‘I understand that this room has been referred to throughout the length of this inquiry as the Incident Room. It is no longer going to be called that. Ladies and gentlemen, you are now standing in the Murder Room. The Murder Room.’
And, again, excitement could be seen to run through all present like so many diverse darting electric currents.
Harriet glanced over at the bull-like form of Pat Murphy, just behind Rance on the platform, a silent figure in his bulging, bright blue suit. Nothing at all in his big, round, red face, with the little blue eyes planted in it like currants in a bun, betrayed either approval or rejection of Rance’s stagey change of the room’s name, nor of his bright-polished new theory.
But rejection of that, or something not far short of it, was what she herself was beginning now increasingly to feel. She was not sure why she was so opposed. The idea was at least tenable. The history of crime was full enough of examples of icy killers attempting that sort of major blackmail. Yet, apart from her own belief, as yet unsubstantiated, that Bruce Grant’s identification of the Poisoner as a witch-like old woman was pure make-believe, she could not help feeling that the Poisoner was acting from a quite different motive. Acting, simply, out of that terrible desire to exercise the power of life or death.
But, up on the platform, Commander Rance was getting the investigation on his own lines rapidly under way, body leaning eagerly forward, eyes glittering with the intensity of his purpose. Beside him, Pat stood, a monument to showing no opinion.
For a quarter of an hour or more Rance hammered on. New tasks were allocated. Earlier lines of inquiry were abruptly terminated. Among these, Harriet was pained to hear, were two that Pat must have put to Rance out of a determination not to hold anything back. First, no further steps were to be taken about ‘an old man who, I’m given to understand, claims to have seen someone digging at a clump of monkshood plants out at a place called Halsell Common, miles from this city’ and, next, ‘a scheme for reconstructing the circumstances of the first murder, or murder attempt, which is unlikely to take us any further forward’.
So much, she thought, for the little I’ve been able to contribute to stopping the Poisoner.
But, before Rance had wholly finished, there came a clattering interruption.
The desk-sergeant from the front hall came in, face flushed with excitement and embarrassment. In his fists he was clutching what looked to Harriet like four or five copies of the Evening Star.
‘Sir, sir,’ he positively shouted out. ‘Sir, I think you ought to see this at once.’
It was not totally clear whether he was addressing Pat Murphy or Commander Rance. But Rance did not hesitate to jump down from the platform and stride along the length of the big room, hand held out.
He met the sergeant a yard or two short of where Harriet was standing, and in his eagerness to snatch the copy of the paper that was being offered him, contrived to send the whole bundle skittering to the floor.
So it was that Harriet, accustomed to the paper’s layout, was able to read the headline The Poisoner Writes to the Star.
Then, a minute or two later, as Ranee apparently absorbed in a single gulp the newsprint in front of him, she learnt why the Poisoner had written.
Rance had swung round and mounted the platform again.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he barked. ‘Here it is. A demand for money. A demand from Target for one million pounds to halt her campaign of murder.’
Harriet would have liked to snatch up one of the copies of the paper Commander Rance had knocked to the floor. But the desk-sergeant had already bent ponderously down, scooped them up and was setting off towards Pat Murphy.
So it was not until a quarter of an hour later, when Pat handed her one of the copies, that she was able to read in full what the Poisoner had said.
The time has come to say why I have thought it appropriate and necessary to bring to an end the lives of a number of citizens of Birchester, and even to show that I have the ability to send to Hell, where they deserve to languish, a person outside the ambit of this wicked city. The lesson must be learnt. It is time for the wickedness to end. It is time to go back to the old ideals, the forgotten ideals, to regain healthy minds in healthy bodies.
For this reason I chose as sacrificial victims on the altar of probity a woman lying obscenely naked beside a swimming pool, a youth indulging in the grossest passions in a drinking den dedicated to displays of flesh, a young woman wantonly lying in the sun almost unclothed in the very heart of the city, a lady of mature years who yet flaunted scarlet lips and scarlet fingernails in a modest tea shop, and that arch corruptor of all that the city should stand for, Sir Billy Bell, owner of establishments throughout Birchester selling gramophone records of the most raucous music set to the lewdest words, the man who has turned once decent cinemas into places showing the vilest of pornography.
I tell you now that all such activities must cease. If within the next week I am not paid, in a manner I shall indicate to the authorities, the sum of one million pounds by way of punishment, I shall continue to eliminate such offenders as I chance upon. I have the best historical precedents for my actions. In the wars that have ravaged the world many, many sinners have perished. Let Birchester beware lest some hundreds die in much the same way that in the War of 1914-1918 sinners choked to death in their thousands or became victims of almost fatal attacks of vomiting illness.
Then, below, the signature. Mentor.
She handed the paper back to Pat.
‘So it seems I was obscenely naked,’ she said, relieved to find something in the letter she could see as more funny than not.
‘That aside,’ Pat replied with a hint of a grin, ‘what do you make of it all?’
‘What do you?’
‘Ach, no, I asked you first.’
‘All right. Let me see. Right, between you and me, I think all that stuff was written by a man.’
She glanced over towards the platform where Commander Rance was talking emphatically to one of his team.
‘We won’t go into that just now,’ Pat said in a heavy whisper. ‘So, you tell me. You’re the one who notices the little things, specially when it comes to words on paper or, come to that, on the lips. Tell me about anything you may have picked up.’
‘Right then. It struck me at once that whoever wrote that letter is educated, not at all likely to be a wizened old crone out of nowhere. He’s educated, perhaps even over-educated. I’d guess he’s fairly well on in life and the product of some school at a time when schools laid down the rules, whether of grammar or of behaviour.’
‘You’re right there, I think. He’s certainly someone who believes he knows how everybody should behave. But does that help us one little bit to get hold of the fella?’
Now Harriet ventured on a somewhat daring comment, pleased to find herself capable not only of thinking but of putting her thoughts into the right words for Pat.
‘Isn’t getting hold of the Poisoner,’ she said, ‘the task now of Commander Rance and his merry men?’
Pat pulled a face.
‘And who’s at this moment under the command of Mr Rance?’ he said. ‘And ought to be up there, listening for orders?’
Poor Pat, she thought.
‘Oh, I think you’ll be able to hold your own. And if you do need a shoulder to have a little cry on, mine’s ready and willing.’
Only to find the remark had been overheard, or partially overheard, by Commander Rance coming sharp-paced towards them.
Pat, having no doubt seen such colour as she had in her cheeks draining away in a moment, made matters worse by coming to her assistance with a mild joke.
‘Commander,’ he said, ‘I think you’d like to meet the lady that Mentor of the Evening Star described as lying obscenely naked beside the pool at the Majestic Club.’
His quip provoked a response Harriet had not at all expected.
‘It’s Detective Superintendent Martens, is it? Then, Miss Martens, I have just one t
hing to say to you. I don’t know how you come to be here in the Murder Room where the crime you were a victim of is being investigated, but I have no doubt at all that this is the last place you ought to be. I’ll say good afternoon to you, and I trust I will not see you anywhere near here again.’
Chapter Fourteen
Harriet, feeling moment by moment more depressed and exhausted, found a taxi waiting outside. Sinking down on its back seat, she shut her eyes and let semi-oblivion pour over her.
God, how things have gone wrong. Two hours ago, less, I was more hopeful than I’ve been at any moment since I heard Mr No-hyphen saying, ‘you can take it now that we’ve pulled you through.’ And now I’m even absolutely barred from my own place of work, most likely from all inside news of what’s happening. I thought I was managing to push forward a little the hunt for the man who put poison into my drink on that sunny morning, who’s put poison into what five other people drank. And now there’s nothing I can do to help. I’m barred. It’s a total setback. Total.
Tears, the first she had shed since the long-ago days supercharged with emotion immediately after her wedding, began to spurt from her eyes. Unstoppably they rolled down her cheeks.
Only when the wetness penetrated through her shirt on to the tops of her breasts did she sniff herself into calm. Not before time. The cab was at the comer of her road.
It came to a halt. She thrust open the door, staggered out on to the pavement, feeling so weak she hardly trusted her legs.
Behind her the driver called out for his fare. She turned bewilderedly, then remembered that her purse must be in the bag on her shoulder. She found a note in it, fingered it clumsily out, handed it across.
Then she realized the man was holding out her change. She extended her hand like a beggar and watched as he slid some coins into it.
Tip, she thought. I should ...
She snatched up some of the coins, any of the coins, handed them over.
It was all she could do then to make her way along the path up to the front door. And there, for what seemed minutes, she stood beneath the shelter of the long porch in front of the house, unable to recollect what had to be done to get the door open.
Eventually it floated into her mind that two keys were necessary, and then that they must, like her purse, be in her shoulder-bag.
*
John, coming home at about half-past six, found her lying flat on the bed, still with all her clothes on and fast asleep. He helped her to undress and got her under the duvet. No rebukes. Then, as he was asking her whether she would like some supper, the phone beside the bed rang out.
John picked it up.
‘Yes, Pat, she’s here. But — ’
Hazily Harriet heard Pat’s vigorous, Irishy tones saying something she could not make out
‘No,’ John said in answer. ‘No, you’d better tell me, and I’ll pass it on.’
Then came that always irritating series of yeses in answer to things being said at the far end. Harriet listened to them, lying flat on her back, unable to decide whether she really wanted to know what Pat was saying or not.
Eventually John dropped the handset down on its rest.
‘It’s another one,’ he said.
And then Harriet knew she did want to hear.
‘Another poisoning? Where? Who was it?’
‘Well, it was in Nottingham, and on Sunday evening, not very many hours later than the murder at that Gay March in London. But only when it was diagnosed as aconitine poisoning were the police here informed. It was a young man by the name of Tenter, Lee Tenter. A student. It was at that famous pub, supposed to be the oldest in England, the Trip to Jerusalem.’
‘Yes, I went into it once.’
She felt energy flowing back into her like a tide creeping across wide, wet sands.
‘Well, I gather the place is a big students’ haunt, and on Sunday evening, when it was still hot over in Nottingham, there was a crowd of them milling about. And this Lee Trotter, no, Tenter, Tenter, suddenly vomited, in the way we know all too much about. Apparently though, some of his friends had spotted someone putting something into his beer and, thinking it was some sort of practical joke — they’re not as aware of the Poisoner as we are in Birchester — they gave chase. But, of course, they lost the fellow. In the end they were able to give the police, quickly enough on the scene when it was realized young Tenter was dead, only the vaguest of descriptions.’
Was it, Harriet thought at once, of a man in a three-piece suit somehow resembling a white rabbit? Was it him really? The Poisoner? So nearly caught.
Or, even though John had said the fellow, had it been after all a witch-like old woman, perhaps in some sort of disguise?
‘The people who gave chase,’ she asked, ‘did they say they could have been going after a woman, an old woman?’
‘Well, Pat said they talked about a man. But the descriptions were not at all clear. It was getting dark and the area all round the pub was full of people. The runaway was white, it seems, and wearing a cap — though of course quite a few women wear them these days — as well as some sort of nondescript mackintosh. The Nottingham police still hope, when they’ve questioned everybody whose names they managed to take, that they’ll get a better description, though Pat doesn’t seem to place much reliance on it.’
‘Yes, I wouldn’t either. But the more I hear the more it seems to me the Poisoner is a man.’
‘Yes, Pat agrees with you, more or less. But apparently Commander Rance of the National Crime Squad still firmly believes he’s looking for that old woman whose picture was in the paper.’
‘If he is right, and it was a woman there, or a mannish woman, say, then Bruce Grant would still be the actual witness to ... to my murder, or near-murder.’
She was unable to suppress a long shiver.
‘I suppose so,’ John said, looking down at her. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t let you talk to Pat yourself. But you certainly didn’t seem to be up to it.’
‘No,’ Harriet said, ‘I wasn’t. And I’m not sure I’d be now.’
She told John then how Commander Rance had expelled her from his ‘Murder Room’ and how the setback had affected her tremulously poised nervous system.
‘Well,’ John answered, ‘I’m in two minds about it all, to be frank. You know that it’s true you really aren’t fit to go about searching for this man, or this woman. For this monster. On the other hand, if you’re stuck here at home fretting, that won’t do anything to speed your recovery. I don’t know ... ’
‘No.’ Harriet said abruptly, ‘but I do know. Yes, I’ve made up my mind. I can’t take setbacks like the one I had this afternoon. I’m going to have to let it all go. I’ll do my best to put it all out of my mind. Let the great Commander Rance get on with it. Let his Target try to get her million pounds, and let Rance catch her when she does, if he can. If she’s there to catch. I’m sick of it all. It’s too much for me. I’ve tried, and I’ve failed. No, I’m on leave, under medical advice. For three months. Let them roll on and leave me in peace.’
Exhausted again by her scarcely controllable vehemence, she let her head fall back on her pillow.
John, looking at her, was faintly smiling.
*
The phone remained silent all that evening and all next morning. But at about three in the afternoon it rang. Harriet, propped up in bed trying to read an Agatha Christie John had given her as being nicely undemanding, thought for a few moments of letting it ring.
But then she realized that Mrs Pickstock would be in the house, possibly in the kitchen replacing things in the cupboards with organic substitutes. She would be bound before long to pick up the instrument downstairs. The thought of her muscling in on whatever the caller had to say was too much for her.
She snatched up the handset, nearly let it drop from her sweaty palm, squeezed harder, spoke the number.
‘Harriet? It’s Pat. Harriet, come down to Waterloo Gardens, quick as you can. Don’t come inside the statio
n. I’ll be outside, in the gardens themselves. By ... by where? Oh, yes, by the pond. You know it?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Come as soon as you can. Can’t talk any — ’
At the far end the phone clunked down. And, she knew, she was going to do what Pat had asked her to.
As soon as I can. But, Christ, doesn’t he realize how impossible that is? I’ll have to get up, get dressed. Drag myself up, try to think what I should wear. And then ... then what? I can’t even get myself round to imagining it.
She allowed herself to sink back on her pillows.
A moment’s rest. Just a moment’s ... or a moment or two.
But the tiny voice of conscience put in its word.
No, this was Pat. Pat asking me to come, quick as you can. I can’t refuse. I must do it. Now. I owe Pat. If it wasn’t for him I’d have been lying here day after day, hopeless, helpless. Perhaps never to get back to what it is I do. What it is I am. A police officer. A detective.
No, it was Pat who, against all the rules let me in on the investigation, hauled me back into being what I am, what I should be.
Yes, I owe him. He gave me hope. And he wants me. He wants me now. Wants me for some reason, some reason he plainly could not mention where he might be overheard. He wants me now, down there by the pond in Waterloo Gardens.
She rolled out of bed. Shakily then she forced herself to her feet. She shook her head and looked around for her clothes.
No. In the wardrobe and the chest of drawers.
I will be able to get out what I’ll need. I can put them on, in the right order, the right way round. And to hell with it, anyhow, if they aren’t right.
She lurched over and pulled out the first things that came to hand. Jeans. The old jeans she wore only for gardening, had worn when she’d gone with Miss Earwaker in search of monkshood and had found that chopped-off, poison-packed tuber.
Thoughts running willy-nilly through her head as she wrestled with panties, bra, shirt, brought her suddenly to the full realization of what she had undertaken to do. She had pledged herself to get down to Waterloo Gardens as fast as she could. And that meant, she knew it now — had obscurely known it all along — that she would have to take her car. She would have to drive there. All right, it was possible to phone for a taxi, wait till it came, go there in it. But how often, on the rare occasions when she had needed a cab, had she had to wait and wait till one came in answer to her call. Birchester taxi firms were notorious for promising more than they could perform. With you in ten minutes, madam. And half an hour later, when called urgently back, it would be excuse after excuse and finally With you in ten minutes, madam.
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