Henbane, henbane, henbane.’

  His little eyes were bloodshot. All around them on the darkened common was silent. And his voice, now, seemed to be coming from inside Henry’s head. If Rush was part of him he was the authentically evil part. Was he now going to come even closer, to sidle up to Henry’s mouth, and press himself close to him, put those wrinkled middle-aged lips on his and climb into him, as an astronaut might clamber into a space suit?

  ‘The anemone is poisonous when fresh,’ crooned Rush, ‘and water dropwort, they call it oenanthe crocata, that’s poisonous too. Nature has made it look like the plant they call sweet flag. Some children ate it and died in 1947. Why did Mother Nature do that? Why do you think? I think because she is very cruel, like all mothers, and she plants in her garden things that heal us and things that hurt us and we don’t know any more what will heal and what will hurt us. We are living off poison. We have poison in our bloodstream; it has got into our bloodstream and we must drive it out.’

  His voice was rising in pitch and his mouth, working this way and that, was dribbling freely. ‘I wanted to save Elinor from the poison. You’re poisonous, you are, you are poison. I wanted her to be free, I gave her the antidote, we have no antidotes now, we have sold our antidotes, we have no English poisons, we have Paki poison and Jew poison and Nigger poison and you’re not listening to me, are you?’

  Henry was trying not to listen. But it was proving difficult.

  Rush’s voice suddenly changed tone completely. ‘The earliest form of windmill in England,’ he said, sounding rather bright and cheerful, ‘was the post mill, which first appeared in 1180!’

  Windmills, Henry decided, were much safer territory than the English Naturalist’s Guide to Poisons of the Hedgerows. In the interests of keeping this conversation as alive as conversations of this nature could ever be, he said, ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t pretend to be interested,’ said Rush, ‘when you’re not! Don’t fake it! I can spot fakes!’

  He looked across at Henry in a sullen manner. ‘Do you think God is a windmill?’ he said. ‘I think God is a windmill. Worm drive and rack and pinion. Fantail and sailblade. I am His Miller you know. I am God’s Miller. He came to me last night and asked me to grind up the bad people in Wimbledon. All of the bad people. Do you think I should grind them up, Henry?’

  Henry found this a completely unanswerable remark. Once, years ago, a boy at his school had, in the middle of a history lesson, informed him that all the clocks and watches in Wimbledon were being shipped out at night in furniture vans. What, he asked Henry, who was only fourteen, was he going to do about this? He goggled then, as he goggled now, at a loss to know what to say.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Rush, ‘died for us, and he broke bread for us but it isn’t wholewheat you see, it’s processed. It’s full of poisons. They put the list of the poisons on the side and God is angry. So I am going to give everyone an antidote to the poisons. Truth casts out falsehood, right? Sodium thiosulphate casts out hydrocyanic acid, that would have done your shrink friend more good than talk talk talk about his dreams, there are no dreams. There are laudanum dreams, what would you give for laudanum? Potassium permanganate. We must cast out the devils in the bread!’

  ‘I see . . .’ said Henry, thinking he had found a way of giving this conversation some direction. If he could bring it round to additives in food he felt he was on safe ground. But Rush was looking at him as if he, Henry, was the one who was barking mad. Insanity of course, is very proud of its rules, it doesn’t want just anyone to join its club. What was strange about Rush was the easy commerce between the apparently normal and the transparently crazy, and the fact that the building bricks of the edifice Rush was constructing, the words, the phrases, the sentences, some of the ideas, were the currency of the normal, the everyday. Just as poisons were chains of chemicals, which, linked in another order, might create, and not destroy life, so Henry saw cliché, comedy, real pain and even rational intelligence glimmer fitfully in his speech, promise the great human achievement, coherence, only to see them, seconds later, gutter out in the wind and the rain that blew through his skull.

  ‘I am going up into the mill now,’ said Rush, ‘because my mother is there. She knows all about Maltby of course. She’s good with Maltby. There’s a man in CID Wimbledon called Maltby and a man called Miller. That’s when I knew I was God’s Miller and I had to grind him up the way we used to grind the bread so I ground glass in his beef daube, you can see through glass, I could see right into his stomach and in his stomach I saw all this poison, all this poison we read and see and think and feel and never own up to because we are supposed to be so fucking squeaky clean, I am going in now!’

  ‘OK, then . . .’ said Henry.

  And walking like a man in a dream, clutching the remains of Sprott in his right hand and the phial of whatever it was in his left, Detective Inspector Rush walked towards the Wimbledon Windmill to talk to God.

  44

  Henry did not attempt to follow him.

  Not that he believed God was in the windmill, although, if He was, Henry did not think he was, yet, in a fit state to see Him. What he did feel was that Rush was quite capable of leaping out at him from behind a wooden pillar or a display case of nineteenth-century artefacts.

  The trouble was, after Rush had gone and Henry was alone, he suddenly felt exposed, like a man standing under the walls of a medieval castle waiting for the defenders to tip out boiling oil, or an archer to appear somewhere high up on the battlements, his arrow aimed at Henry’s heart. The windmill was so still! So quiet!

  Perhaps he should go after him. He cut through the wicket gate in the privet hedge and made for the open door. As far as he remembered there was a steep staircase to the left, leading up to a landing. But it was possible that Rush might be waiting for him on the stairs. It would be best to wait below until the policema
n made a move.

  The trouble was, once he was inside the door, it seemed quite as frightening to stay where he was as to continue up the dark stairs. The only light came from the illumination outside, which from the interior gave one the illusion of being behind the footlights of a son et lumière. Henry felt on display, caught, like an escaping prisoner in a searchlight, but in spite of the alarmingly public nature of the place, everything round it was silent. He stood listening for a moment. There was someone on the floor above him. Creak. Creak. Creak.

  ‘Er . . .’ Henry craned his neck upwards. ‘Rush?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Look . . . Rush . . . if you’re hiding up there . . .’

  If you’re hiding up there what?

  ‘If you are . . . you can’t hide for ever . . .’

  There was a scurry of feet on the boards of the museum above and the sound of something being dragged across the floor. Was Rush barricading himself in? Henry imagined the noise growing in volume, the creaks, thumps and rattles coalescing, fusing, until in the dawn Rush would, as he had promised, start to grind. The great spur wheel would turn, the governors start to clatter and the unseen hand of some miller open the shutters of the sails through the striking rod and the great stones would start to grind the corn, only it wouldn’t be the corn of course, but the suburb itself, sucked into the machine, like smoke from a pipe, squeezed and bruised through the bed stone and the runner stone, shaken out through the hoppers, mounted on the framework they called the horse, shaken by the spindle they called the damsel because it made so much noise, and then poured like liquid meal through the holes into the floor to be bagged up for market. Reaping the sinners!

  ‘Rush?’

  Henry was now round the turn of the stairs. In time to see the policeman’s legs disappear from the end of a ladder placed against the trap door that leads to the upper part of the mill. Once, in Maltby’s day, there was an external staircase up to the fantail stage – now Rush was climbing up through the interior to . . . to what?