The Art of Murder (Harriet Quigley Mystery)

by Nicola Slade

  ‘Look,’ she said in a small voice, ‘I found this blister pack in the pocket. Linzi was on Warfarin.’ She bit her lip. ‘I wish I’d found it earlier. It might have helped if they’d known. It’s a blood thinner. It explains why there was so much blood.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it would have made any difference,’ he comforted her. ‘They said it was a serious head injury, it was probably too late for help.’ He was intrigued: ‘Warfarin, eh? Isn’t that what they prescribe after a stroke, or a heart attack?’

  He sat down again and picked up the magazine. ‘Oh, by the way, I’ve remembered where I saw Donald before.’

  ‘Really?’ Harriet wasn’t surprised, Sam had a memory like an elephant. ‘And—’

  ‘It’s not relevant to what’s happening here and it was at least ten years ago but he’s not changed much. A friend of Avril’s had pictures on show at an exhibition in Basingstoke and I was dragged along to show support.’ He frowned. ‘Avril wanted to buy one of Donald’s seascapes but we went off for a coffee to think about it and when we got back to his stall he’d disappeared. Probably went outside for a quick snifter, knowing what I know now.’ There was a melancholy look in his eyes as he added: ‘We forgot all about him or I’d have got in touch and bought the picture for her.’

  Harriet folded the dressing gown and tucked it into the suitcase which she zipped up and put by the door. The discovery of the Warfarin was niggling at her but she set it aside as she picked up the papers Linzi had left scattered on the dressing table.

  ‘We’re nearly done here,’ Harriet sighed. ‘Not much more to do so I vote we turn in.’ She started to tidy up Linzi’s paperwork then cursed softly as she knocked the TV remote to the floor. ‘Damn, oh well, no harm done, I’ll just—’

  She dropped to her knees.

  ‘What on earth are you doing, Harriet? Grovelling under there like that?’

  ‘Spotted something,’ was the terse response. ‘Look at this.’ She scrambled to her feet and held out a small white tablet in the palm of her hand.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I told you about the trick with the dead wasp in the bottle of pills? Fiona flushed them down the loo and chucked the bottle into the wastepaper bin, but this one must have rolled under here.’

  ‘Fiona did what?’

  ‘I told you before. Anyway, does it matter?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m seeing spooks everywhere, but you got me wondering about destroying evidence, that’s all.’

  She was about to snap at him when she froze for a moment and carefully put the tablet down on the dressing table. ‘Don’t let me lose that,’ she warned him as she went back into the bathroom and rummaged in the bin. ‘I thought as much. The room was made up while we were at the morning session which means the bin isn’t due to be emptied till tomorrow. This is the bottle that had the wasp in it.’

  Sam took it from her and peered at the label. ‘Even I’ve heard of this: St John’s Wort. Claims to be for mild depression, made from hypericum. Seems harmless enough.’

  ‘Hypericum is that yellow flower that edges the path by my shed,’ she said absently. ‘Sam, take a really close look at this tablet,’ she handed it to him. ‘Sorry, you’ll have to squint. I haven’t got a magnifying glass.’ She put a hand to her head. ‘Bother, something else I need to check again.’

  He looked puzzled as he examined the small white tablet but he made no comment while she picked up Linzi’s other pills, the ones in the blister strip, and read the label out loud. ‘There’s no mistake, it definitely says Warfarin.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I do see what you mean.’ Their eyes met and Sam frowned as he took another look at the embossed letters on the face of the innocuous little tablet.’Aspirin,’ he read. ‘But—’ He reached out a hand and she gave him the pack of Warfarin. ‘That’s not good, is it? Not good at all.’

  Chapter 12

  Harriet sat down heavily on the dressing stool and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘You’re right, Sam, I’m sure it’s not a good idea for someone to take aspirin when she was already taking Warfarin. Two lots of blood thinners? Why on earth would she do that?’

  ‘Maybe this aspirin tablet has nothing to do with Linzi? Couldn’t it have been overlooked by whoever cleaned the room?’

  ‘Eve cleaned it herself,’ she said. ‘I believe her new cleaner doesn’t start till Monday so she’s single-handed till then. But listen, Sam,,’ she said, ‘it’s a completely new B&B – newly decorated, brand new carpet, nobody has slept in here before and Eve would never overlook something like that.’ Harriet heaved a dismayed sigh.

  ‘Fiona mentioned Linzi’s HRT and nasal spray when she took the sponge-bag to the hospital but she said nothing about blood-thinners. Maybe Linzi wanted the Warfarin handy and that’s why she kept it in her dressing gown pocket. The brown bottle with St John’s Wort pills – the bottle with the bug in – was on her bed until Fiona took it and tipped it down the loo. Nothing else has turned up in this room; and don’t forget I’ve just packed all her stuff in her suitcase. There’s no sign of any other medicine.’

  ‘Surely Linzi would have spotted the difference?’ Sam frowned. ‘If she really thought someone had been in her house, wouldn’t she have looked at what she was taking?’ Harriet shrugged and he raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought those homeopathic things were usually plain, not embossed,’ he said. ‘Avril tried something similar for her hay fever and her allergies but she wasn’t convinced it had any effect. Later – when people kept telling her about miracle cures – she refused to try. She didn’t believe they’d do any good.’

  ‘Fiona said Linzi popped pills like mad in recent days, twitching with nerves about this stalking thing. She said herself – Linzi, I mean – that she usually just tipped a couple on her hand and swallowed them down. I don’t suppose she ever bothered to check what was going into her mouth. Why would she? She knew what it was. Or thought she did.’ Harriet was exhausted but she soldiered on. There was still that pile of paperwork to go through.

  ‘Nothing much here, unless … hang on, look at this, Sam.’

  He took the sheet of paper from her. ‘It’s a photocopy of a newspaper cutting,’ he said, taking a closer look, ‘dated September 1979 and it’s from the something-or-other News, the top right-hand corner’s missing.’

  Together they stared at the photograph of a middle-aged man, bearded and balding, wearing dark-rimmed glasses, as he sat proudly at the wheel of a vintage car. Beside him sat a slightly built young woman, smiling at the camera.

  The headline read “Tragic accident at local black spot” and the caption under the photograph read “Vintage car enthusiast and stalwart of the Afonbach Male Voice Choir, Idris Parry, in happier times, shows off his Super Sports Mx II, 1936 three-wheeled Morgan, with his lovely wife, Elin.”

  Sam, momentarily side-tracked, whistled enviously. ‘Fantastic! They go for up to £60,000 these days, there were so few made after 1935 and the war put a stop to production.’

  ‘Never mind lusting after the car,’ Harriet snapped. ‘What happened here? What was the tragic accident? The cutting doesn’t show the report, what a nuisance.’ She examined the photograph more closely. ‘It’s definitely Linzi, isn’t it? Trophy wife? She looks no more than 20, I’d say. He looks about 30 years older.’

  Sam dragged his admiring gaze away from the vintage Morgan and considered her questions. ‘I wonder why Linzi had a photocopy of this in her possession. It’s not a crumpled cutting, which you could understand, I suppose, but why a new copy? And it is new, there’s not a mark or a crease on it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, it’s all questions, no answers.’ Harriet put the cutting to one side until she saw Sam’s face. ‘What?’

  ‘I was just thinking it’s a pity Fiona emptied the bottle down the loo,’ Sam looked thoughtful. ‘What made her do that?’

  Something in his tone made Harriet jerk her head up. ‘What?’

  ‘Keep your hair on!’ His f
ace was stern and he took a deep breath. ‘Listen, Harriet, if someone deliberately substituted another blood-thinner – aspirin – for the homeopathic pills that Linzi believed she was taking, we could be talking about murder.’

  Harriet was indignant but before she could answer there was a fumbling at the door and the handle turned. Seren’s startled face appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Oh, oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know there was … that there’d be anyone here.’ She turned to go and Harriet snapped out of her temporary paralysis at Seren’s entrance.

  ‘Don’t go, Seren,’ she said quietly. ‘Come on in and shut the door behind you.’ She wasn’t surprised when the younger woman obeyed at once. ‘Haven’t lost my touch yet,’ she thought smugly, then winced, ashamed of her flippancy.

  ‘I don’t want to intrude.’ Seren looked pale and young as she stood awkwardly just inside the door, poised for flight.

  ‘We’re helping Fiona,’ Sam explained kindly. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ He pointed to the grey linen chair and moved to a carved oak one by the fire place. ‘Were you looking for something?’

  There was a long silence as Harriet and Sam said nothing, merely sat, Sam on the oak chair, Harriet perched on the stool, as they watched Seren struggle with conflicting emotions. Her face was taut with suppressed misery as her shoulders heaved in a sudden convulsion of sobs.

  At last she raised tear-filled eyes to meet Harriet’s speculative but compassionate gaze. ‘Linzi was my mother,’ was all she said as she headed for the armchair.

  Harriet said nothing as Seren plumped down, but she gave an encouraging nod.

  ‘I’ve always known I was adopted,’ the younger woman explained, sitting upright. ‘Mum – my adoptive mother, that is – never made a secret of it. I waited till I was 18 and then I contacted her – Linzi, I mean – through the solicitor who arranged the adoption. It was done privately,’ she said. ‘It was done properly, all the legal odds and ends tied up tightly.’

  ‘So you got in touch?’ Harriet’s voice stayed noncommittal and Seren’s answer was in a similarly calm vein, as she managed to suppress the sobs.

  ‘All I got was a letter from the lawyer’s office saying she didn’t want anything to do with me and forbidding me from ever contacting her.’

  ‘How did you find out she would be here,’ Sam asked, ‘at this house?’

  ‘I suspected she lived in Winchester,’ Seren confessed. ‘Mum saw her here once. She used to come here from Woking for the day to meet up with friends. Not long before she died she came home very excited – she lived with us by then – insisting that she’d spotted a woman in Winchester who looked exactly like Elin – my birth mother. Mum was in a café on the High Street, looking out of the window and she saw her, Elin, standing just outside, talking to someone. Mum said it gave her quite a turn but she was absolutely sure.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Harriet maintained the calm voice, lest she upset the younger woman.

  Seren shook her head. ‘Mum died – a heart attack out of the blue – only a few weeks afterwards. Last year was awful with Paul’s death following so soon and Hafren and I had enough to cope with. Later, we thought a complete change would help so I put the house on the market in the New Year. For once everything went smoothly so by the end of July I was ready to move. I’d decided to rent at first and when I saw Locksley on television – we got the same local news in Surrey – I fell in love with the village and went house-hunting.

  She blew her nose. ‘It was a gamble. I mean Linzi might have been here on a day trip, same as Mum, but I … I had a feeling. Silly, I suppose, but there was a photo of her in the Echo, at some charity gala a month ago, and she was looking straight at the camera. I didn’t recognise the name – to me she’s always been Elin Williams – her name when … when I was born. She looks – looked – just like Hafren, my daughter. That’s what caught my eye, and it was in one of those colour supplements which meant I could see the colour of her hair: it’s just the same and Hafren is so like her. It shook me rigid.’

  Seren looked wistful. ‘It was a private adoption, as I said, and Mum had met her when they signed the papers and took me home. It was a face she could never forget and when Hafren grew up to look so much like her it was a sore reminder for Mum; that her granddaughter looked so different from her.’

  Sam shifted in his seat and waited while Seren collected her thoughts. Harriet was silent too.

  ‘When I rang up about the art group I had no idea Linzi was involved, and anyway, I was still dithering about whether to look for her, but Fiona showed me a photo taken at one of their classes, and there was Linzi again, just like Hafren. When Fiona rang to offer me a place on this weekend course I jumped at it, not really thinking how I’d handle it.’ She shook her head: ‘I didn’t know what to do when she walked into the room but I was determined to pluck up courage and introduce myself. I hovered around her but then I’d bottle out at the last minute. She must have thought I was mad.’

  Her face crumpled: ‘I wish I’d talked to her. I know she didn’t want to see me but that was 25 years ago, surely she’d have changed her mind by now? I didn’t want to be a nuisance, just to find out – well, you know the kind of thing. Who was my father? Did she regret giving me up for adoption? Was she glad that I’d had such a happy life? That she had such a wonderful granddaughter?’

  ‘I’m sure she would have been glad,’ Sam spoke with the authority of his innate kindness as well as his years as a parish priest and Seren began to relax. ‘How could she not have been? I know she had a brittle shell and a flippant manner but I believe she’d have found great pleasure in getting to know you and your daughter, had she been spared.’

  Harriet had serious doubts about that but her smile was affectionate as she watched her cousin Sam. He really is the nicest man, she thought, and smiled again as Seren straightened up looking comforted.

  ‘Here, Seren.’ She picked up the photocopy. ‘Take a look at this. We just discovered it on the dressing table.’ She handed it over. ‘Can you shed any light on it? You’ll see it’s dated 1979 but that’s after your birth, isn’t it.’

  ‘I was born in 1973. I’ve never seen this in my life.’ She looked bewildered. ‘Her husband – looks a lot older – and what’s this about a tragic accident?’ She blinked: ‘I was six weeks old when she gave me up so I’d have been about five or six when this was taken, and living in Surrey with my family.’ She corrected herself, guiltily: ‘I suppose I should say my adopted family.’

  ‘Why?’ Harriet was serious. ‘They are your family, no question about it. That would make Linzi only 17 when you were born. I saw her birthdate when we looked at her driving licence earlier. She was 58 last birthday.’ She touched Seren’s hand gently: ‘You can’t wonder at her decision to find a happy, stable home for her baby.’

  ‘Seren …’ Sam had been thinking, ‘… did you often visit your grandparents in Wales?’

  A shadow fell on her face as she nodded. ‘When I was about ten, we were there on holiday and one of the local kids told me my real mother was a tart. I wasn’t sure what that meant but I’ve never forgotten my mum’s face, or my gran’s, when I told them. Gran marched straight round to the girl’s parents and gave them a telling-off I bet they’ve never forgotten.’

  Sam smiled. ‘If it was a private adoption it could be that your parents already knew Linzi, were neighbours maybe? Where did they live? You could start your research there. That is, if you want to find out more about her?’

  ‘It’s a tiny hamlet really, Afonbach,’ Seren brightened up, ‘not far from Brecon. Mum only mentioned that she met Linzi at the handover, but you’re right, Sam. I’ll make the trip as soon as I can. My great-aunt Mair still lives there and she’ll know all the gossip.’

  ‘One thing, Seren,’ Harriet’s voice was quiet, ‘when you fell on the stairs this morning you told us initially that you’d been pushed. Are you still sure you just slipped?’

  ‘Oh, that,’ she looked uncomf
ortable. ‘I honestly don’t know. It felt so real but it must have been a dream. If anyone was there, surely you’d have seen them too?’

  Harriet pictured the shadows on the half-lit landing and wondered but she patted Seren’s shoulder. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she said.

  They said goodnight a few minutes later and the cousins were alone.

  ‘I wonder what she was really after’ Sam looked thoughtful. ‘Come to think of it, I wish Fiona hadn’t emptied the bottle. It could have been helpful.’

  There was something in his tone that made Harriet look up sharply. ‘You said that before. What are you suggesting? That Fiona was deliberately getting rid of evidence? Oh no, Sam, no – not Fiona, don’t be stupid. ’

  He shrugged and held up his hands. ‘Don’t shoot. I know it’s a stupid idea, I’m just clutching at straws. This whole damned business is such a mess, a mixture of hysteria and melodrama centred on a silly woman who might have been casting herself in a fantasy or who, if it was true, was too stupid to put it in the hands of the authorities.’ He suddenly looked as tired as Harriet felt. ‘At least, that’s how it seemed until now. Still, there’s nothing to be gained by going over and over it tonight. Come on, old Hat, you look completely knackered. Get to bed – now!’

  He hesitated as Harriet went into her own room. ‘Listen,’ he said urgently, ‘I want you to put your chair against the door tonight. I know,’ as she stared at him, ‘it sounds alarmist but better safe than sorry. If we discount the theory that Linzi was responsible for everything, that pill bottle could be dangerous, Harriet. Suppose there’s a trace of aspirin – fingerprints even – although we’ve both handled it too. Suppose someone else comes prowling and poking in Linzi’s room and puts two and two together and suspects you might have it?’

  She stared at him in silence and he put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Look at it this way, Harriet. Somebody unknown substituted aspirin, a well-known blood thinner, for a homeopathic remedy, knowing that Linzi was already taking Warfarin, another well-known blood thinner. There’s no way that can be interpreted as innocent. Someone meant to harm Linzi which means that her death could be murder.’