Diana's Altar

by Barbara Cleverly

  “No. She said not a word. She was aware of me. Aware that I was trying to help her as I went through the usual diagnostic procedure, but the pain and the struggle were draining her strength. I think she knew she was dying and was not able—or was afraid—to tell me how she came to be in such a terrible situation. When I moved into her orbit I caught again the smell I’d detected from the doorway. It was on her breath. Joe, she was breathing out a strong odour of garlic.”

  “Oh, Lord!” Joe muttered. “I feared as much.”

  Adelaide chewed her lip for a moment then went on, uncertainly, “Something else struck me as being very odd right from the start of my examination. I loosened her clothing—it was constricting her breathing—and took off her soiled outer layer. She was wearing a very smart dress—off the peg but good quality—from a London store. Fenwicks of Regent Street, according to the label. A dinner dress in magenta satin. Her underwear was equally good. Silk, not Celanese. Stockings silk too. Not the lisle or wool a housekeeper would wear.”

  “Her shoes? Were they on view?”

  “Calf skin, high heels.”

  Joe pulled a face to indicate his puzzlement.

  “I have a confession to make,” Adelaide said without the slightest trace of guilt. “Just in case the lady was subject to an existing heart or gastric ulcer problem she’d been wanting to keep quiet from her employer, I found her bag and searched it. It’s routine in an emergency. It can save hours of uncertainty if you find a neatly labelled box of prescription pills in a patient’s pocket. No pills in there, on prescription or otherwise—just a pack of aspirins in amongst the female clutter of hankies, powder compact, cigarette case and such-like. But she did have a small bottle of her perfume. Rêve de l’Orient.”

  “Dream of the East, eh? Sounds rather racy! . . . Never heard of it.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. I wouldn’t like to think you knew the kind of lady who uses it. Joe, this Mrs. Denton—who should have smelled of Yardley’s Lavender and been dressed in sober skirt and blouse and lisle stockings—I’ve no idea who she was, but she wasn’t the housekeeper.”

  Chapter 6

  They heard it at the same moment: large feet pounding athletically up the stairs and then suddenly beginning to clatter where red wilton gave way to the uncarpeted treads that led to the third floor.

  “Adam! Thank goodness!” was Adelaide’s reaction.

  “Hunnyton! Damn it!” was Joe’s simultaneous outburst.

  “Adam will take over all this nonsense now. Sorry, Joe! He’s your friend, of course, but I really don’t see why you have to concern yourself with his local affairs. You’re far too grand for that. A suicide and the death of one female servant sixty miles from the capital? Bring on the honest copper! Let Adam deal with them both. Leave the police work on his desk where it ought to be, and we can spend the rest of the day together.”

  The superintendent came in, riding a bow wave of energy and bonhomie.

  “Allo, allo, allo!” he said, affecting a music hall comic policeman’s greeting. “Got your feet under the kitchen table at last, I see, Sandilands!”

  Joe might have expected a formal, “Good afternoon, Commissioner. So glad you could come down so quickly, sir!” Why the lack of deference? Joe could only speculate. Showing off for Adelaide? Perhaps. She was herself direct and not one to stand on ceremony. But Joe thought the reason ran deeper. Perhaps the secret knowledge that you had held a superior officer’s life in your rifle-sights but shot wide, and had held his career in your pocket but destroyed the evidence, granted you the right to indulge in a certain playful intimacy. Joe was not normally a stickler for ceremony, but he was irritated by the man’s intrusion into his quiet moment with Adelaide.

  “Superintendent Hunnyton,” Joe said, nodding. He pointedly remained seated, officiating at the coffee pot. “So sorry to drag you from your investigation.” His stiffness thawed swiftly in the face of Hunnyton’s beaming geniality and outstretched hand. “Why don’t you join us? I’m sure we can find space for your size twelves if we shuffle up a bit. May we offer you some coffee? I think I can squeeze another one out. Where are you in your day?”

  “I’d rather have tea, please. Your kitchen tea will do me just fine, thanks, Adelaide.”

  “Milk, one sugar?” Adelaide reminded herself of the formula with a smile as she jumped to her feet and headed for the kettle.

  “Oh . . . this is quite a spread I see before me! One or two of those sandwiches wouldn’t come amiss to a bloke who’s not had his lunch yet,” Hunnyton said with a hopeful smile.

  Joe filled him in with the brevity required of one copper by another as Hunnyton munched his way through the pile of sandwiches. The superintendent listened attentively, his only question being, “Have you got any mustard?”

  “So, that’s you up to speed with Adelaide’s story, Hunnyton. We have a woman named Denton—who could well not be the housekeeper—discovered in her last hours of an agonising death, which could well not be natural. Over to you.”

  Hunnyton’s voice took on a crisp, professional edge. “Right. Got it. You’re going to tell us, Doc, that the lady was dying of some sort of poisoning? Let’s eliminate the obvious first of all, shall we? A step you’ve already taken, Adelaide, I suspect. Forgive me for dotting the i’s. Mushrooms? It’s that time of year. Fungus fortnight. We’ve had two cases already this week. Poor folk who forage for whatever’s edible in the fields fall victim. Cooks in posh country houses know their Puffballs from their Poison Pies or else they leave it to a greengrocer who does. But there’s always the chance of a sneaky little Angel’s Bonnet making its way into a pheasant casserole, I suppose.”

  “I did think to ask. The maid couldn’t say. No such thing had been served up below stairs. They’d had scrag of mutton stew served at five o’clock before their evening duties began. But the gentry . . . well, they ate some strange muck, fish eggs and suchlike. Nobody else above or below had been taken ill as far as she knew.”

  “Mmm . . . Well, I’ll tell you what the symptoms are saying to me—and I think to you, Doc. That smell of garlic . . . ? I don’t suppose in the circs you had time to . . .”

  “I did. The maid told me it couldn’t be garlic. Cook wouldn’t have it in the house. But it was strong on her breath.”

  “A clincher, then? Arsenical poisoning. Thought so.” Hunnyton scratched a note in his book. “How very Victorian! We don’t get so many of these since they got a handle on it. Still, cases do crop up. Usually as an accident rather than through evil intent. It’s tasteless and odourless and generally appears in a white powder form looking for all the world like something you’d cook with.” He shrugged. “Once the previous generation caught on to the fact that the wretched stuff was lethal, freely available for tuppence an ounce over the counter, and killing thousands of old ladies and unwanted spouses, they took steps to suppress it. Inadequate, belated and quite barmy steps in some cases. Hiding the stuff in a tin labelled sugar and stowing it away on the top shelf of the pantry isn’t such a good idea in a hungry, underfed, food-hoarding country. I don’t exaggerate! Only last month a bedder at St. Anthony’s found a packet of white sugar hidden away from before the war—would you believe it?—in the bottom of the grandfather clock in the college pantry. Poor lass sneaked it home in her pinny and cooked up an apple crumble for her six children. Three of them survived. Did you get anything further out of the girl?”

  “Very little. I’m sure she’d been told not to speak to me about the patient. She only gave me information about the garlic because I implied it might have a bearing on the illness. She was scared out of her wits, poor little soul! She can’t have been more than fourteen.”

  “Was there anything more you could have done to save the sick woman?”

  “No. All I could do—all anyone could have done—was offer nursing services of the most basic kind while murmuring useless reassurance. I gave her a
painkiller. The one or two who have survived a bout say that the pain is unbelievably bad—like having a ball of fire in your insides. Even if she’d been taken off to hospital the outcome would have been the same. Death within hours.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them to call for an ambulance? Shift the problem on?”

  “I did. I sent the maid off with a written note as well as a spoken request to send for one at once.”

  “And?”

  “She was away for half an hour and came back, totally confused, saying that she’d told the butler who’d refused to alert the master. Collins—I managed to establish that her first name was ‘Daisy’—turned out to be one of those girls who can’t be doing with reported speech. It tumbled out verbatim, even with changes of voice to convey Mr. Jennings’s brusqueries. It was all, ‘So I says . . . Then he says . . . Mardy old trout!’ I’ll summarise for you. The dinner was in full swing—a ‘personage’ was present and the master wanted no fuss. Jennings wasn’t going to upset his master’s appetite between courses. A soufflé was on its way up from the kitchens and you don’t keep a soufflé waiting. They could manage without Mrs. Denton. In the maid’s hearing, the butler went to the telephone in the hall and phoned the hospital. He waited about a bit then put the phone down.”

  Hunnyton raised an eyebrow and made another note.

  “‘No ambulances available tonight, Collins,’ he told the maid. ‘They’re all out at an accident on the Huntingdon Road. And there’s no one to drive her in. Chauffeur’s got the night off. Tell the doctor she’ll just have to stay at her post and do what she can for Mrs. Denton. I’m sure that’s what Doctor Easterby would expect of her. Contain the situation. State the lady’s in, she’d be a gonner anyway by the time they could get out here from Cambridge.’”

  “I’ll have that phone call checked. Pressure, Doc, did you detect?”

  “No doubt about that! I was very scared. Adam, they were virtually holding me prisoner! I hesitate to say that because it sounds so shrill—like a line from a Bulldog Drummond thriller. You know . . . What are those fiends doing to Phyllis?”

  “Topping gel, Phyllis Drummond!” Hunnyton commented, selecting his alarmingly upper-class voice. “Quite the strider but—really—barely house-trained.”

  Joe knew what the man was doing: using humour to sidetrack a confession of weakness she would instantly regret and bounce her back onto the main line. “Jolly uncomfortable to have around—a girl who carries a gun in her reticule and a cosh in her knickers, I’ve always thought,” Joe added lightly.

  Adelaide smiled, undeceived. “Anyway—I can’t be absolutely certain I was under restraint because, unlike Phyllis, I didn’t test out the boundaries at Mystery Manor. I could have made a dash for my bike, I suppose, and that would have made them show their hand, but I would never have deserted my patient. They knew that. Duty was more effective than a pair of handcuffs. But that’s not the worst of it!”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, she died. It seemed to take forever. Poor woman! I made her last hours as comfortable as I could, but there wasn’t much I could do. Finally, when she died in the middle of the night, I sent Daisy off with another message. There was a further time delay—for which I was quite grateful, in fact, as it gave me a chance to . . . um . . . do a bit of tidying up. Jennings appeared, still in his evening uniform. He checked she was dead and offered to countersign the death certificate.

  “Under his stony gaze, I filled in the details as far as I knew them. ‘Just the name will do,’ he said. ‘Clarice Denton. I haven’t got her home address by heart. I’ll enquire and fill it in later. Just leave it with me.’

  “He checked the form and exploded when he saw that I’d filled in ‘Cause of Death’ as arsenical poisoning.

  “‘What’s this rubbish?’ he yelled. ‘Do I have to get Doc Easterby up in the middle of the night and ask him why he sent us an idiot? You were told what to do! Stomach troubles. Now wrap that up in whatever technical terms you like, but do it! You’ve wasted enough of our time fannying about.’ He tore up the form and sort of loomed over me. He didn’t need to add, ‘Or else!’ He was truly frightening, Adam. No threat is somehow more chilling than an overdramatic suggestion of, ‘or I’ll break your bones and boil you up for soup.’”

  “Indeed?” said Joe, with a sudden show of interest. “I’ll try to remember that next time I have a hard case under the spotlight.”

  Adelaide was not to be mocked. She pushed on with her explanation. “The thing was, you clown, he left it to my imagination. My fevered brain and overwrought emotions were doing his work for him. I was very certain at that moment that I’d end up squashed on the road on the way back to town if I didn’t comply. You can imagine—‘Poor lady! Dreadful accident in the dark! That tight bend by the oak tree—how many victims has it claimed? Exhausted, of course, after her all-night vigil tending the sick. Such a tragedy!’ So I complied. I gave him exactly what he expected.”

  “He wasn’t suspicious?”

  “Of course not. In his world women are obedient creatures. They exist to carry out his orders. I tried to show no fear. Just grumpy compliance. I even offered to add a note and a flourish of Latin to make it convincing. He watched every word I wrote over my shoulder as I filled in a fresh form.”

  “Glad you didn’t resist,” Joe murmured. “There are times when you have to retreat, gather your allies about you and reform the company. It worked for us on the Marne.”

  “Right,” agreed Hunnyton, his face severe. “Buggers! And I’ll tell you the next chapter, shall I? With the second certificate in their hands . . . what does it say, by the way, your revised version?”

  “It says, Cause of Death: Perforated Peptic Ulcer. I added in explanation, Delayed presentation resulted in subject being moribund on examination and too far gone to sustain operative treatment. And, underneath, a bit of Latin to impress: Hoc mendacium est. Non bene decessit. And I signed it V. C. Hartest.”

  “Gawd!” Hunnyton spluttered. “You were chancing your arm, girl! The above is a lie? She died a bad death? You were confident this thug wouldn’t be able to work it out?”

  “Yes. He had to ask what ‘moribund’ meant as I wrote it, so I thought ‘mendacium’ would be beyond his ken. I dismissed the phrases as ritual doctors’ Latin to confirm my bona fides with the coroner, the equivalent of swearing on the Bible.”

  “And what’s this V. C. stand for—Violet Christabel? What have you been holding from us, Miss Adelaide?”

  “Oh, I read that in an Alexandre Dumas novel, I think. It stands for Vi Coactus. ‘By force constrained.’ It’s supposed to nullify a signature. ‘I’m signing under duress.’ I made the mistake of telling my brothers! They always used it when they signed their pocket money IOUs when we were children. I didn’t take any notice of it then and I don’t suppose anyone would now, but it made me feel better at that moment! In fact it still does! I didn’t relish taking orders from that gorilla.”

  “I look forward to hearing that read out in a court of law,” Joe muttered uneasily.

  “It will never make it to a court of law,” said Hunnyton. “As far as Clarice Denton is concerned, we must prepare ourselves for a bad outcome. A dead end, you might say. The moment he had that in his hand, he’d have rung his preferred undertaker and made arrangements for a swift and discreet burial—cremation, most likely. The room will have been scrubbed clean and all traces of the deceased removed. Fat chance of any suspicious coppers rootling about in there, helping themselves to incriminating evidence.” He sighed. “I’m most awfully sorry, Adelaide, that you suffered as you did and all to no avail.”

  “Oh, come on, superintendent! Don’t be such a weed! There’s always something one can do. Do you really think I was going to stand by and let them get away with such bad behaviour? I suspected more or less what you’ve just surmised might happen as soon as she was dead . . . out would come the m
ops and buckets and all traces of the night’s events would be removed.” She went to pick up her medical bag and put it down carefully on a bench before opening it. “I was left to my own devices for long periods and I took the opportunity to remove some evidence.”

  “What? But—”

  “I know. I know it would never stand up in court—break in continuity of evidence keeping, would you say in the trade?—but I thought it might just give the police an inkling, even if unofficial, of what was going on.” She took two specimen bottles from the case. “Disgusting but useful! On the left: vomit. On the right: a blood sample.”

  Hunnyton waited until she had placed them back in her case before leaping up and enveloping her in a congratulatory hug, growling his approval.

  Joe frowned. He wished Adelaide would discourage such displays. Hunnyton seemed to think his overtures had the unquestioning welcome of those of a soppy, great Labrador retriever—which he much resembled, Joe thought bitterly. He had the same trusting eyes, floppy fur and big feet of Adelaide’s father’s dogs. Instead of being confined to barracks in the rear of the house, like any other working dogs, that pair of hooligans had the run of the house and the freedom to welcome guests in their own all-overish way, heavy paws pinning even strangers to the wall to be covered in slobbering affection. Small wonder Adelaide seemed to feel at ease in Hunnyton’s company.

  “We can get those straight off for testing,” Joe said. “We should have the answers back in a couple of days. Perhaps sooner, if Hunnyton has influence at the labs.”

  “Tell you what,” Hunnyton said, smiling with triumph, “it’s not the labs we need at this moment, it’s what’s her name—your cleaner, Adelaide.”

  “Mrs. Gidding?”

  “Where does she keep her cleaning equipment? Soap, detergent, bottles of cleaning fluid?”

  “In a cupboard on the landing just outside, but . . . Oh, got it! Ammonia? I’m sure she’s got ammonia in there. A spot of it turns blue in the presence of arsenic—have I got that right? I’ll go and have a look. But hang on a minute. You can take these away and do your chemistry somewhere more suitable. I don’t want to turn my bedroom into a stinks lab. There’s more—I’ve got another piece of evidence up my sleeve.”