Winding Up the Serpent

by Priscilla Masters

  She drank again, frowned. ‘Her bank accounts show large deposits but apart from her wages they were all cash so, although we know there was this huge disparity between her legitimate income and her outgoings, it’s a little difficult to prove. Besides, Matthew, I don’t really want to dig up everyone’s little secret. I simply want to find out who killed her. The why doesn’t matter so much. But to find out who killed her I first have to know how she died.’

  She looked him square in the face, reading some uncertainty there. ‘How well did you know her?’

  ‘I knew her,’ he said. ‘She was a witch.’

  And now she knew real, cold fear. She couldn’t look at Matthew’s face. All the time she had worried about his connection with the dead nurse. Now she knew she must face it to progress with the case.

  ‘Go on,’ she prompted.

  ‘Jo,’ he said softly, ‘can I trust you? Which comes first – the person or the job?’

  Now she knew she would be compromised. And as she watched his face very carefully she felt closer to him than she had ever felt before – closer now than when they had been lovers.

  She spoke very softly. ‘You can trust me, Matthew.’

  ‘Let me tell you about her,’ he said. ‘You should know what sort of woman she was – whose murder you’re investigating.’

  ‘Was she blackmailing you too?’

  He nodded. ‘She tried.’

  She was suddenly appalled. ‘About me?’

  Again he nodded. ‘I told her to go to hell – do her damnedest!’

  He leaned down and touched her hand. ‘Do you remember that night, at the restaurant?’

  ‘When Jane turned up?’

  He nodded, drank a little of the wine and set it down on the coffee table. ‘It was Marilyn who told Jane where we were. It was because I refused to pay her any money. I thought she was bluffing.’

  She remembered the night – an intimate evening in a tiny hotel – a meal slowly tasted, quiet, shared conversation, giggles over numerous glasses of wine, a feeling that life was good, of warmth and comfort and good food, the promise of sex.

  And then, shattering the peace of the restaurant like some hellish storm on a summer’s sea, Jane had burst in, screaming and furious. Appalled and embarrassed, they had sprung to their feet, their quiet anonymity shattered. The other diners had watched with shocked eyes, knowing their secret, witnessing the noisy fury, as Jane spat out insults. ‘Scarlet mistress, filthy whore.’ Even now Joanna felt hot at the memory of that night, of Matthew’s fumbling excuses, his face suffused with shame. He had left with Jane. She had paid the bill.

  Two days later he had rung her and apologized and she had said what she knew he was thinking, that they should not meet again. A slow hatred of Marilyn Smith filled her. She closed her eyes and pictured the plump figure with her obscene greasy red lips, legs splayed ... that picture of a dirty invitation.

  She looked at Matthew. ‘Her,’ she said.

  She refilled her glass, felt her face twist in sourness, drank it all. The good French wine tasted like vinegar.

  Matthew was watching her. ‘Now do you understand?’

  She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t you, Matthew?’ She gripped his arm. ‘Tell me it wasn’t you.’

  He shook his head, gave a vague smile. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course I didn’t kill her. I couldn’t stand her, but I wouldn’t have killed her, Jo.’

  ‘Then who?’ she asked.

  But he shook his head. ‘Jo,’ he said. ‘That’s for you to find out. I can tell you how. But I don’t know who.’

  ‘How will do for now, Matthew,’ she said quietly and watched him pull a pale blue magazine from his pocket. ‘British Medical Journal,’ he said. ‘A couple of months ago.’ He frowned. ‘It suddenly came to me late last night. I remembered this article.’ He flicked through the thin pages until he found the article and then pushed the magazine across to her. She glanced at it, read it, and looked at him for explanation.

  ‘It actually happened,’ he said awkwardly, ‘in Canada, last year.’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  He glanced again at the magazine. ‘An injection of insulin,’ he said, ‘well disguised. In this case in the crease underneath the breast. As the pathologist says in this article, she was a plump woman and it was tricky to find, but look.’ He jabbed his finger on the photograph at the bottom of the page. ‘He found it with a magnifying glass.’ He looked at Joanna. ‘There was so little to find: a slight swelling, a tiny bit of bruising ... They could only confirm it by taking a biopsy of the surrounding tissues.’ He paused. ‘They were saturated with insulin.’

  He looked carefully at Joanna. ‘I bet there’s a syringe mark somewhere on Marilyn Smith’s body.’

  ‘Surely you would have seen it, Matthew?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not necessarily.’ He paused to think. ‘I could have missed it.’ His green eyes looked straight at her. ‘Anyone could have missed it, Jo. We’re talking about something very tiny – almost microscopic. Apart from obvious signs of homicide I was searching for a natural cause of death, and after that poisoning, maybe suicide. And suicide marks are easy to spot. The syringe would be there, dropped on the floor or lying on the bed with the phial. The mark would almost always be in the arm. Sometimes they use the leg – but rarely. The mark we’ll be looking for will be hidden... folds of skin, between digits, even behind the hairline. It was only when I recalled the article that it all fell into place.’ He looked at her. ‘Do you remember me mentioning that she was sweaty?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Insulin could cause that.’ He stopped for a minute, frowning in concentration. ‘Also the way she simply slipped into unconsciousness and died. There was no sign of a struggle, was there?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘It would all fit so neatly,’ Matthew said. ‘I should really have thought of it before. You see, the poisons lab wouldn’t have found anything abnormal. Insulin is a naturally occurring substance. They wouldn’t have looked for it.’

  But Joanna shook her head. ‘It won’t work,’ she said. ‘She wouldn’t have just lain there and let someone inject insulin into her.’

  ‘She was zonked out,’ Matthew said, ‘or at the very least beautifully sleepy. Champagne, remember, a couple of sleeping tablets, new sexy underwear, lie back and think of England.’

  ‘Matthew ... Why would she have taken sleeping tablets if she was expecting a night of passion?’ She stopped. ‘You don’t think the capsules …’

  ‘I’ve always thought this,’ he said. ‘Easy to split a capsule.’

  He waved his hands in the air. ‘You can put rat poison in a capsule. What was actually in the capsule was a meticulously measured dose of phenobarbitone. I had the analysis back today. The lab rang up and asked if she had been epileptic. I rang Sammy Bose. No, she wasn’t. But they’d found traces of phenobarbitone in her blood. Not enough to kill her, but enough to make her drowsy. A therapeutic dose, had she been an epileptic – but she wasn’t.’

  ‘But why take it?’ she said. ‘And where did that one different-coloured capsule come from?’

  He sighed. ‘Far be it from me to try to tell you your job,’ he said. ‘And anyway, it’s only a guess. But I wondered if she was under the impression that it was an aphrodisiac.’ He stopped. ‘Remember I knew her. Not well, but she was amazingly gullible. And she believed in fantasies. It would have been in character for Marilyn to trust someone who sent her a capsule saying it was an aphrodisiac.’

  ‘And yet she blackmailed all these people?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have worked anywhere but in a small, isolated moorlands town,’ Matthew said grimly. ‘People here care very much about their reputation. Anywhere else and they would have told her to get stuffed.’

  She looked up at him. ‘So she really was waiting for a lover – or thought she was. But it was an appointment with someone quite different.’

  He nodded. ‘I think
so.’

  ‘And that lover was no lover,’ she said. ‘They never had intercourse.’

  He waited.

  ‘He killed her.’ She closed her eyes and pictured the scene – suddenly vivid and cruel. ‘She lay there, zonked out, dressed up in the ... black lace ... waiting for someone. And he came and murdered her.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have known much about it. She died happy.’

  ‘Did she, Matthew?’

  He looked uneasy.

  ‘Have you had another look at the body yet?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in London. Besides,’ he added, ‘I thought it would be nice if you were there too.’ He hesitated awkwardly. ‘It’s your first case as an inspector. And I did withhold information. I should have said I knew her, Jo.’

  She looked anxious. ‘I’m sort of hoping it isn’t important.’

  He bent forward and gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek. ‘Put some clothes on,’ he said. ‘We’ll go and have a look now.’

  She was upstairs getting dressed when she heard the telephone ring. She cursed as Matthew answered it – cursed even louder when she heard him say, ‘She’s upstairs getting dressed.’ Pulling on a sweater, she picked up the upstairs telephone.

  Mike sounded even more grumpy than before. ‘I thought you ought to know, ma’am,’ he said sarcastically, ‘we’ve found a man’s overcoat buried in the garden.’

  She wriggled her arms down the sleeves, the phone tucked underneath her chin. ‘Where?’

  ‘Near the french windows. It had been there a good few years,’ he added. ‘We’ve bagged it up – sent it off to forensics.’

  ‘I don’t suppose there was a name in it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right.’ She paused. ‘You’ve finished there now?’

  ‘I’m ringing from the station. The others have all buggered off home. I’m just about to go. Just thought I’d ring – see how you were getting on.’ His voice was heavy with disapproval.

  ‘I’m on my way down the morgue,’ she said. ‘Dr Levin thinks he may have a cause of death.’

  Mike grunted.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Mike.’

  Matthew was waiting at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘I wish you hadn’t picked up the phone,’ she snapped.

  He looked injured. ‘We weren’t doing anything.’

  She flushed and he grinned, looking mischievous and quite at ease.

  ‘Tarzan jealous, is he?’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ she said, suddenly angry with the pair of them. ‘Let’s get going to the bloody morgue.’

  Chapter 13

  She was silent as they slipped on green gowns, gloves and masks. The porter wheeled in the trolley and she steeled herself for the ordeal.

  Matthew shot her an enquiring look. ‘Are you going to be all right, Jo?’

  She smiled. ‘I’ll be fine, Mat,’ she said. But she was dreading this. Post-mortems are not pretty and Marilyn Smith had been dead for almost a week.

  He patted her shoulder. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve rather dragged you down here, haven’t I?’

  ‘Where else should I be?’ she said stoutly. ‘I’m the investigating officer. I belong here. If it’s murder I want to know who.’

  He gave her a warm grin and said nothing. He pulled back the sheet on the mottled corpse and stared down for a moment. ‘She must have died,’ he said, ‘thinking of promises and hopes, dreaming in perfume and champagne, clouded with phenobarbitone.’

  ‘I wonder,’ she said, trying to suppress the feeling of nausea and revulsion.

  He blinked.

  ‘Is it murder, Matthew? Because if it was,’ she said, ‘killers can kill again. And clever killers can kill again – cleverly.’

  Scarred by the pathologist’s knife and hacksaw, minus viscera and hastily sewn back together, Marilyn Smith was indeed not a pretty sight.

  Joanna felt both sick and faint. She leaned against the wall. ‘It doesn’t get any easier,’ she said.

  Matthew laughed and handed her a huge magnifying glass.

  ‘Keep busy,’ he said. ‘That's the secret. Help me look. Forget she was human and think of her as a scientific exercise. Concentrate on the less obvious places: folds of skin, between the toes, underneath the breasts. Remember the article.’

  And looking at the discoloured lump of meat it was easy to believe this thing had never been alive, a thinking, doing, moving person. A spiteful person who had harmed many people’s lives. Joanna glanced across at Matthew and knew Marilyn had harmed them. They had not seen each other since that night in the restaurant.

  The faintness threatened to engulf her again and she felt herself falling. But his hands were on her shoulders.

  ‘Jo. It’s a good job I’m a sympathetic pathologist.’ He looked at her good humouredly. ‘What the macho members of the force would make of this strong urge to pass out I don’t know.’ He tutted. ‘What the hell would Tarzan say?’

  She laughed. ‘Please, Matthew,’ she said. ‘Leave him out of this.’ Then she remembered the telephone call and started to giggle. ‘What must he have thought?’ Matthew’s eyes were warm as he watched her. He raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

  She concentrated on the job.

  ‘Behind the ear,’ he said, ‘in the hairline, feel for lumps and bumps ... between the fingers, in creases.’

  ‘You’ve cobbled her up a bit crudely.’

  ‘I’m not Harley Street,’ he said. ‘This woman is never going to sue and, what’s more, Jo, she’ll never complain again. These incisions would never have healed, however skilfully I’d drawn them together.’

  Joanna swallowed. ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she said.

  Matthew was unsympathetic. ‘Then go out.’

  She looked helplessly at him, then suddenly vomited into the basin. ‘I’ll never get used to PMs,’ she complained when she had finished, and washed her face in cold water. ‘The stink of disinfectant.’ She looked up. ‘I think it’s that that makes me feel so sick. Can’t they put a different perfume –’

  ‘I’ve found it,’ Matthew said quietly, ‘classic medical school hiding place: between the toes, syringe inserted towards the ball of the foot.’ He straightened up. ‘Clever,’ he said. ‘Very clever.’ He moved the magnifying glass closer to Marilyn’s right foot, adjusted the light to beam down on a tiny puncture wound, still crusted with a pinprick of blood, between the second and third toe. Now they concentrated on it, the ball of the foot was slightly swollen.

  ‘Clever,’ he muttered again, ‘very very clever.’ He crossed the room and brought back a camera with tripod, adjusted the lens. Then he looked at Joanna. ‘Would you mind holding the toes apart?’ he asked. ‘And just drape this green towel behind it – it makes a good backcloth,’ he explained.

  She stood there while he clicked the shutter, conflicts of emotion moving across her face like stormy weather across the sky. She had been right all the time. It had been murder. Thoughts tumbled through her mind.

  ‘Matthew,’ she said softly. ‘Medical knowledge? Access to drugs, someone who had read the article? Someone who could get hold of a syringe?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be that difficult.’

  ‘There was no syringe found in the room,’ she said. ‘And Marilyn didn’t inject her own feet.’

  She met Matthew’s serious gaze. ‘It was murder,’ she said quietly. ‘She was murdered.’

  He nodded. ‘That’s right.’

  She watched as Matthew fished a scalpel from a drawer and cut tissue from around the puncture wound. ‘If I’m right,’ he said, dropping it into a specimen pot, ‘this will be saturated with human insulin. I’ll have to ring the coroner’s office.’

  She sat down in the corner of the room and drew out her notebook. The field was narrowed ... Evelyn ... Did this let her off the hook?

  Jonah Wilson ... She sat and pondered the quietly spoken doctor. Somehow she did not see him leading Marilyn on, sugge
sting an aphrodisiac, quietly sneaking in and murdering her. But he did fit the bill. A married man. Daily contact with his nurse, and she had been obsessed with him. And yet ... She shook her head. No, he was not the killer.

  Paul Haddon ...? She looked at Matthew. ‘How much medical knowledge does an undertaker have?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Difficult to say. The basics ...’ He met her eyes. ‘Paul is an old friend of mine,’ he said slowly.

  ‘The whole bloody suspect list seem to be “old friends” of yours, Matthew,’ she said sarcastically.

  He flushed. ‘Perhaps I should have told you. I was at medical school with Paul and Jonah, although Paul left after the first year.’

  She waited.

  ‘He was thrown out,’ he said.

  She stared at him.

  ‘All rumours,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘Something happened one day in the dissection room.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, God ...’ Matthew ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Not for sure.’

  ‘What?’ she demanded.

  ‘Someone said ...’ He dragged the words out. ‘He’d been masturbating in there.’

  She felt sick. ‘And you said nothing when he set up as an undertaker?’

  Matthew was silent.

  ‘By God, Matthew,’ she said. ‘Your loyalty to your friends is touching.’ She paused to think for a while. ‘So Paul Haddon has peculiar habits with the dead,’ she said, ‘as well as having the basics of medical knowledge. Is that right?’

  He looked miserable. ‘Lots of people know about insulin.’

  ‘But not many people have access to insulin,’ she pointed out. ‘And how many would have read the article?’

  ‘They wouldn’t have to have read it,’ he objected.

  ‘No, but it’s a sort of manual of how to kill someone and get away with it. Matthew, it even gave the dosage.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Look, Jo,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Please. Don’t expect me to start pointing fingers. I’ve told you how. It’s as much as I know – honestly. I don’t know who.’