Billy had had a bad night, even after all the booze. He supposed there was nothing like messing around with a dead body – particularly one that had smelt the way Arthur Clark’s had done, Arthur having so recently dumped into his trousers – to sober a person up. It had taken Billy more than an hour to drop off after getting in-despite the fact that it was three in the morning – and even then his dreams had been peppered with Arthur’s face . . . and the man’s ravaged stomach.
Work had been underway in the ballroom of the less than palatial Regal Hotel for several hours when Billy Roberts was beginning to contemplate getting out of bed.
The wreckage was far worse than usual somehow, even though the festivities had been cut short by the tragic events in the gentlemen’s toilet. But at least most of the explosive streamers were still intact and there were fewer stains than usual on the cloths and the chairs. The most surprising thing was the number of personal possessions that had been left in the cloakroom, particularly considering the very careful population of the town. But then the unceremonious way the guests had been dispatched for home after been questioned made a lot of things understandable.
Chris Hackett had arrived after the clear-up had begun, clocking into the ancient machine mounted on the green tiled wall leading to the Regal’s back door at 7.13. He didn’t think anyone would object to the fact that he was almost quarter of an hour late, not after last night. He set to straight away, throwing his yellow and blue bubble jacket onto one of the chest freezers in the kitchen and emerging through the swing doors into the ballroom. It was a hive of activity.
Elsewhere, various men and women were dismantling trestle tables, creating a mound of jumbled tablecloths, loading glasses and bottles and plates and cutlery onto rickety wooden trolleys, the sound of their labours dwarfed by the sound of similar items being loaded into the huge dishwashers in the kitchens.
Wondering where he should start, Chris Hackett saw a table that had been untouched, over by the far wall. He went across to it, moving around to the wall side to begin stacking the plates. Halfway along the wall he caught his foot on something and went sprawling onto the floor, knocking over two chairs on the way.
Somebody laughed and their was a faint burst of applause as Chris got to his feet and looked around for the culprit of his embarrassment.
It was a lady’s handbag.
Malcolm Broadhurst sat smoking a cigarette. He had been up since before dawn, having snatched a couple of hours’ fitful nap lying fully clothed on the eiderdown; unable to settle to anything, his mind full of the previous evening.
The call came through at a little after ten o’clock.
A man’s voice said, “You up?”
“Yeah.”
“Been to bed?”
Broadhurst grunted. “Didn’t sleep though.”
“Well, you were right not to,” the voice said. “We’ve been on this all night-well, all morning would be more accurate.”
“And?”
“We’ve not finished yet but we’ve got a pretty good idea.”
The voice with the “pretty good idea” belonged to Jim Garnett, the doctor in charge of forensic science at Halifax Infirmary and who doubled as the medical guru for Halifax CID. He chuckled. “It’s a goodie. You were right to be suspicious.”
The policeman shook another cigarette from his packet and settled himself against the bed headboard. “Go on.”
“Okay. Two hours ago, I’d’ve been calling you to tell you he’d had a heart attack.”
“And he didn’t.”
“Well, that’s not exactly true: he did have a cardiac arrest, but it wasn’t brought on by natural causes.” Garnett paused and Broadhurst could hear the doctor shifting papers around. “What made me a little more cautious than usual-apart from your telephone call last night – was the list of symptoms, all classical.”
Broadhurst didn’t speak but it was as though the doctor had read the question in his mind.
“There were too many. Profuse salivation—”
“Profuse – is that like, there was a lot of it?”
“You could say that,” came the reply. “The poor chap’s shirt was soaked and he’d bitten through the back left side of his tongue; he’d vomited, messed his pants-diarrhoea: most unpleasant – and there were numerous contusions to the head, arms and legs.”
“Suggesting what?”
“The contusions?” Garnett smacked his lips. “Dizziness, auditory and visual disturbances, blurred vision, that kind of thing – and not what you’d want to experience when you’re stuck in a WC. It’s my bet he shambled about in there like a ping-pong ball, bouncing off every wall. And, of course, the pain would have been nothing to what he was having from his stomach – that’s why he’d clawed at himself so much. By then, he’d be having seizures-hence the tongue – and he’d be faint.”
“Why didn’t he just come out, shout for help?”
“Disorientation would be my guess. And panic. He’d be in a terrible state at this point, Mai.”
Broadhurst waited. “And?”
“And then he died. I’ve seen cases before-cardiac arrests-with two or three of the same symptoms, but never so many together . . . and never so intense. This chap suffered hell in his final minutes.”
Garnett sighed before continuing. “So, we checked him out for all the usual bacteria-saliva, urine, stool samples; and there were plenty of those, right down to his ankles – and—”
“So he hadn’t even been to the toilet?”
“No, he had been. His large bowel was empty. This stuff came as the result of a sudden stimulation to the gut and that would release contents further up the bowel passage. Anyway, like I said, we checked everything but it was no go. Then I checked the meal-bland but harmless – and the beer . . . nothing there either.”
Garnett moved away from the phone to cough. “God, and now I think I’m coming down with a cold.”
“Take the rest of the day off.”
“Thanks!” He cleared his throat and went on. “So, in absolute desperation, we started checking him for needle marks: thought he might be using something and that was why he always went to the toilet so regularly. But there was nothing, skin completely unbroken. And then . . .”
“Ah, is this the good bit?”
“Yes, indeedy – and this is the good bit.”
Broadhurst could sense the doctor leaning further into the phone, preparing to deliver the coup de grâce.
“Then we turned him over and we found the rash.”
“The rash? All that and a rash too?”
“On his backside, across his cheeks and up into the anus. A nasty little bastard, blotches turning to pustules even five hours after he died. At first I thought maybe it was thrush but it was too extreme for that. So we took a swab and tested it.”
The pause was theatrical in its duration. “And . . . go on, Jim, for God’s sake,” Broadhurst snapped around a cloud of smoke.
“Nicotine poisoning.”
The policeman’s heart sank. For this he had allowed himself to get excited? “Nicotine poisoning?” he said in exasperation. “Nicotine, as in cigarettes?” He glanced down at the chaos of crumpled brown stubs in the ashtray next to him on the bed.
Garnett grunted proudly. “Nicotine as in around eight million cigarettes smoked in the space of one drag.”
“What?”
“That was what killed him – not the heart attack, though that delivered the final blow-nicotine: one of the most lethal poisons known to man.”
“And how did he get it, if it wasn’t in the drink or in the meal, and it wasn’t injected? And assuming he didn’t smoke eight million cigarettes while he was sitting contemplating.”
Garnett cleared his throat. “He got it in the arse, Mal, though God only knows how.”
Broadhurst glanced across at the solitary toilet roll sitting on his chest of drawers. “I know, too,” he said. “But the ‘why’, that’s the puzzler.”
“And the ‘
who’?”
“Yeah, that too.”
Edna Clark sat at her kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a mug of steaming tea. Sitting across from her was Betty Thorndike.
When the knock came on the front door, Betty said, “You stay put, love – I’ll get it.”
Hilda Merkinson had been in every room in the house but her sister was nowhere to be found.
Worse still, she couldn’t find her handbag.
“Harry?” She had already shouted her sister’s name a dozen times but, in the absence of a more useful course of action, she shouted it again. The silence seemed to mock her.
Hilda knew why Harriet had gone out. She had gone out to clear her head, maybe to have a weep by herself. No problem. She would get over it. It might take a bit of time, but she would get over it – of that, Hilda was convinced.
They had lived together, Hilda and Harriet Merkinson, in the same house for all of their 53 years; just the two of them since their mother had died in 1992.
They had a routine, a routine that Hilda did not want to see altered in any way. It was a safe routine, a routine of eating together, cleaning together, watching the TV together, and occasionally slipping along to The Three Pennies public house for a couple of life-affirming medicinal glasses of Guinness stout. It was a routine of going to bed and kissing each other goodnight on the upstairs landing and of waking each morning and kissing each other hello, again in the same spot; a routine broken only by Harriet’s job in Jack Wilson’s General store, and Hilda’s work at the animal testing facility on Aldershot Road, where she’d been for almost seven years. The same length of time that Harriet had worked.
During that time, the routine had persevered.
It had been all and its disappearance was unthinkable.
Not that there hadn’t been times when things looked a little shaky, namely the times when Ian Arbutt had cornered Hilda in the small back room against the photocopier and sworn his affection-despite Ian’s wife, Judith, and his two children. But basically, Ian’s affection had been for Hilda’s body and Hilda had recognized this pretty quickly into the relationship – if you could call the clumsy gropes and speedy ejaculations performed by her boss on the back room carpet a relationship.
Hilda had had to think of how to put an end to it – thus maintaining her and Harriet’s beloved routine-while not having it affect her position at the testing centre.
The solution had been simple, if a little Machiavellian. She had sent an anonymous letter to Judith Arbutt saying she should keep a tighter rein on her husband. “I’m not mentioning any names,” the carefully worded (and written) letter had continued, “but there are some folks around town who think your Ian’s affections might be being misplaced.” Hilda had liked that last bit.
A very anxious and contrite Ian had suggested to Hilda, on the next occasion that they were both alone in the centre, that he felt he wasn’t being fair to her. “Trifling with her affections” is what Hilda imagined he was wanting to say but Ian’s pharmacological expertise did not extend to the poetic. “I hope you’re not leading up to suggesting I look for other work,” Hilda had said, feigning annoyance, brow furrowed, “because that would mean something along the lines of sexual harassment, wouldn’t it?”
The answer had been emphatic and positive. “A job for life”, is how he worded it. “You’re here for as long as you want to be here, Hilda,” he said. And he had been true to his word, at least Hilda could give him that.
No, Hilda would have nothing come between her and her sister. They were all either of them had and their separation was something she could not contemplate. She had thought that Harriet felt the same way.
And then came the fateful day, almost a week ago – was it really only a week? it seemed so much longer – that had threatened to change all that.
Every Thursday, without fail, Harriet always walked along to the fish-and-chip shop on the green-Thursday being Jack Wilson’s early closing day – and had the tea all ready for Hilda when she got in. But on this particular Thursday, following four days of solid rain, when Hilda – a little earlier than usual because Ian also had flooding and wanted to get off – had gone past the General Store, she had seen Harriet helping Jack with moving boxes around due to the leakage through the front windows. He had asked her to stay back and give him a hand, and Harriet couldn’t refuse, despite her other “commitments”.
“We’ll just have some sandwiches,” Harriet had shouted through the locked door of Jack’s shop, looking terribly flustered. “You just put your feet up and I’ll make them when I get in,” she added.
Hilda had nodded. Then she had gone home, put the kettle on and, at the usual time Harriet always left the house en route for the fish and chips, Hilda had embarked into the darkness on the very same journey. Imagine her surprise when, from behind the big oak tree on the green, a shadowy figure leapt out, grabbed her by the shoulders and planted a big kiss on her mouth.
It was Arthur Clark.
“Thought you weren’t coming,” Arthur had announced to a bewildered Hilda. “Been here bloody ages,” he had added. “Edna’ll be getting ideas – mind you,” Arthur had confided, “it won’t matter soon. Must dash.” Then he had given her another kiss and had scurried across the green bound for home, calling over his shoulder, “See you on Saturday anyway, at the Christmas do.”
Hilda had stood and watched the figure disappear into the darkness, and she was so flabbergasted that she almost forgot all about the fish and chips and went home empty-handed. But already she was thinking that that would not do. That would not do at all.
The “meeting” had given her advance knowledge of a potential threat to the beloved routine. And by the time she was leaving the fat-smelling warmth of the shop, Hilda had hatched a plan.
She knew all about poisons from Ian’s explanations, long-drawn-out monologues that, despite their monotony, had registered in Hilda’s mind. Which was fortunate. She knew about nicotine, and about the way it was lethal and produced symptoms not unlike heart failure.
Getting a small supply would not be a problem. There were constant threats against the centre – notably from animal rights groups based out in the wilderness of Hebden Bridge and Todmorden-so a small break-in, during which most of the contents of the centre could be strewn around and trashed, was an easy thing to arrange . . . particularly after administering a small dose of sleeping tablets to her sister, who obligingly nodded off in front of the TV.
Hilda scooted along Luddersedge’s late night streets, let herself in with her own key-thanking God that he had seen fit to make Ian make her a joint key-holder with him-did what she considered to be an appropriate amount of damage, and removed a small amount of nicotine from the glass jar in Ian’s office cabinet, to which, again, she had a key. She left the cabinet untouched by “the vandals” who had destroyed the office. Then, after resetting the alarm, she had smashed in the windows with a large stick and returned home.
It wasn’t until she was almost back at the house that she heard the siren. She had smiled then – it had been long enough for whoever had broken in to do all the damage and escape without challenge. The night air had smelled good then, good and alive with . . . not so much possibilities but with continuance. Back in the warmth, she had settled herself down in front of the TV and, after about half an hour, had dropped off herself. The icing on the cake had been the fact that it was Hilda’s sister who woke Hilda up. A wonderful alibi, even though none would be needed.
Two days later, on the night of the Conservative Club’s Christmas Party, Hilda had bolted her meal and – though she knew she was risking things – had gone to the toilet at ten minutes to ten (Arthur Clark’s toilet habits being legendary). Once out of the ballroom, she had run down to the Gentlemen’s toilet, removed the tissue rolls from all but one WC, and had treated the first few sheets of the remaining roll with the special bottle in her handbag. It was four minutes to ten when she had finished.
She had arrived back in th
e ballroom at 9:58 just in time to see Arthur get up from the table and set off for his date with his maker. She had not been able to go straight back and was grateful for Agnes Olroyd catching her to talk about the break-in and about her Eric’s prostate. By the time they had finished talking, Hilda’s composure was fully restored and she was able to rejoin the table.
And now Harriet was nowhere to be seen. But that could wait.
The main thing as far as Hilda was concerned was to find her bag.
And she had a good idea as to where it was.
Harriet’s revelations had hit Edna Clark harder even than her husband’s death less than twelve hours earlier.
In Edna’s kitchen, with the sun washing through the window that looked out onto the back garden and with steam gently wafting from the freshly boiled kettle, Edna sat at the table feeling she had suddenly lost far more than her life partner: now she had lost her life itself. Everything she had believed in had been quickly and surely trounced by the blubbering Harriet Merkinson when she burst through the front door, ran along the hall-pursued by a confused Betty Thorndike – and emerged in the kitchen, tears streaming down her face. And now Edna’s 27 years with Arthur lay before her in tatters; every conversation, every endearment whispered to her in the private darkness of the their bedroom, every meal she had prepared and every holiday snapshot they had taken.
While Harriet continued sniffling and Betty simply stood leaning against the kitchen cabinets (installed by Arthur, Edna recalled, one laughter-filled weekend in the early 1980s), her eyes seemingly permanently raised in a mask of disbelief, Edna looked around at the once-familiar ephemera and bric-a-brac of a life that now seemed completely alien. These were things from another life – another person’s life – and nothing to do with Edna Clark, newly bereaved widow of one Arthur Clark, late of this parish.
The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries Page 15
