by Cathy Ace
She went on to answer Glover’s other questions: ‘Harold Roberts died in August two years ago, sir. Dropped dead with a massive coronary at the local tennis courts. There was a post-mortem, and no funny business, it seems.’ Stanley looked up at Glover who was popping a peppermint into his mouth. ‘Wife got the life insurance – it was a couple of hundred grand. No problems there either. It all seemed above board, sir.’
Glover chewed and crunched. ‘Do you happen to know what the man studied at Cardiff Uni – where he so happily exposed himself all those years ago?’
Again, Stanley referred to her notes. ‘Here we are, sir – it seems he graduated from the School of Pharmacy. The late Harold Roberts was a dispensing chemist at a shop in Bonymaen for almost thirty years, and died just before he was due to take an early retirement.’ Stanley closed her book and added, ‘Always a shame that, when they go before they’ve had a chance to enjoy some time to themselves.’
Glover crunched, arched an eyebrow, and muttered thoughtfully, ‘Alright, I suppose it might come to it that we have to dig him up – if he wasn’t cremated, that is, which is most likely – but, for now, just tell the FIT folks they can get all that stuff out of there and bagged for evidence, and then you come with me to see our lupine friend.’
‘Sir?’
‘Mrs Mary Roberts of 64 Plasmarl Park Terrace. I’m looking forward to this.’
The two detectives crossed the road; most of the street’s residents were shut in behind closed curtains, probably drinking their cocoa and watching TV, or maybe some were already sound asleep, but Glover could see the light shining through Mary Roberts’ front bedroom curtains. She took a few moments to respond to the ringing of her doorbell, and Glover could tell she wasn’t pleased to see them.
‘Oh, detectives, it’s late. And I’m not really dressed for visitors or I would invite you in, but if you don’t mind––’ She clutched her dressing gown around her throat.
Glover cut her off and interrupted with: ‘I realize it’s late, ma’am, but we are here on the most urgent business. It’s about poor Mrs Kitts, you see. We really do need to speak to you, in private.’
Glover could see the turmoil in the woman’s eyes. She seemed to make some internal decision, then her gaze settled upon him and she became her gracious self – the woman they had met earlier in the day reemerged, this time without the benefit of make-up.
Once again ushered into the beige parlor, Glover was unsurprised to discover it wasn’t granted any softness by its lighting – the angular overhead fixture blazed with hundreds of watts, and the overall effect was to make the room look even more stark than it had by daylight. Mary Roberts looked older and less vibrant than she had that afternoon – the lack of thick make-up and vivid lipstick accounted for most of that difference, but Glover wondered if she had an inkling about why they were there. If she did, she was putting on a good act, offering tea, coffee and even ‘something stronger’, all of which were declined politely by Glover.
‘Mrs Roberts, I don’t want to beat about the bush – you strike me as the sort of woman who would prefer I come straight to the point.’ He paused, to gauge her reaction.
Her response was to relax into a chair and arrange her dressing gown as flatteringly as possible.
Ah well, thought Glover, here we go then . . .
Aloud he said, ‘Mrs Mary Elizabeth Roberts, I am here to arrest you on suspicion of murdering Mrs Emily Kitts. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you fail to mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be given in evidence. I am going to ask you to accompany me to the police station where you will be questioned, and I am bringing in a Forensic Investigation Team to search your house for possible sources and preparations of certain substances that relate directly to the death of Mrs Kitts.’
The woman looked surprised, but didn’t lose her composure. She asked if she could dress.
The next couple of hours were a blur for Glover and Stanley; taking anyone into custody requires an amount of paperwork that would be off-putting if it weren’t for the fact it’s the only way to bring a possibly guilty party to a point where they can be interviewed in a way that’s acceptable to the courts, so they ploughed through the reports, and waited for the solicitor their suspect had requested to attend her interview.
It was just before two in the morning by the time Glover and Stanley – with Roberts and her solicitor – were as settled in an interview room as it’s possible to be, and Glover was ready to begin his interrogation. He could tell the woman wasn’t going to be an easy person to break so, rather than asking questions, he decided to confront her outright with his suspicions, and see where that got them. The recording equipment was switched on and Glover listed all those present, for the record.
He looked the woman straight in the eyes and began. ‘Mary Elizabeth Roberts, I put it to you that you killed Mrs Emily Kitts by means of nicotine poisoning. You prepared the poison, an art you had gleaned from your pharmacist husband, and took it to Mrs Kitts’ home when you visited her on Tuesday morning. You arrived unexpectedly at her house and invited yourself in for coffee, knowing she would likely have no baked goods left from the week before to offer you, necessitating a visit to the shop at the end of the street to buy some biscuits. While alone in her house, when she ran to the shop, you took the poison you had prepared and transferred it to the metal hooks of all Mrs Kitts’s coat hangers, which were hanging in the laundry room. You knew that, being a woman of extreme habit, Mrs Kitts would be doing her ironing that day and further surmised that, it being May and the time when both summer and winter clothes are being prepared for wear, she would be ironing more than the usual amount of clothing. You left after your refreshments, allowing her to get on with her duties, and waited for the hours of her inadvertently licking the nicotine when she placed the hangers in her mouth to take effect.’
‘What a very clever idea, inspector,’ replied Mary Roberts coldly, ‘but, even if you were to discover that all her hangers had been treated in such a way, there can be no connection with me, because I didn’t do it.’ And that was the response she stuck to, for two extremely long hours.
By four a.m. Glover was frustrated, Stanley was beside herself with annoyance, and Mary Roberts was still smiling her wolfish smile, clearly convinced her story would hold fast. Finally, the two detectives broke off the interview and got themselves a couple of cups of gritty coffee from the machine in the hallway.
When Glover went to relieve himself, Stanley popped into her office to see if there were any messages from the FIT. A few moments later she hammered on the door to the gents’ toilet shouting, ‘We’ve got her, sir.’
Glover pulled open the door with a grin on his face. ‘The FIT lot found something?’ he asked.
‘They certainly did, sir.’
‘And why am I only finding this out now?’ was Glover’s bear-like reply.
‘The report’s just come through on e-mail, and they rang the front desk to tell us to check what they’d sent. They’ve only been on it a few hours really, sir.’ Stanley was doing all she could to placate her boss.
‘Alright, alright, Stanley, let’s give the little pointy heads the benefit of the doubt. What have they found to help us out?’
Stanley smiled. ‘Believe it or not, sir, they have found a small pastry brush in one of Mary Roberts’ kitchen drawers with heavy traces of nicotine at the base of its bristles; it seems she didn’t wash it out thoroughly enough. Hers are the only prints on it.’
Glover nodded and looked pleased. ‘Pretty good, Stanley, but is it good enough? Is it enough to break her? I don’t suppose there’s anything else is there?’
‘Yes, there is, sir.’ Stanley was almost bursting.
Glover smiled. ‘Go on then; you’ve saved the best till last, haven’t you?’
‘Oh yes, sir. How do you feel about a saucepan with trace amounts of nicotine, found
in her kitchen? It was one of those old enamel pots and the nicotine was found underneath a couple of chipped bits in the base. Strong stuff, they said. And again, only her prints.’
‘Am I allowed to pat you on the back, without it being misconstrued?’ asked Glover with a smirk.
‘I believe so, sir,’ replied a beaming Stanley.
Returning to the interview room, Glover formally charged Mary Roberts with the murder of her neighbor, then outlined the new evidence for the benefit of the woman and her solicitor. He hoped she would confess, but could tell by her expression this was not her plan.
‘Your fingerprints on the pastry brush, and ditto for a cooking pot with nicotine in its base? It’s damning, Mrs Roberts. No jury will believe you didn’t do it.’ Glover hoped she’d break.
‘Well, I’m afraid your evidence is wrong,’ replied the accused woman tartly. ‘I am a fastidious person in the kitchen, and I am particularly so when it comes to enamel – it’s a tricky surface. There won’t have been anything for you to find on the pot. Because I didn’t do it.’
Glover pounced. ‘Now isn’t that interesting, Mrs Roberts; I don’t believe I specified it was an enamel pan, and all your others are stainless steel.’
He knew he had her.
Around nine o’clock in the morning, Mary Roberts finally told her full story. When Glover asked what had made her think of the coat hangers, her straightforward answer was: ‘Well, it’s pretty obvious really, isn’t it? I mean, what would she put in her mouth that tasted awful? I did think about the sage tea, but she never drank it when I was there, and I couldn’t be sure she still used it at all.’
However, even with the benefit of her confession, it was difficult for either Glover or Stanley to fully comprehend the woman’s motive, despite her explanation.
When Glover asked why she had killed Emily Kitts, Roberts smiled as she replied, ‘People never see beneath the surface, do they? John is a lovely man, and Emily treated him like dirt. She went on and on about how inadequate he was, about how boring he was; but he isn’t – he’s a funny, intelligent man, and I would have looked after him a treat. We could have sold one of our houses and lived off the proceeds from that for a while; we’d have been very happy. Personally, I thought we should sell his, because her taste in décor was shocking, but then, mine might sell better because it’s so lovely. What do you think?’
Glover could tell she had imagined that by killing Emily she could take over running John Kitts’ life; she honestly believed she could make him happy, and truly believed she would be happy too. She’d completely lost sight of the value of a human life – she was simply driven by the desire to get what she wanted.
So the shopkeeper had been right in a way, and John Kitts had been right too – in that Mary Roberts was a woman to whom he could turn in his time of grief. The problem was that she was the woman who had killed his wife and caused his grief in the first place.
By eleven, a bone-weary Glover was on the phone to Dr Souza, who was eager to hear his news.
‘I hear you got your man – or rather, your woman, Evan. Congratulations. Now tell me – I’m dying to know – how did she do it?’
‘Coat hangers,’ was Glover’s cryptic reply.
‘Coat hangers?’
‘I tell you what, Rakel, I’ve got to come to see you about the paperwork on the post-mortem findings anyway, so how about I buy you a coffee and tell you all about it? You can also tell me if you think there’s any chance this woman killed her first husband too. I wouldn’t put it past her; she hinted he might have strayed, at least with his eyes if not with his entire body, and I don’t get the impression she’d have taken to that very kindly.’
‘Well, I’m happy to do what I can, of course, but you can forget the coffee, thanks. You can buy me a nice green tea instead; have you seen what coffee does to your insides?’
‘No, and I don’t want to. I’ll be there in about an hour.’
Glover pulled on his jacket and called to Stanley as he walked past her office, ‘With me, right now, Stanley.’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Stanley as she caught up with her boss, ‘where to, sir?’
‘We’re off to see Dr Souza and I might treat myself to a pint later – so you’re driving, right?’
Once again, Stanley knew this wasn’t a question. ‘Yes, sir,’ was her only possible reply.
JUNE
The Corpse with the Fake Purse
The applause was polite rather than thunderous, but I supposed it was the best I could hope for from a group of police officers who’d rather be anywhere in the world than in a university lecture theatre at eight o’clock on an unseasonably warm evening in June. I’d reached the part of my presentation where I was wrapping up. They seemed to have stayed with me for the last hour and knew we were on the home straight. I noticed people trying their best to not fidget and forcing themselves to look attentive as I brought up a new slide on the screen behind me.
Then I spoke what I suspected would be my most popular words that night, ‘So, in conclusion –’ I could sense the relief in the room – ‘the concept of victimology allows us to better understand a crime by better understanding the victim. As we grow to understand the victim and their lifestyle and habits, so we are able to infer where the victim and the perpetrator might have crossed paths, if they possibly knew each other socially, or intimately, how they came to know each other, and why the victim might have become a victim in the first place. None of this places any blame on the victim, of course; it’s simply one more tool in our detection arsenal. Victimology, together with forensic pathology, information sharing and management, and, of course, good old interrogation of both the facts and any suspects, can all work together in harmony, to help law enforcement professionals such as yourselves with successful crime detection, and maybe even prevention, in the twenty-first century.’
I left it at that, smiled thankfully through another, slightly more enthusiastic ripple of applause, then stepped aside while Chief Superintendent Dufray stood to make his closing comments. He rocked on his toes and looked smug as he read from his prepared notes.
‘Thank you very much, Professor Morgan –’ he nodded in my direction and smiled like a shark – ‘for an enlightening glimpse into what the School of Criminology here at the University of Vancouver is doing in terms of victimology research, and theory building.’ He emphasized the word ‘theory’ rather too much for my liking. ‘Thank you, too, for allowing us to use these delightful premises. It’s nice for us all to get away from our own buildings and breathe the slightly fresher mountain air up here, especially on such a delightful evening. But before I release all these eager young officers back into the wild . . .’ He paused for a laugh, and eventually got a chuckle out of one of the youngest in the crowd. ‘I have a bit of a surprise for us all.’
I was half expecting someone to step forward with a bunch of flowers or maybe, if I was really lucky, some chocolates or a bottle of champagne, but that wasn’t the case. Cory, the chap who sets up the AV equipment for lectures in the part of the university we were using, pushed a trolley through the door. He smiled at me as he fiddled around with a piece of kit he’d wheeled in. I had no idea what was going on. Dufray, too, was smiling, and in a way I didn’t like at all.
‘Tonight we have a special treat for Professor Morgan.’ Dufray’s tone made the word ‘treat’ sound like a threat. I felt apprehensive as the projection of the slide being fed from my laptop was replaced with a vision of a young freckled face, twenty feet across, beaming at us from the screen above my head.
Dufray took a microphone from Cory, and spoke into it loudly and precisely, smiling as he did so. ‘Constable Webber, can you hear me?’
The eyes on the screen opened wide, and the young man looking down upon us answered, ‘Yes, sir, I can hear you just fine, sir. Can you hear me?’
‘Indeed we can, Webber.’ Dufray looked triumphant and turned to Cory whom he dismissed from th
e room with a curt, ‘I think I can handle it from here, young man.’
I still didn’t have a clue about what was going on. And I don’t like that. Dufray addressed the room full of police officers – who were not only as puzzled as me, but were now beginning to panic they might never escape.
‘I know you’ve all enjoyed tonight’s talk about the theory of victimology, and I’m sure we’re all pleased Professor Morgan was able to give us case examples from around the world where the techniques she spoke of have been used on an experimental basis. But tonight we have a unique opportunity to give her a chance to put her theory into practice, and to apply it to a real, current murder case.’
Dufray was clearly expecting some sort of reaction, but what he got was a room full of blank looks and a smile from me that could have frozen Hell. My head was whirring; what was this man talking about? My stomach was sinking; this had all the hallmarks of Professor Cait Morgan – me! – being put on the spot and made to look a right twit. And why would Dufray do that, I wondered? Then I mentally answered myself; because, despite the fact he’d gone along with the idea of tonight’s lecture, I knew he had about as much use for the idea of using victimology as a day-to-day detection tool as I have for a Martha Stewart book on baking – all well and good in theory, but not really of any practical use.
When no one reacted, Dufray continued, ‘Holding the camera, and ready to take direction from Professor Morgan, is Constable Webber. Indeed, we have at our disposal what one might call a “Webbercam”.’ Dufray paused for guffaws but only drew a polite titter from one or two in the room. He filled the empty space with his own manic laughter, then pressed on, undeterred and smiling broadly. ‘Webber is at the home of a recent murder victim. Professor Morgan won’t have heard about the case, because, as far as the public is concerned, we’re working it as an accidental death, though we have been in no doubt the victim was murdered. I thought it would be an excellent opportunity for Professor Morgan to show us how her theories work in practice. How about it, professor – are you game?’
