by P A Nash
“Yes, it’s quite light!”
He stooped and, with a straight back, gently lifted the safe up. He gave it a shake before placing back down on the ground. He wasn’t even out of breath.
“How did you know it was empty?”
“I couldn’t hear anything rattling around. Could you?”
“Do loose pieces of paper rattle around?”
“No but… Oh, I see. What a fool I am. No wonder I’m not a detective yet.”
Ella looked at the safe. There was a keypad with letters of the alphabet on it. “Hmm, either we need a dictionary or a huge stroke of luck.”
“I don’t believe in luck. Just hard work.”
“Now, if you were Mr Buckerell, what would you use as a password to get into this safe?”
For the next twenty minutes, they tried all sorts of words and letter combinations. They looked around the room at titles of books. Months of the year. Kings and Queens of England. Famous and infamous names. Nothing opened the safe door.
“Anthony?”
“No!”
“Wait a minute. We should have tried this one first of all.”
“What one?”
“Dudley!”
Chapter 5 – The Verbal About Herbal
The safe door swung open with quiet ease.
“What’s inside?” asked Ella expectantly.
PC Hydon pulled out a sheaf of paper. He took a look at the top piece and then shuffled through the remainder.
“Well, I never. Looks like letters. They’re all letters. No envelopes, just letters.”
He turned back to the topmost letter and began reading it silently to himself.
“How could I have missed these? I just assumed.” He tutted and pointed a finger at himself. “Never assume, Alf, never assume!”
“What does it say?” Ella was getting more than a little exasperated. She was normally a patient person.
“It’s a letter of complaint from a Dudley Widworthy.”
“He’s our poisoner, then!” Ella jumped and made as if to leave the room.
“Where are you going?”
“To telephone Frank and WPC Knowle.”
“No. Wait. There’s more.”
“What do you mean?”
“The next letter is from Dudley.”
“Dudley as well?”
“No, Dudley Musbury. It’s a letter of complaint.”
“Check the next one.”
“Another Dudley. This one’s from Dudley Gosford—Feniton.”
“Another one?”
“Yes, except this one is also from Dudley Gosford—Feniton. And this one. And this one. And another.”
PC Hydon continued leafing through the papers. “Ten of them. All from Dudley Gosford—Feniton.”
“Fascinating! Our Mr Buckerell was not a popular person with Dudleys!”
“Yes, here’s another Dudley. This one’s called Dudley Weston.”
“Anymore?”
“No, that’s the last one. Four Dudleys.”
“Four suspected poisoners!”
“I’m bagging these up before we wipe any more evidence off them.”
PC Hydon soon had the letters safely stored away. “Why didn’t I check the safe properly?”
“Can’t be helped. At least, we’ve got some form of a motive.”
“You mean that one of these Dudleys was so annoyed with Mr Buckerell that they went beyond writing letters and took it further?”
“Exactly!”
“Now we can contact WPC Knowle and Frank.”
***
There was a thump, thump, thump of boots up the stairs. The office door flew open and an angry middle—aged man crashed into the room.
“Where is he? Where is that snide little weasel? I’ve reached the end of my tether. He’s going to pay for this.”
“Good afternoon, sir. I’m WPC Knowle. How can I help you?”
“I don’t care who you say you are. Where is he? He won’t answer my messages. This time, I’ve had…” The man blundered to a halt, like an oil tanker whose brakes take a while to have the desired effect.
“WPC Knowle. A police constable. That’s why I’m wearing my police uniform. Good afternoon!”
“Good afternoon, er, ma’am.”
“That’s better. Frank, could you just knock on the office door for me?”
Frank went to the door and gently tapped on it.
WPC Knowle called out in a pleasant, welcoming voice: “Come in. Hello, how may we help you?”
The angry man had found the diversion beneficial. He had calmed down. He saw Mrs Aylesbeare sitting at her desk.
“Good afternoon.”
Mrs Aylesbeare, barely suppressing a grin of glee, asked, “How may I help you, my dear?”
“I’d like to speak to that… to Mr Buckerell. Is he here? Is he hiding from me?”
“I’m afraid that you won’t be able to speak to Mr Buckerell today, sir.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“No, sir, not tomorrow, nor the day after, nor…” Mrs Aylesbeare couldn’t keep up the act any longer. “Sir, he’s dead.”
“Dead?”
The once angry man stood there immobilised, unable to know what to do next.
“Sit down, please, Mr…?”
“Widworthy. Dudley Widworthy.”
***
PC Hydon carefully and slowly locked up the house, determined not to commit any further breach of police protocol. Ella waited in her car. Eventually, he completed all of his meticulous tasks and climbed sturdily into the passenger seat clutching his bag of evidence.
“Right. I decided to just go over to Mr Buckerell’s office with this. We can all discuss it there. There’s no need to phone. We’ll be at his office in ten minutes.”
Ella turned to him. “If you’re sure?”
“Drive on, please.”
***
“How can he be dead? I saw him only a couple of days ago. I wrote him a letter just last week. He never replied. I got fed up with waiting and… he’s dead?”
“What was the letter about?”
“I was complaining about his handling of my business. He took me for a mug!”
“Perhaps you’d better tell us the whole story. Begin at the beginning and all that,” said Frank soothingly.
“Yes, it’ll be good to get it off my chest. Someone around here needs to know the full facts.”
“Do you mind if I take notes?” WPC Knowle already had her notebook and pen in hand.
“No.” Dudley Widworthy looked around as if expecting to see Anthony Buckerell appear from one of the dark corners of the room.
“It started about eight years ago. I met Mr Buckerell at a Budleigh Chamber of Trade meeting. We got talking about the NHS and how their medicines didn’t seem to work. He was a great believer in vitamins. Somehow we got onto herbal medicines. Self—medicating, he called it. I asked him where he would get such medicines from and he said there was nowhere around here. Instantly, a light went on in my head.”
“Why?”
“Well, I’d been looking for a new business idea. My previous business had just been jogging along. I was an importer of exotic plants but there wasn’t much profit in it. I went home and did some research and saw the potential as a supplier of herbal medicine here in Budleigh Salterton. The place is full of old biddies with illnesses. They call Budleigh Salterton ‘God’s waiting room’. I thought if I could tap into the market, there may be lots of money to be made.”
***
“I came to you in good faith, Anthony. I thought you were my friend as well as my solicitor.”
Well, Dudley, you are your own worst enemy sometimes. Let’s look at your business decisions over the past two years, shall we?”
“Not another one of your lectures?”
“Sometimes, Dudley, the best way forward is to look back and learn from one’s mistakes. Your first mistake was to buy too much stock at the very beginning without
identifying who you were going to sell it to. Secondly, linked to that, you paid far too high a price for it. If you’re buying that much, you could have demanded a huge discount. Or, at least, negotiated, some of the stock as sale or return.”
“It was all from South America. They’re difficult to deal with.”
“Then there was Mrs Westdown. Of all the people to suffer a reaction from one of your herbal tablets, she would not have been my first choice. She’s a regular gossip of the highest order. Your name was mud, as soon as she entered that nursing home.”
“Typical of my bad luck.”
“Did you research the side effects? Did you check she was not allergic to any of the ingredients? No, you did not. Then your next mistake was to move into bigger premises. You could hardly pay your business rates or the shop rental for that place in Rolle Road. Why would you want to move into that monstrosity in the High Street?”
“Kerb appeal. Bigger footfall.”
“No, vanity, pure vanity. I warned you against it. You didn’t listen, did you?”
“I did listen. It was the way you warned me. You were so arrogant, so high and mighty, that I vowed to prove you wrong.”
“You didn’t, did you? No, the most recent mistake was not entirely your fault. No—one really thought that internet shopping would take hold so quickly. Still, then, you could have seen the opportunity. You didn’t even have a website. You could have sold so much of your overpriced stock online.”
“And now, I’m broke. Bankrupt. I blame you. You make me want to kill you!”
“Now threats like that could get you into even more trouble!”
“You should have stopped me. Given me better advice.”
“Would you have listened?”
“I would have listened if you’d advised me in the right way.”
“Well, I’m advising you now. Sell your stock, close down the shop and cut your losses.”
“What choice do I have?”
“None at all.”
“But who’s going to buy my stock?”
“How much do you need to pay off your creditors and close down the shop lease?”
“You know how much. You did all the calculations on that napkin there whilst we were drinking our coffees.”
“Well, that’s my offer. I’ve circled it to make sure you understand the exact amount.”
“What! You are a nasty, vicious swindler. That’ll leave me with nothing. No job, no assets, no prospects.”
“That’s the way it is in business. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.”
“And I’ve lost big time!”
“I’ll sort out an agreement for the stock. I’ll call around with it tomorrow. I must be going. I’ll leave you to pick up the bill. Call it my fee for all this free advice!”
***
“He bought me out” Dudley Widworthy concluded. “All my stock was gone — just like that. I found out a short while later that he’d sold the lot to an internet start—up company based in Exeter for a colossal profit. The internet company went bust a couple of years later but he didn’t care. He’d made his profit out of me.”
Frank nodded in sympathy. There was enough resentment and desire for revenge in Dudley Widworthy’s eyes. Were those the eyes of a murderer? WPC Knowle was still furiously writing notes in her black notebook.
Mrs Aylesbeare was not impressed at all. “It was all your own fault, Mr Widworthy. You shouldn’t have taken so many risks. Now you’re blaming poor Mr Buckerell. All your verbals. And he can’t answer you back, my dear. All your verbal about herbal!”
Frank wondered how long she’d been storing up that comment!
Dudley Widworthy’s anger was returning. “I don’t think it’s any of your business. You’re just a secretary. What’s more, you’re his secretary!”
WPC Knowle had stopped writing. “Mr Widworthy, calm down. There was no need for that.”
“Sorry,” he grumpily replied without looking at Mrs Aylesbeare.
“We’d like to ask you a few questions, seeing as you are here. Just informal questions. I won’t even caution you!”
“Most obliged, I’m sure.”
WPC Knowle ignored the sarcasm. “I’m interested in these exotic plants of yours. Are any of them poisonous?”
“Some can be, I suppose. If you used their leaves in the wrong way.”
“How?”
“Well, you could ground the leaves down into a powder.”
Frank was intrigued. “Did you ever do that?”
“I read a few books about it, but it was too much hassle. You had to mix the powder with some other powders. I didn’t have all of the plants. It was like being back in chemistry class at school. The amounts have to be so exact to have the maximum impact. And who was I going to use it on? I could have killed someone!”
“Someone like Anthony Buckerell?”
“No, look here! You said he was dead.” He paused. His brain was whirring. “How did he die?”
“We think he may have been poisoned.”
“Oh, I see your game. Plants, powders, poison. Blame it on Dudley. Everybody else does. I’m not standing for that.” He stood up, clumsily knocking the chair over in his haste.
“You can’t prove anything. You’d have arrested me if…”
“Mr Widworthy, calm down. No—one’s accusing you of…”
“Pull the other one!” He moved towards the office door. Frank stood up as if to stop him leaving. “Get out of my way, unless you want some knuckles on your chin. I used to box when I was younger.”
He reached the door, opened it and stormed out, slamming the door noisily behind him. The sound reverberated around the room. There was a crashing commotion on the stairs that lasted for over half a minute. WPC Knowle put away her notebook and was just about to stride across the room to investigate when the door opened once more.
Chapter 6 – Death is Nothing at All
In came Mr Widworthy with a dejected and forlorn expression on his face. “I’d like to apologise for my behaviour.”
“That’s better, sir,” said PC Hydon as he entered the room.
“Of course, I’d be happy to assist the police in any possible way.”
“We may need to speak to you again. Just give your name, contact address and phone number to PC Hydon. He’ll see you safely off the premises.”
After Dudley Widworthy had quietly left, Ella made sure he had closed the door before she shared the discoveries with Frank and WPC Knowle.
“We found some papers in the safe. They were all letters of complaint. There were four Dudleys amongst them.”
“Let me guess. Dudley Widworthy?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“That gentleman leaving was Dudley Widworthy. He told us a very interesting tale.” WPC Knowle smiled at Ella. “I’m sure Frank will fill you in later.”
“Good,” said Ella, “That leaves three. Dudley Weston.”
Frank jumped in. “Dudley Musbury.”
“You know about them all, don’t you?”
“Yes, who’s the last one?”
“Dudley Gosford—Feniton.”
“Correct. We’ve got him on our list as well.”
“Don’t tell me. Our letters of complaint were copies. You found the originals in the files.”
“You’re spot on. Thanks to you and Mrs Aylesbeare, we’ve all discovered that there are four Dudleys. Each one of them has complained in writing about Mr Buckerell in some form or another.”
“Four suspects. The Dudleys of Budleigh!”
***
“There is a fifth suspect, you know?” WPC Knowle was consulting her notebook.
“Yes, of course, the doctor.”
Frank added, “He may have been giving Anthony vitamins, but he could also have poisoned him.”
“Somehow on that day, someone got to Anthony and poisoned him.” PC Hydon stated the obvious.
“In spite of the fact that he never left your side.”
“And that he was in a locked room in the last two hours before he died.”
“And that he had a police officer and myself as witnesses.”
“And that there was an eagle—eyed policeman on guard at the door of the police station. No—one came past me. No—one got in!”
Ella concluded. “In spite of all that, someone poisoned him. If it wasn’t one of you three, then it could well have been either of the Dudleys or the doctor. Somehow!”
***
Mrs Aylesbeare giggled. “You need to see the doctor.”
Ella joined in with her giggling and it lightened the situation. The two police officers had other work to do so Frank and Ella volunteered to see Doctor Daniel Moore. Mrs Aylesbeare told them where the surgery was in Budleigh. It was within walking distance so they left their car and sauntered up the High Street. Within ten minutes they were in the reception area of the modern–looking medical centre.
There was a queue to speak to the receptionist. Ella stared at the notice board. There were a few local events alongside the usual National Health adverts. One poster held her attention. It was the local amateur dramatic society’s latest production of Table for Four. It starred Daniel Moore. At least, it would have done. The word CANCELLED was scrawled at an angle across the poster.
“We ought to start going to the local theatre, Frank.”
“You mean the Manor Pavilion Summer Season?”
“Yes, but there are local productions as well.”
“Not that one,” he said, pointing at the poster.
They reached the front of the queue.
“Hello,” began Frank, “We’d like to make an appointment to speak to Doctor Daniel Moore. It’s not a medical matter, but more of an urgent personal situation. Is he free?”
The receptionist looked up at them both with a sympathetic smile on his face. “Sorry, sir. Sorry, madam. He isn’t here today.”
Ella broke in. “Will he be in tomorrow? It’s quite important that we…”
The receptionist firmly replied, “Madam, he’s not here for the next ten days.”
“Oh, do you know how we could contact him?”
“Leave a message with us and we’ll pass it on to him when he gets back.”
