‘Oh, there is. Former dancer in musicals, I believe. But luckily she wasn’t there last night. Don’t suppose she much cares for social events of that sort, and she may be fed up with seeing Sir Billy being Sir Billy.’
‘One good thing, she didn’t have to watch him die. But, tell me, what were the exact circumstances? Were you too far away to see?’
‘Yes, and no. I was quite near him, but I was busy keeping an eye on the trays of champagne. If no one does that, they tend sometimes to get delayed off-stage, delayed and depleted.’
‘Dear old human nature.’
‘Yes. So all that I saw really was that Sir Billy was taking yet another glass, just as soon as he’d swigged the one before. But I didn’t properly see the one that poisoned him, though, now you remind me, I did just notice Sir Billy pull a face when he put it to his lips. But then the stupid fool — oh, I know nil nisi bonum and all that — instead of putting the glass aside, he took a really big gulp. I actually turned away then, didn’t want to look at him.’
‘And then you heard the spluttering and the vomiting?’
‘At the very next moment. I looked back in time to see that great fat body of his go thudding to the ground. Of course, I knew at once what had happened. Everybody there must have thought the same thing, the poisoner being so much on everyone’s mind.’
‘Yes, of course. You know, here safe indoors all day I don’t feel it quite as strongly, especially as I rather discourage la Pickstock’s gossiping. But, of course, everyone in the city must be thinking at every minute: Will I be the next? Will it be me, out of the blue?’
‘Exactly. You should have seen the reaction all round when it became clear Sir Billy had been a victim. Frankly, there was plain relief on every face. Not me. Not this time!
‘Yes. And ... and I suppose it’s possible that one of those faces was deliberately putting on that same look of relief. To cover up. The poisoner.’
‘It could have been, certainly. But equally whoever it was could have slipped away the moment it was clear that from the expression of distaste on Sir Billy’s face that he had taken at least some of the aconitine. Once the proceedings started there was no one there on the door to look at invitation cards.’
‘And Pat hasn’t got anywhere, as far as you know?’
‘No. He was on the scene quickly enough, and his team had had all the exits stopped in minutes. Then they started the questioning. None of us was allowed to go until they’d seen everyone.’
‘So it was very late when you woke me last night?’
‘It was today, in fact. Early morning today. I didn’t quite know what to do, but I thought you might have been worrying. So I woke you. Not that you were worrying as it turned out.’
‘No. I was so knocked out by my trip with Miss Earwaker that I just wasn’t in a state to do any worrying about anything.’
John gave her a more authoritative glance.
‘I doubt very much if it was the trip alone that exhausted you,’ he said. ‘You’re still under doctor’s orders, don’t forget. You’re still ill. I should have put my foot down more firmly yesterday about you and your wretched Miss Earwaker. It was a nonsense you going out like that. You’ve a long way to go, a very long way, before you’re back to anything like normal. And you’ve got to remember that.’
‘Oh, John, don’t preach. I know all you said’s right, and I will try to take it easy. I really will.’
‘I hope you do. You know, if you go on the way you’ve been doing these last few days, you’ll do yourself some permanent damage. And I’ll find, instead of being the supportive husband of senior police officer Detective Superintendent Martens, I’m being sick-nurse to bed-bound Mrs Harriet Piddock. If not worse.’
*
Whatever feelings of remorse Harriet had been left with were to be put under severe strain before Monday was much older. Scarcely had she finished the long process of choosing what to wear and getting herself dressed — she was determined at least not to endure compulsory bed-rest — than Pat Murphy rang.
‘Harriet, something new. And hopeful, at last. We’ve got a witness to your poisoning.’
Into her head, as she sat there on the edge of the bed, there came again that flash of thought saying somehow black and white. For a moment she was thrown by it. What exactly was it? It was nothing like an image of anything black and white, more just a single thought attached to nothing. And it vanished as quickly as it had arrived in her head.
But it had stopped her properly listening to Pat.
‘ ... or at least it looks as if we’ve got one.’
Was he saying that? He must be.
‘But it’s not ... not certain about this witness?’ she asked clumsily.
‘It’s not certain to me, that’s for sure. But maybe it’s because I’ve yet to see the fella. He was one of the two security men on the gate at the Club when it happened to you. Name of Bruce Grant. But that’s about all I know.’
‘So how did you get to hear?’
‘Ach, the fella went sailing into his local PS — it’s the station out at the Meads — just last night. Happy as Larry he was. "Yes," he said at the desk, “I saw the woman do it.”’
The woman. Then that old man out at Halsell Common must have seen someone else altogether digging beside that monkshood plant. The man in the grey three-piece suit with the tie must have been someone quite innocent. Perhaps the tuber there was broken months ago.
‘A woman?’ she said slowly. ‘You know, I’ve been trying to keep a woman in the frame, in my mind’s eye, all along. Assuming nothing. The good old rule. But somehow I never really thought the poisoner could be female.’
‘Woman’s point of view. No, tell the truth, I had the same trouble as yourself. And even now I’m not quite happy with the notion of the poisoner being a female. But then I’m an old-fashioned family man, I suppose.’
‘Family man, yes. But old-fashioned, I don’t think so.’
‘Well, that’s as may be. But what I want from you is not your half-arsed compliments, but yourself sitting here, out of sight if you like, while I get my teeth into this fella Bruce Grant.’
‘Pat, I can’t. John gave me such a lecture half an hour ago.’
‘Telling you you’ve got to look after yourself, is it? Well, if you can’t, you can’t.’
‘No. No, Pat, I’ll come. I’ll come. If the poisoner’s to be caught, and if your Bruce Grant saw him — saw her. Her. Her. Then if my being there when you interview Grant will be any help, I’ll be there.’
‘Good girl. Half-past two, here. But take a taxi, mind. We don’t want you back in St Ozzie’s again.’
Chapter Eleven
I’m back on the job, back in the Job, Harriet thought with emotion bubbling hard, as having changed into the grey pleated skirt and the white shirt she generally wore for work, she sat in a tiny cubicle next to Interview Room One at the central police station. Perched up in the comer above her there was the blue-lit monitor screen with its camera focused on whoever might occupy the interviewee’s chair at the bare square table next door.
She waited.
In two minutes or perhaps three, she said to herself, Pat Murphy will lead in this man, Bruce Grant, who says he saw who put aconitine into my Campari soda. All right, if I observe anything useful, I shan’t, as the poisoner’s victim, be able to appear in court. But, never mind that, this is police work and I am engaged in it. This is no longer pussyfooting around with a retired primary school teacher hoping to find a monkshood plant from which the poisoner may have dug up its deadly tuber. This is it, the real thing.
The blue screen above her showed a sudden movement. The door of the interview room had been thrust wide open. Pat Murphy’s burly, bear-like form appeared, guiding in, hand on elbow, Bruce Grant.
He seemed to be in his late thirties, thin face dark with indifferent shaving, sleepy-eyed, ganglingly tall. He was wearing, surprisingly, the uniform that Majestic issued to its security staff. Perhaps, she th
ought, he hopes it will add to the authority of what he is going to tell Pat.
So who is the woman he’s going to describe? The woman he saw dropping something into my tall, half-empty glass as I lay there in the sun, vulnerably all but naked? Will I recognize her as someone I’ve seen before? Be able to put a name to her?
But forget speculation. Pat’s seated himself. He’s going to begin.
Well now, Mr Grant, they tell me at the Meads police station that you saw who poisoned the lady at the Majestic Sports and Social Club on August bank holiday Monday. So just what was it you did see? Did you actually notice someone putting something into the glass of bright red drink which Mrs Harriet Piddock had beside her?’
‘You trying to say I didn’t?’
Pretty truculent that. What’s wrong with the fellow? But perhaps Pat was being a bit impatient.
‘Not at all, Mr Grant, not at all. So, why don’t you just tell me in your own way what it was you saw?’
Ah, that’s better. Grant looks more co-operative now.
‘Saw a woman, didn’t I? Old woman. Saw her go creeping up to where that lady was on that recliner, and then I did see her pour something liquid into that glass. While Mrs Whatever-you-said was asleep.’
‘So, can you tell me what this old woman looked like? Were you at your post on the gate when you saw her?’
‘‘Course I was. Never leave it, do I? What I’m paid for. I’m on duty there, see. Never mind how bloody boring it gets I gotter stand there.’
‘Right you are. So this woman you saw must have come past you earlier on. Did you take note of her then?’
‘No, I didn’t. Lovely sunny morning like it was bank holiday, you get ‘em streaming past by the dozen, all talking and yapping. Girls a sight to see, too. It takes us all our time to check they got their membership cards.’
‘So you and your mate were busy men, though you did have time to look about and see this old woman go creeping up to where the lady was stretched out there?’
‘Yeah, ‘course I had time. It slackens off after a bit, you know. Slackens off. And that’s when I saw her creeping up to where that Mrs Piddock was lying. And then I saw her put that stuff into the drink. Definite.’
‘All right, you saw her. So what did she look like?’
Bruce Grant seemed to be having some difficulty in producing an answer.
Okay, he doesn’t seem to be particularly intelligent, Harriet thought. He may just be having trouble getting the words right.
‘Looked like an old woman,’ Grant said at last. ‘Sort of bent and creeping, like I said.’
‘Well now, that’s not a great deal for you to have noticed. You’d been watching her, hadn’t you, watching her while she crept up and then put something into that drink?’
‘I told you.’
‘You did, you did indeed. But you haven’t managed to tell me just what she looked like. You know, if we’re going to catch her before she poisons any more people, we’ve got to have the best description we can get.’
Bruce Grant, there on the screen, shifted about a little on his chair opposite Pat.
‘It’s hard to think,’ he complained.
‘But try, Mr Grant. Try.’
‘Well, she had on a sort of ... I dunno. A sort of cloak thing.’
‘Right. A sort of cloak. Colour?’
A momentary hesitation.
‘Green. Yes, green.’
‘Light green or dark?’
No hesitation now.
‘Oh, dark. Yes, dark green.’
‘And what else besides the cloak?’
‘I dunno. I mean, when you see someone, old woman like that, all bent over, pouring something into someone’s drink, you don’t go thinking about what clothes she has on. Do you?’
‘I dare say you don’t. But what about her face? Did you see her face while she was pouring the stuff in? How far, now, would you say it was from the gate to the pool?’
‘I was near enough. I saw what I saw.’
‘So how much did you see of this old woman’s face? If we’re to get our useful description, that’s what we really need, what like was her face.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Her face. She was old, like, wrinkled and, yeah, with a hook of a nose. And ... and her hair was sort of whitish, and long and straggly. And she looked evil. Just evil.’
Evil? For God’s sake, what sort of a description is that? If he can’t do better than this, Pat’s never going to get any further forward. He can hardly have every police officer in the force going about with eyes skinned for a bent old woman who looks evil.
*
By the end of the long session they were, in fact, a little further forward, if only a little. Pat, Harriet thought, had been wonderfully patient with the stupid man on the other side of the table. But he had been able to do no more than screw one or two more details out of him. Yes, he had not thought much about that bank holiday happening, not until he had chanced to read a copy of the Evening Star — all that about poisonings — then he had remembered. No, he hadn’t seen the old woman leave the club. But then a lot of people had begun to go, and it wasn’t his duty to take any particular notice of them.
No wonder, Harriet thought. If the guests at the Majestic Insurance prize-giving had made their hasty exits when Sir Billy was so tumultuously sick, then there would have been a good many people at the pool that holiday Monday who would have thought it best to leave when John led me off at top speed, already beginning to spew out that poison, to — which was it? The Ladies or the Gents? I forget what he said.
And dumb Bruce Grant had managed to add a long skirt — ‘grey, I dunno, yeah, sort o’ greyish,’ — to his description of the woman who had, it seemed, poured out that aconitine. The poison she might have carried round with her for years, if Agatha Christie’s dispenser was anything to go by, waiting for the moment of life or death. My moment of life or death. But why did she choose that particular moment? Why did she choose me? Did she somehow know who I was, an authority figure, a senior police officer? Right, a crazed old woman, if that is what Grant’s poisoner is, may well have nurtured some hate of that sort. Or was it simply that, lying there wearing only my minimal bathers, I looked particularly vulnerable? Somehow temptingly vulnerable?
Pat Murphy, his witness disposed of, came in.
‘So, Harriet, what did you think?’
‘I don’t know, Pat, I really don’t know. I mean, he was firm about seeing what he did, so he must have seen something, somebody, even if it went out of his mind almost straight away. But why, when you did all you could, didn’t he give you a better description?’
‘Well, the fella was a fair distance away. I’ve just taken a quick look at the plan the Scenes-of-Crime people drew up. It’s all of thirty yards, or metres as they will call them nowadays, from the gate to the place where you were lying. More even. So he mightn’t have seen all that much.’
‘No, I suppose not. But he was quite detailed about her pouring the stuff into my drink.’
‘He was. And I’ll tell you what I’ll do, soon as I get a moment. I’ll have a bit of a reconstruction. Not with you, not with you. I don’t want to put you back in hospital. But I’ll have a WDC get into her swimsuit and lie there, and I’ll have a constable at the gate, someone about the height of that long streak of a fella. And we’ll see what he can see. That should tell us just how much anyone could observe, one way or another.’
‘And in the meanwhile ... ?’
Pat heaved a huge sigh.
‘I’ll be seeing Grant’s mate on the gate there,’ he said. ‘Might get some corroboration out of him. And then each of the female witnesses at the pool will have to be interviewed once more to see if any of them fits at all your man Grant’s description, or if anyone saw an old woman who does. And more than half of the hundred and twenty-seven we’ve got are women. Then, if we get no luck, we’ll have to tackle all the men again, the men and, damn it, the boys. As if my resources aren’t stretched enough as it is.’
*
Harriet, suddenly so tired she could hardly walk, had gone home then. Luckily, censorious John was still at work. All right, she thought, I’ll tell him all about my afternoon. One day. When this nameless old crone that dismal Bruce Grant saw has been caught. And from now on I really will take things quietly. God, I feel dopey enough now, and all I’ve done is to take a couple of taxi rides and sit watching that monitor screen while Pat attempted to squeeze information out of Grant.
But why was Grant so unforthcoming? All right, he’s not the best communicator in the world, and it could be that the right words just elude him, have never before entered his head. Yet I feel something was wrong about him.
Wrong? No, call it not quite right. I couldn’t pin it down as I watched from the cubicle, the way I had to concentrate with all the force that’s left to me. But —
No, wait. Here’s one thing. Grant mentioned me, lying there on the recliner, and he described the mysterious old woman, if not in detail, at least moderately clearly, her hooked nose, her straggly white hair, the cloak, the skirt. But he never described with a single detail the person he saw being poisoned. Me. And me, not dressed in any ordinary way. Far from it. Me, lying there in the bikini I put on only when it’s so hot I feel I must have maximum exposure to whatever wafts of breeze there are. The almost naked me.
And Grant’s a man, isn’t he? Didn’t he comment on girls a sight to see going past him through the gate? He must have had some reaction to me, even if there was a lot of so-called talent about. But he didn’t. He never indicated in any way that the victim of his old woman was almost naked.
I wish I’d realized this when I was discussing Grant with Pat. Call him now? But is my near-nakedness much of a fact for his files? And won’t he, in any case, have spotted the inconsistency for himself? And perhaps he didn’t quite like to mention it to me. Pat, the decent family man, God bless him.
So, no, leave it, leave it. If only because Pat’s stretched to the utmost. Under maximum pressure. And there’ll be another opportunity at some time. Plenty of them.
A Detective at Death's Door Page 9
