Fall of Angels

by Barbara Cleverly

  “Certainly. I’m almost sure that there was an attempt on the life of Miss Proudfoot in the chapel at about eight-thirty. An attempt which would have been neutralised, had you done your job, young man. And a second person with links to the attempt, Miss Louise—or Lois—Lawrence, was herself murdered, probably by midnight, and her body discovered at about five o’clock next morning.”

  “Lois? Murdered?” Tyrrell fell silent, his eyes starting from his head. He began to tug nervously at his blond quiff and breathe shallowly as the enormity of his situation stunned him.

  “We are left with a scenario where a jilted young man who confesses a degree of animosity towards the girl who has deceived him has hours of time on his hands to go in pursuit, track her down, kill her and return to his empty digs at his leisure. Apart from the short time you were talking to Doctor Henningham, you do not, it would seem, have an alibi. I shall be speaking to your landlady and to the master in an attempt to establish an accurate picture of your movements last night. Meantime, I’m sure you understand, I must keep you incommunicado until I have spoken to your two witnesses. Therefore, if necessary, I am prepared to put you under arrest on a charge of the murder of Miss Louise Lawrence and possible involvement in the previous attack on Miss Proudfoot. You may avoid this measure by agreeing to stay in a holding cell. If you try to leave, I shall issue the arrest warrant. I’ll have you escorted downstairs. The superintendent will probably want a word. Sarge! Ah, Sergeant, will you take Mr. Tyrrell to cell ten. And fetch the lad a cup of tea.”

  Tyrrell appeared for a moment to rally. He raised his head and called out dolefully. “Wait a second, Sergeant! Would you make that two sugars, please?”

  “Good man! We’ve got ’im bang to rights then? Selfish little berk! I’ll just ring the chief back and let him know the good news. No communication as yet with the press.” MacFarlane was cock-a-hoop as he ran an eye over Redfyre’s interview notes.

  “No sir! He didn’t do it. I’m reasonably certain of that. My instinct is telling me he’s involved only to the extent that he’s been put up to mischief by others—used as a cat’s paw. There’s a deeper conspiracy in play here, and we’re not near to unraveling it. If you must, you could tell the chief that we have detained a suspect who is helping us with our enquiries and we may confirm identity by the end of the day, or some such. That should hold him.”

  MacFarlane glowered and muttered, but he knew better than to mistrust messages from Redfyre’s gut. He reluctantly returned the receiver to its hook.

  “From where I’m sitting, sir, it looks as though the chosen scene for this debacle, the university body, is the rich but rotting medium from which this nasty fungus has spawned.”

  “Right! For once I’ll grant you a metaphor, and remind you that spores are airborne, free to blow about and settle anywhere. Go for the master, Redfyre, before worse occurs. Pin him down and interview him straightaway. I bet he knows something! It happened on his watch. And be prepared to be hoodwinked—you know what these university types are like for protecting each other. He’ll swear the young toad Tyrrell was in bed with Mrs. Master all evening if he has to, to get him off a charge . . . He’s got the what? The squitters, eh?” MacFarlane gave an evil grin. “Perfect! That’ll learn ’im not to go gadding off to foreign parts in term time. Use it, Redfyre! Catch him off-balance. Square your shoulders, block his exit to the jakes and stand no nonsense.”

  “Doctor Henningham! It’s very good of you to see me, bearing in mind your, ah, delicate condition, sir. I’ll make this brief.”

  “Not at all, Redfyre. We’ve all seen worse in the trenches, what! Just stay clear of the doorway, in case I have to go rocketing through. I’m not expecting it—the worst, I’m sure, is over. Unless the worst turns out to be malaria.” He sighed and grimaced. “There’s always that fear. Nasty payload satisfactorily jettisoned last night, however! Sorry I had to bail out early. I knew I was leaving matters in capable hands.” He managed a wan smile. “Can’t say it was unexpected—the medics always warn one. It’s just that, having made it through six months of secondment to India unscathed, one begins to feel one is immune.”

  Redfyre peered at the master, who was lying shivering on a chaise longue, rugged up to the chin in a tartan blanket. The ruddy features he remembered from the previous evening were pinched and pale, and there hung in the air a faint trace of vomitous effluent.

  “You got back last week, I understand?”

  “Last Monday. Not a day too soon! Much picking up of threads to be done. And a fair bit of heavy-duty darning, you might say. I could have well done without this present piece of drama. I can tell you!”

  “So, I hadn’t appreciated that the arrangements for the concert were not within your—”

  “No, indeed!” was the swift response. “I’ll make it clear, Redfyre. Have you read the local paper? No? Take my copy and make what you will of it . . . The idiot reporter is ascribing to me a generosity of spirit to which honesty does not permit me to make a claim. Here.” He handed over a folded newssheet. “Take a look. ‘Miss Proudfoot’—to whom the feller seems to have lost his heart!—‘was denied a platform for her musical talents by the whole university,’ he asserts. Apart, as he would have it—from this college chapel. St. Barnabas. People are congratulating me on my farsightedness and liberality! Others are condemning me for breaking ranks and betraying the principles of the University. Men whom I had considered my friends are in a decidedly black-balling mood!”

  He shuffled about in discomfort for a moment, sighed and confided, “It was not my decision to offer the girl a platform in the chapel. Not mine at all! I was in Calcutta, up to my ears in financial arrangements for an offshoot college over there at the time, and completely unaware of—or at all concerned by—box-office politics back home. Permission for the event was wrung from my deputy, Dean Herbert, whom I had left in charge. We’ll probably find that Mrs. Herbert was the driving force behind it. Manipulative lady, Honoria! Awkward, what! In all honesty, Redfyre, I should say that, had the request been made of me, I would have declined it. I’m a traditionalist when it comes to the granting of degrees to women, and look with disfavour and dismay on the terrorist tactics certain feminist agitators use in their efforts to change the structure of our society. My stance on such matters is well-known, understood and supported. However, I want to make it clear that, presented with the fait accompli of the performance booking, I would have gone to any lengths to avoid harm coming to the talented young lady, who, as you must have noticed, is charm itself. I will help in any way possible to establish what happened to her. I cannot claim, however, that she performed in my college sub auspiciis praesidentis.”

  His lungs or his patience, exhausted by this speech, gave out, and he broke off to cough into a large handkerchief.

  “Thank you for clarifying that, Master.” Redfyre took advantage of the pause in delivery to take up the matter he was really interested in. “But I’d like to hear what you have to say about your Thomas Tyrrell and his activities yesterday.”

  “I’ve given him a bollocking already!”

  Redfyre enjoyed the spirited expletives which occasionally spiced the academic’s expression. Clearly this man had spent time in rougher company than the effete fellows he rubbed shoulders with these days.

  “The young twerp’s well aware that Miss Proudfoot came tumbling down owing partially to his dereliction of duty. When she’s strong enough to survive the awful sight, I’ll send him along with a bunch of hothouse roses to grovel.”

  Redfyre explained that he needed to check the time of Tyrrell’s arrival back in college and the time he’d left. He produced his notebook.

  The master grimaced. “Of course. I can confirm both those times he gave you. It was a very brief encounter! Ten minutes at the outside. I was in no state to be able to grant him longer. The curse had just come upon me, and I had bellyaching enough of my own to suffer without
dealing with an emotional music scholar ranting on about a girl who’d stood him up.”

  “Of course.” Redfyre closed his notebook and got to his feet. “When did you realise you’d fallen victim to Vishnu’s Vengeance, sir?” he asked, smiling politely. “My last sight of you was of a commander in chief, organizing his squad with aplomb.”

  The tough old face relaxed into a thoughtful expression. “You’re right, inspector! It came upon me all of a sudden. One moment I was helping Coote down from the scaffolding, then I was handing back unwanted offerings—handkerchiefs and suchlike. An old lady came to retrieve her hip flask of brandy from me. Did you notice how effective that was, Redfyre? Something to keep in mind, eh, what?” His voice trailed away as he tried to reconstruct the later events of the evening. “Then, I suddenly felt sick. Could hardly get my breath. Headache, shivery and the rest of it. You’d got your witnesses lined up by then, so I pulled everything in tight and made a dash for the Lodge.” Silence again for a moment, then, “I say, thinking of people’s kindnesses, do you happen to know what became of that rather pretty little inhaler—the silver device that someone handed over. Smelling salts, she said it contained?”

  Catching the appalling import of the thought, Redfyre took his time replying and chose his words carefully. “Yes, I do know. It’s quite safe, sir. If I remember correctly, you unscrewed the top, took a sniff and identified it as smelling salts. You handed it to Miss Stretton, who was attending to her friend and she, rather ungraciously, you must have thought, snatched it from you, declared it an unsafe medicament and put it away in her bag.” He smiled reassuringly. “She later handed it to me. It is at present locked away in the police safe in St. Andrew’s Street,” he lied. He had controlled the automatic movement of his right hand towards his right trouser pocket on the mention of the inhaler and hoped that the slight bulge of the object at present digging into his thigh could be taken, if noticed at all, for a cigarette lighter. He’d been about to hand it over to the master. “If you can give me the information which will identify the kind lender, I’ll see that it’s returned to her, sir.”

  “Two things, Redfyre. I think we both value precision in our work, so you won’t think me pedantic if I clarify: I couldn’t positively identify it as smelling salts. But don’t take my word for it, as I have never actually had the experience of sniffing at such things. No idea what to expect. The ladies of my family are not the shrinking violet type, and things like that are unknown in my household. But I can tell you that it was disgusting! And to think that you’re supposed, from the design of it, to insert it into a nostril and breathe in the fumes! The fumes from a substance which derives from the charred shavings of a deer’s horns, they tell me! Argh. The very thought makes me retch! Glad I did no more than wave it under my nose!”

  They fell silent for a moment, recalling the scene, then the master resumed. “Secondly, Redfyre, every instinct would be to avert one’s nose when offered those salts. Believe me! No unconscious person, I am persuaded, would be physically able to make that life-preserving evasive movement had someone attempted to insert it into a nostril . . .”

  Redfyre shuddered. “And Miss Proudfoot was at that moment out of her senses and immobile—but breathing.”

  “We should thank God for Miss Stretton’s intervention! Lying here, feeling useless, I’ve had time to think this through. And now I’m going to voice the thought you are too professional to utter, Redfyre: I fear a second attempt was made on that young girl’s life last evening. By someone who was prepared to activate a backup plan. Someone who was lurking, observing, manipulating others, riding on circumstances.” He shot a penetrating glance at Redfyre and asked, “Are these fevered speculations? I rely on you to tell me if I’ve fallen into a state of delirium.”

  “If you have, sir, you have company. This is a path I’m treading myself.”

  The master nodded and continued, gathering confidence. “I fear we must contemplate a man or woman who was in no hurry, and ready to seize an opportunity if and when it offered. They had the means to hand and the nerve to use it. A cool game-player. The worst kind of opponent for a lawman who plays by the rules.”

  Redfyre nodded, his expression sober. Though impressed by the master’s perspicacity, he was not ready to share his further thought: “Two unsuccessful attempts, perhaps. But another attempt on a young Cambridge girl’s life has succeeded.” He would keep this up his sleeve for the moment. He sensed that Henningham was tiring and was determined to keep the master’s fevered and swivelling eye on the finishing line.

  “And the lady who handed you this silver device?” he asked.

  “Never saw her before in my life. Nothing out of the ordinary. Usual Cambridge lady on an evening out. But I must do better than this for the police!” He frowned and went on with precision: “She was five foot, four inches tall—a bit overblown, you’d say. Busty, corseted. Looking like anybody’s aunt. No distinguishing features, unfortunately. She was wearing a straight-cut dark woollen coat—navy or dark green. A cloche hat, with a rather cheery spray of holly berries on the side,” he finished in triumph. “Just the sort of trustworthy old trout you would accept help from. I didn’t think twice!”

  “Did she have anything to say to you?”

  “Yes. She spoke well. Educated . . . low register. She knew who I was, addressed me as ‘Master.’ Said something like, ‘Do give the poor girl a sniff of this. It will have her conscious and on her feet in a trice.’”

  He gave Redfyre a concerned look, which was returned.

  “Inspector, may I ask you to examine carefully that silver inhaler when you can get your hands on it? It is locked away, you say? Thank God! We wouldn’t want that being passed around for sampling in the officers’ mess!”

  “Even with the lid on, it pongs!”

  With the end of his pencil, MacFarlane poked at the silver cylinder that lay between them in the middle of his desk. “You feeling all right, Redfyre? You’ve been trotting about round town with this in your pocket all morning.” He peered at it dubiously. “Is this what you’d call a ‘vinaigrette,’ by any chance?”

  “No. Please don’t fiddle with it, sir! It’s the wrong shape and has a slightly different purpose, I think. Vinaigrettes are small, slab-shaped decorative containers and they have a lid that you lift. They give out sweet, strong odours—oils like lavender or eucalyptus dissolved in vinegar, I suppose.”

  The third man present in MacFarlane’s office nodded agreement, his brown eyes twinkling with amusement over his face mask. Tall and silent, the masked man wore the green lab coat and gloves he’d rushed out in when he received the call for help at the hospital.

  MacFarlane had wasted no time and pulled no punches. “We want your best man over here in two minutes. I’ve sent a car for him. That’s it arriving now. Poisons! We need an expert in poisons to take a look. No, we’re NOT sending it over in a bag! It’s . . . volatile,” he improvised. “And an immediate danger to life. We could lose the whole force and the station cat if it gets out!”

  Professor Henderson had arrived with a bag of precautionary pieces of equipment that had appeared to be snatched up and tossed in hurriedly as he’d left the laboratory. He’d put up the mask dangling around his neck in the doorway before entering and swiftly giving them a rundown on his impressive qualifications. These included, as well as one or two degrees, wartime experience in poisonous gases. He now carefully picked up the silver inhaler with a pair of tweezers and put it away in a glass vial with a tightly fitted stopper. He placed this inside a wad of cotton wool, packed the whole bundle into a steel box and again fitted a lid.

  “You’re right,” he said calmly, “about vinaigrettes. The gentry would sniff them to combat the stench from the river or the crowded ballroom. But smelling salts, which this purports to be, can be carried about in any small container. Anything from a disused glass salt pot to a bespoke gold Fabergé confection carrying the fa
mily coat of arms. This one is a clever design that enables the contents to be delivered straight up the nostrils. I say—I must check, you haven’t . . .? Thank God for that! It may be quite innocent of course, you never know until it’s tested.”

  “Bit of an old-fashioned device, I think?” the superintendent suggested.

  “It’s a very old-fashioned substance,” the professor said. “Ancient. Known to us from Roman times—sal volatile,” he went on conversationally as he stowed the box away in his bag. “Pliny the Elder mentions it: hammoniacus sal. Ammonia salt. No recorded cases of it being used by Roman ladies, who seem to have been made of sterner stuff but one sniff would give a lift to a fading wrestler or a faltering boxer. So I expect it was an essential item in the materia medica of any Master of Gladiators worth his salt.” Straight-faced, he added, “Never ones to miss the chance of an unfair advantage, the Romans. And the well-trained, experienced gladiator represented, after all, a considerable investment to his lanista. No, this stuff has always been useful for anyone requiring an instant boost to the sympathetic nervous system. The Victorians abused it, and the habit is taking a long time to die out. I blame novelists for its overuse. It’s a more dramatic device than a tap on the nose with a fan, and they have their overwrought characters reach for the salts to emphasise their emotional state and even to raise a laugh. Dickens has one of his characters—in Hard Times, I think—order some inhalers to be made up specially to be offered round to startled friends and family when he announces his wedding engagement.”

  “But can you tell if there’s anything else in there besides ammonia? We’re dealing with the case of a gentleman who has actually sniffed at that bottle and, we believe, was taken ill as a result.”

  “His symptoms?”

  Redfyre supplied the list. “Breathlessness, headache, nausea, diarrhea—symptoms he naturally assumed to be due to a tropical stomach condition he picked up abroad. He’s just returned from India.”