The door opened to the sound of low laughter; it was good to know that the doctor, although a thief, had the capacity to instill hope and cheer in his patients. Dr. Trenkel, standing behind the wheeled chair of Edmund Ffosse, looked surprised to see me, as did his patient.
“I believe I have an appointment at noon,” I said.
“Oh, I wasn’t aware of that,” said the doctor, looking vexed.
“Should I come back later?” I asked, feeling more than a little embarrassed. I was heavy with the knowledge of what I had witnessed the previous night with the theft of the pearls, and for some irrational reason I felt as though I had been infected with the doctor’s burden of guilt.
He met my question with another question. “What’s your name?”
“Mrs. Christie. I’m staying here at the hotel.”
The answer seemed to satisfy him.
“No, no,” said Trenkel. “Let me just place my patient into the hands of his good friend Violet Grenville, and then I’ll be back. Please go inside and take a seat.”
As the doctor wheeled Ffosse down the corridor, I stepped into the office and shut the door behind me. The room was bare and clinical, lined with shelves containing classic textbooks on the treatment of various lung disorders. An odor of something rotten being masked by a cloying antiseptic smell hung in the air.
On Trenkel’s desk, ordered and tidy, lay a green file labeled with the name of Edmund Ffosse. I looked at the door and then down at the file. What I hoped to gain by looking at the private medical file of Mr. Ffosse I did not know, but I opened it anyway. My heart raced as I flicked through the pages of the neatly written report, my eyes quickly taking in words and technical terms about the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis. The upshot was that Trenkel had diagnosed Ffosse as a terminal case: he had only a matter of months to live.
How different from the handwriting of the English doctors I had known, which resembled something a spider might leave behind after crawling out of an inkpot. Perhaps all German doctors shared the same precise, steady hand, a product of their supremely ordered, logical brains. Just as I closed the file, Dr. Trenkel opened the door and walked into the room.
“Sorry about that, Mrs. Christie. Now what can we do for you today?”
I told him that I was feeling rather nervous. I felt anxious and was sure that my heart was beating faster than it should. I gave him a little background information on my state of mind in England, the recent troubles with Archie, and the grief I had felt after my mother’s death. I informed him that I had been one of the first people to come across Mr. Winniatt’s body in the dry riverbed.
“Let’s start with me listening to your heartbeat,” he said, taking out his stethoscope and placing it on my chest. He listened intently for a minute or so before he concluded that yes, my heartbeat did seem somewhat irregular. He proceeded to take my blood pressure and then looked into my eyes. “And how long have you been feeling like this?”
“Well, I’ve been feeling a little out of sorts for a while now, but I felt so much worse this morning.”
“I can imagine. Quite a shock for many people,” he said. “Did you know this man Winniatt?”
“Not very well, but we were on the same ship, the Gelria, over from England. It’s his poor wife I feel sorry for.” I watched Trenkel carefully as I spoke. “I went to see her earlier. The inspector asked me to help him with his inquiries. You see, Mrs. Winniatt clammed up in front of him and he thought that she might open up to me. But she is in a terrible state.”
“Yes, I gave her a sedative last night, but of course something like that is only ever a temporary measure. I’m afraid there is no medicine that can cure a loss like this.”
“Indeed,” I said. “When my mother died I simply fell to pieces. I think I actually lost my mind for a while.”
“That’s perfectly possible,” said Trenkel, turning his attention back to my health. “There’s nothing seriously wrong with you, as far as I can tell. What I advise is to try and alternate rest with some form of light exercise. And try not to think about the gruesome discovery you made down there in the rambla.”
I hoped the doctor might be able to give me a little more information about how Winniatt had died. I was prepared to use the fact that I had seen him steal Mrs. Winniatt’s pearls, but this was a last resort; after all, if I used this strategy I would have to explain what I had been doing in Daisy’s room. First, I wanted to try and engage some of my feminine wiles: distress, charm, and flattery.
“It really was a terrible shock, Doctor,” I said, my hand fluttering up to my neck like a distressed bird. “To see the body there in that ravine. And the state of it.”
“Yes, a very terrible thing,” he said. “As I said, best to put it out of your mind, if you can.”
“I have seen some terrible things in my time—I was a nurse in the war, you see,” I said. I knew that this would mean something to the doctor and he nodded in acknowledgment of shared experience. “But this, it was—”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, alluding to the autopsy he had performed. “To be honest, it was hard for me to take in. Obviously, the head injuries were bad enough, but then this business with the bird-of-paradise flower.”
“Yes, that was one thing I didn’t understand. I was only a nurse, and that was many years ago now. Your knowledge is much more profound and your experience much deeper than mine ever was, so I wondered what you made of it all.”
The flattery was beginning to work on Dr. Trenkel, whose chest puffed out like a prize pigeon. “You are too kind, Mrs. Christie, too kind,” he said.
“As I was saying, from your expertise would you say that the flower spike was inserted into the eye before or after death?”
“Difficult to say, as I cannot compare it with anything I’ve seen before, but I think that it was probably done after death.”
“At least that’s some comfort to poor Mrs. Winniatt,” I said. “And what of the head injuries? I couldn’t work out whether they had been sustained as a result of the fall or—”
“Or whether they had been inflicted before the fall?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“From examining the body for the police, I think that Mr. Winniatt was killed as a result of falling from the bridge and suffering these very significant injuries to the head.”
“So he fell or was pushed from the bridge?”
“Perhaps, but I don’t think so.”
What was Dr. Trenkel suggesting? “But it can’t be suicide? Surely you’re not implying that Mr. Winniatt took his own life?”
“No, no, I’m not saying that at all,” he said.
I tried not to sound too eager to extract the information from him, but it was difficult to keep my voice steady, detached, and professional. “You’re not? But then what would cause Mr. Winniatt to fall from the bridge into the ravine?”
“I’m not an expert by any means, but I think Mr. Winniatt may have been poisoned.”
“Poisoned? By what?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he said.
I ran through a list of poisons in my mind and came up with one name: henbane, something I had seen in Grenville’s garden. Yes, that would make sense. The plant had a nasty range of toxic side effects including vomiting, flushing of the skin, confusion, blurred vision, and most relevant in this case, hallucinations.
“Henbane,” I said. “The tropane alkaloids in the henbane made Mr. Winniatt think he could fly.”
“I see you know your poisons, Mrs. Christie.”
I explained a little of how I had trained in the dispensary in Torquay during the war. I told him about the pharmacist who always carried a lump of curare in his pocket and a little of how this knowledge had helped me with my books. Of course, there were certain aspects of my interest in poisons that I kept back from him.
“So it seems as though this is one area in which you may have more expertise than I?”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“But this is fascinating. What else do you know about henbane?”
I proceeded to tell him what I knew. I talked a little of a case reported by Charles Millspaugh in a book of his I had read. Nine people ate the roots of the plant. After suffering from convulsions, some of the group experienced speechlessness, while others could only howl, and for three days afterwards they seemed to see everything through a prism of a scarlet hue. Another case, reported by a Dr. Stedman, detailed how seven people supped on a broth made from the leaves of the plant. They went on to suffer slavering, delirium, and hallucinations, believing that everything around them was on the point of collapse. I had always been particularly struck by the first-person account of Gustav Schenk, who roasted some seeds of the plant and then inhaled the fumes. Although he could not remember everything that he had experienced—memory loss was one of the effects of the poison—he wrote that he suffered tremendous pain and realized that he was close to death. His limbs felt as though they were separating from his body. At one point he thought he was about to dissolve into thin air, and he related how he believed that he could fly. Perhaps this is what Winniatt had experienced when he stood on the bridge by the rambla.
“And then, of course, there is the Crippen case,” I said, referring to the infamous murder of 1910. “It’s thought that’s how the doctor finished off his wife, Cora—with hyoscine.”
“How very interesting,” said Trenkel. “I must tell the inspector how very helpful you’ve been.”
“I would be more than happy if you claimed the knowledge as your own,” I said, smiling. “After all, I always think it vulgar for a lady to show off about what she knows, don’t you?”
The doctor nodded his head in agreement, failing to pick up on the frisson in my voice as I thought about the secret knowledge I had of Trenkel’s own crime. It was powerful information, and I had every intention of using it for my own advantage.
22
Everything pointed towards Grenville: the henbane in his poison garden, the proliferation of bird-of-paradise flowers near his house, the proximity of the body to Mal País. Grenville could have spiked Winniatt’s drink with hyoscine extracted from the henbane and led him to the bridge, where the man became convinced that he could fly. If anyone had witnessed the scene from afar, it would have looked as though Winniatt had simply jumped off the bridge into the ravine. Grenville could then have stumbled down into the rambla, where he made sure Winniatt was dead before adding that ghoulish garland of the bird-of-paradise flower. But what was his motive? Why would Grenville want Winniatt dead?
I left the hotel and walked through the gardens, tracing my way back to the bridge under which Winniatt’s body had been found. Standing above the ravine I could still make out the red stains that streaked the dark earth. The splash of blood on the black rocks served as a sign that death, and violent death at that, had visited here.
I closed my eyes and imagined Winniatt’s arms reaching up to the sky, his feet moving towards the end of the bridge. I saw the expression of joy on his face, the belief that—yes!—he could fly. The dream that had played in his head as a child, as it did for so many children, had actually come true. He was going to soar high into the air. His body felt so very light, and as he stretched out his arms, he likened the weightlessness to the same feeling one enjoyed while swimming. But then as he stepped off the end of the bridge, ready to arc his way up towards the sun, perhaps even as far as the great Mount Teide, the pull of gravity returned. He tried to pretend that he was flying, but he wasn’t. He knew he was falling. His body was heavy and he heard a part of himself hit a rock. The pain was indescribable, something far beyond anything he had ever experienced before. Something twisted, a leg perhaps. He heard the snap of bone and vertebrae and felt the crush of skull on rock and then nothing.
I opened my eyes, my mind flooding with confused fragments of memories and images from a parallel narrative. I thought of Gina Trevelyan throwing herself off the ship into the ocean. Was falling into freezing water less or more painful than hitting sharp rock? Winniatt’s death, I presumed, would have been instant, whereas Gina may have survived in the sea for a minute or more. I also remembered Davison telling me about the way poor Una Crowe had died. Her feet bound in green tape. Her body found at the bottom of that lonely cliff in Dorset.
Winniatt may not have been pushed off the bridge, but if Grenville had given him a tincture laced with henbane that led him to believe he could fly, then it was murder all the same. If Grenville had done it, what was the best way to prove it? And what could be his reason? This important point was still troubling me. Was it connected to the death of Douglas Greene, as I suspected? And if so, in what way? There was no point going to the inspector with half-baked theories. No doubt Trenkel would tell Núñez about the poison, but how would he ever link Winniatt’s death to Grenville? I needed to find some kind of evidence, evidence that could possibly lie within the walls of Mal País.
As I walked back to the Taoro, I thought about a plan. In order to search the house I would need some time, much more time than a mere dinner invitation would give me. I would have to manufacture a reason to stay with Grenville and his daughter overnight. My brows knitted together as I ran through a list of possibilities, all of which seemed to have some kind of flaw.
“Planning a murder?”
I looked up to see Helen Hart, who had just passed by me as I walked up the grand staircase to my room.
“I’m sorry?”
“You looked so serious and contemplative, that’s all. So lost in thought. I assumed you must be working out a murder in your head.”
“Oh, yes, that’s right. Sorry, I get so distracted at times.”
“I’m pleased I’ve caught you. I’ve just been to see a couple of people here to invite them to a party I’m giving on Valentine’s Day. You see, my latest piece of sculpture is about love. It’s quite an informal little gathering, but it would be wonderful if you could come.”
“That sounds . . . delightful,” I said.
“All of us need something to take our minds off this awful business.”
“Yes, indeed. A terrible thing to happen. Poor Mrs. Winniatt, and then there is the funeral to get through, too.”
“At times like these, I do think it’s important that people carry on. There’s so much doom and gloom in the world as it is, why should we contribute more to the great heavy bag of misery. Don’t you think?”
I wasn’t quite sure I would agree with the way Helen expressed it, but in general I did agree that one had simply to carry on. I remembered a phrase that always used to be quoted in my parents’ house when I had been a child.
“ ‘What can’t be cured must be endured,’ my grandmother used to say,” I said, sounding more like an old maid than ever.
Helen’s blue eyes sparkled with mischief, a sign that this was one platitude she would not subscribe to—indeed, I imagined her to be the kind of woman who did not endure anything that displeased her. Her lips pursed to say something amusing, if not cutting, but she obviously thought better of it and simply said, “So we’ll see you at my house at eight o’clock, on Valentine’s Day. I’ll leave directions for you at the hotel.”
“Thank you,” I said, and carried on up to my room.
From the window I saw Rosalind with her friend in the gardens and Carlo sitting on a bench nearby. The two children were playing with their toys, Rosalind with her Blue Teddy and Raymond with another one that, from a distance, looked remarkably similar. As I watched my daughter play—her mind free from all the horrors and troubles of the world—I wondered why I could not be like a normal mother to her, a woman who devoted all her energies to raising her child. I never seemed to find enough time simply to sit still with her, to feel the soft warmth of her breath on my face, to run my fingers through her hair. I wondered whether she loved Carlo more than she loved me. If she did, I would not blame her, considering that Carlo was the one who spent the most time with her. Perhaps I should not have br
ought her with me on this trip; after all, it wasn’t a holiday, but a job for the Secret Intelligence Service. Davison had assured me that all would be well, that my daughter would be safe, but now with Davison gone, who was to say that was still the case? I was facing an enemy whose face was hidden from me, an enemy who could strike at any moment. I thought of Davison’s pleas to be careful—he had made me promise that I would not put myself in any sort of danger. Staying overnight with Gerard Grenville was risky, of course, but I could see no other way.
I walked over to the door of my room and locked it. From the bottom of the wardrobe I took out a small leather suitcase and placed it on the bed. I entered the bathroom, smoothed down my hair with a splash of cold water, applied a little powder to my face, and then from the inside pocket of my toilet bag eased out a small key. With this I opened the suitcase and took out the leather pouch containing my poisons. As I ran my fingers over the vials I felt the familiar thrill that came with the knowledge that a single drop of liquid or a couple of grains of powder could kill a man. It went without saying that the sense of responsibility that came with such knowledge was enormous, and I knew that I would never use any of them unless it became absolutely necessary. But if I was going to spend the night in Grenville’s house, I would need some sort of protection.
Of course, some of the chemicals I carried in the pouch could also be used as an antidote to reduce the toxic effect of other poisons. I thought of how atropine, itself a very dangerous substance, could be used to treat the symptoms of gelsemium poisoning. That plant, sometimes called evening trumpet flower, was a common sight in many a garden, and few knew of its poisonous qualities. I had read of how Conan Doyle, in his days as a medical student, had experimented with the stuff, administering a small amount of gelsemium each day, a toxin that had resulted in terrible headaches, depression, and diarrhea. If he had carried on he would have experienced nausea, the paralysis of the muscles of the mouth and throat, delirium, difficulties with respiration, and at some point, death.
A Different Kind of Evil Page 14
