So where do I go from here?
She found the answer was at once clear in her head.
‘You’re right, there are things I want to ask you as a detective, although I must confess I’m still meant to be on sick leave. But I do sympathize with you, too. Weren’t you married to Sir Billy for years? You’re bound to feel an awful blank.’
‘Of course I do. And nothing anybody says is going to make a difference to that. But you: I can see you’re still in a state, though that attack on you was weeks ago now. Anyone who was as near death as the paper said you were, when it came out with this Poisoner going about with his nasty little thing of liquid, well, they’re going to feel all up and down for a long time to come.’
Harriet felt a dart of gratitude. Condolence. It was what she had come to bring to the widow, and instead she was receiving condolence from her.
At once she decided she could only ask, with equal directness, the question she had come to find an answer to, to ask it before she was ambushed by her body once more.
‘Kitty,’ she said, ‘please tell me: was your husband in a poor state of health on the evening he set out for the Majestic Club? My John, who was there as a Majestic executive, wondered whether his death was caused as much by some kind of heart attack as by the sort of poison he saved me from.’
‘Yes,’ Kitty Bell said.
‘You mean, he might have died from his heart condition and not from aconitine poisoning? Is that it?’
‘No, it’s more than that. From what I made them tell me about the what-do-you-call-it, post-mortem — I wasn’t going to stand for any Spare the poor widow stuff — Billy, in the last glass of champagne he took, drank something that upset him. But it would have done no more than that, upset him, the poor old boy. It was just some stuff that made him feel awful, like it was someone playing a practical joke on him. Oh yes, it made him throw up all right. But whatever it was that did that, it wasn’t deadly poison.’
Then why the hell, Harriet said to herself, did Commander Rance not tell Pat that? The contempt he feels for country clodhoppers, I suppose. As if Birch-ester, a city of half a million inhabitants, is some piffling village with three and a bit houses in it. Okay, Pat hasn’t, so far, told Rance that Bruce Grant was definitely lying about his old witch, but that’s not as bad a trick as keeping the post-mortem result from the man who was formerly Senior Investigating Officer for the case.
And then, sweeping that thought aside, a wholly new idea came glimmering into her mind.
Chapter Seventeen
Kitty Bell, when Harriet had asked if she could use her phone to call a cab, had at once insisted that her chauffeur-driven Rolls was there to be used. Sitting in leather-smelling luxury on its broad back seat, Harriet set out to examine the idea that Kitty’s revelation about the post-mortem had put into her head.
Can it really be, she asked herself, that it was not the Poisoner at all who put something in the final glass of champagne Sir Billy swigged down? Was it someone else altogether who did no more than put an emetic into it, rather than deadly aconitine?
Is there someone who, for some devious reason of their own, decided to take advantage of the poisonings that followed the attempt on me? The frightening roll-call: garage hand Robbie Norman, council telephonist Tommy O’Brien, tea-sipping Mrs Sylvia Smythe, as well as Margery Plummer down in London, and the student Lee Tenter in Nottingham? Did this person, in fact, do no more than play a nasty practical joke on Sir Billy — a joke that went unexpectedly, fatally wrong — just in order, yes, to write to the Evening Star and attempt to acquire a million pounds?
Or, to judge by the tone of that hate-filled screed, perhaps to do no more really than vent long-suppressed rage at the way the world was behaving, the world of Birchester in particular, the wider world as well? Was Sir Billy’s death the work, not of the Poisoner, but of self-styled Mentor with that talk of sacrificial victims on the altar of probity?
It looked like it. It really did.
The Rolls glided smoothly onwards.
And then, glancing up, Harriet caught a glimpse of something that just registered in her mind. For a moment she thought she must have had another flicking vision of that something black and white that had troubled her ever since she had come out of St Oswald’s. But, no, it was not that. Something else ... ?
And then she saw it again. High on one of the lampposts they were now passing there was a large, colourful placard. And it was reproducing the Star artist’s imaginary portrait of the old woman Bruce Grant said he had seen putting poison in the Campari soda at her side.
At first she thought it must be a wild advertising campaign by the paper. But Jonathan Whitaker had said nothing to her of any such plan when she had read Mentor’s Latin-filled letter in his office, and in any case it would have been a pointless exercise with the Star selling every copy it could print. Then she took in the large black letters at the foot of the garish picture: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN? and realized the posters had been put up all over the city on the orders of Commander Rance, still hunting furiously for the old woman Pat Murphy had shown was simply Bruce Grant’s invention.
Oh, let Rance pursue his will-of-the-wisp then. I’ve got better things to think about.
She sank back again into the yielding seat.
Who, if I’m right about the person who put an emetic in Sir Billy’s champagne, is Mentor? How can we trace him? Is he as hard to get any sort of grasp on as the Poisoner is?
And then a new thought abruptly came clamouring into her head, sending her earlier careful speculations spinning away like debris from an explosion.
St Aldred’s School. Quite incidentally Kitty Bell had mentioned that the Majestic Sports and Social Club occupied the house and grounds that had once been posh old St Aldred’s. Posh? Did that mean the establishment little Kitty had walked past on her way to the arched doorway marked Girls at her elementary school had been some sort of fee-paying establishment? It must do. It must.
So, yes, it’s likely, more than likely, that there had taught at the school where now the Club stands, a master of the old-fashioned sort? Mentor. It could be Mentor, a man who must have known how to sneak unobserved into, and out of, the prize-giving ceremony where Sir Billy met his end.
If this is so, and at this moment I certainly believe it is, then I’m in sight of finding out who Mentor is. And, with Mentor out of the way, will we be able to see how to find that different person, the Poisoner?
But what shall I do about it all?
Right, I’m going to do nothing. Nothing for the moment. I’m not going to go rushing to Pat Murphy, much less to Commander Rance, to say I’ve seen how the case may be resolved. I am going to get out of the car when it draws to its smooth halt outside the house. I am going to thank that passive, uniformed back in front of me, and I am going to walk quietly to the front door, unlock it and go into the living-room, where I shall sit down and go over my whole train of thought again to see if the idea is or is not logical and sensible.
*
Half an hour later she felt she was firmly in possession of a worthwhile theory. There were, there must be, two separate people putting noxious substances into such glasses or cups as were easily got at. One of them, the Poisoner, she thought with a calmness that surprised her, attempted to kill me. He then succeeded with five other poisonings. But then a second person, the Schoolmaster or Mentor, had intervened, poisoning only, in so far as it was a poisoning, Sir Billy Bell.
For God’s sake, she added to herself, I can’t see a man like him, an old fogey, his every thought harking back to an almost forgotten code of behaviour, coming up to me beside the pool that day as I slept in the sun and putting poison into my glass. What would he be wearing among all the women in swimsuits and men in shorts? A striped woollen bathing-dress with shoulder straps? Absurd.
But Mentor’s intervention had almost certainly had one unexpected effect. It had caused the Poisoner to bring his campaign of killings to a temporary halt. That must
be why there had been that lull in his activities. Broken at last when he had gone down to London that hot and sunny Sunday and given Marge Plummer a tempting can of cool drink, and then had immediately travelled up to Nottingham and visited the famous Trip to Jerusalem, where he had had no difficulty in finding young Lee Tenter’s neglected pint glass.
So am I as near certain as I can be that this is what, in all likelihood, has happened? Yes, I am. My argument is well-conducted detection.
So do I now go trotting along to Commander Rance, into positively forbidden territory, and tell him what the logic I have used means?
No, I don’t. But I can get hold of Pat, and I can tell him.
And at once she remembered the absurd things she had told Pat before. She sat up, heart suddenly beating in fast thumps.
Is, after all, this theory of mine just one more absurdity coming out of a brain I can no longer trust? I didn’t think it was, but it could be. It just could be. I am in a state where such wild notions might well blow up in my head, insubstantial as huge air-balloons, as insubstantial but as much able to block out any other view. Only an hour or so ago, shrewd Lady Kitty told me I would be feeling all up and down for a long time to come. So how can I be sure I was really thinking calmly and logically just now? Like the detective I believed myself to be? No, like the detective I ought to be?
She realized tears were lurking just behind her eyes.
No. No, no, no, no. No more sorry-for-myself weeping. Once was enough.
Right, I’ve been in difficult situations before and thought my way out of them, some even since that aconitine got into my system. Look at that Sunday out with Miss Earwaker when those louts surrounded her car. I was in danger then of getting a going-over. That boy, young man, with the red jersey, he would have led them on. I knew it. And what did I do? I thought my way out of trouble. Just that.
She straightened her shoulders.
So, now start thinking again. Think how to test this theory that Pat Murphy may say is just another of neurotic Harriet’s wild ideas. Or that Commander Rance will certainly dismiss as not worth listening to.
And, as soon as she did set herself to think, the simple answer came to her. If there are two men adding substances to easily got-at drinks, the real Poisoner and the man I have labelled Mentor or the Schoolmaster, then what I have to do is to find the latter. To find the one about whom I know just a little, the man who was once a master possibly at St Aldred’s. It should be possible to trace him. If difficult.
Mrs Pickstock, whom she had vaguely heard clanking about in the kitchen, poked her head in at the door.
‘Oh, you’re back then, dear. I didn’t hear you come in, or I’d have brought you some nice camomile tea. I know you like that.’
‘No, it’s all right, Mrs Pickstock,’ Harriet found herself able to lie. ‘I had some tea when I visited Lady Bell earlier, to offer my condolences.’
‘Oh, yes, dear. That was nice of you. I know when my Reg was taken from me in that awful sudden way — well, they called it Sudden Death Syndrome, didn’t they? — I know what a comfort it was when friends came to call.’
Harriet repressed a shudder, though she could not have said whether it was a shudder of antipathy, however regrettable, or one of something like cold horror at the idea of death being there for someone, for anyone, so utterly unexpectedly.
Luckily, before she had time to frame an answer, Mrs Pickstock swung away and went to peer through the window.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I thought it was. That’s Hubby’s car just going round to the garage. So I’ll leave you two lovebirds together.’
She disappeared into the kitchen, and at the same moment that John came in at the back door she went out of it.
‘I was just saying to your wifey,’ Harriet heard her unrestrained tones, ‘I’m leaving you two together. I’m never one to be in the way, you know.’
*
As soon as John had asked her how she was, and had frowned a little when she told him she had on Pat Murphy’s behalf been to see Lady Bell, she brought out a question that had arrived in her mind just as Mrs Pickstock had come in.
‘John, there’s something perhaps you could tell me.’
‘So long as it’s nothing to do with the Poisoner. Do you know there’s more than one of my fellow executives going about expressing admiration for that woman whose face you see on posters up and down the city? Really daring, they say, the way she risks discovery time and again. Or, when they think of her as Mentor, they’re apt to say “There’s more than a little truth in what she wrote about the people she’s chosen to despatch.” That’s how they put it. Despatch. As if that was what happened to those inoffensive people she’s murdered. That they’ve been sent to some convict colony or other. Sometimes I despair of human beings.’
‘Yes,’ Harriet said, wrenching that round to her own ends, ‘in a way that’s what I want to ask you about. About, if you like, the Poisoner and Mentor.’
‘One and the same woman, yes? So, what is it?’
She took a gulp of breath.
‘It’s that I don’t think they are one and the same, and I know damn well that the Poisoner isn’t the woman on those posters. But listen: you yourself said to me that you thought there was something odd, something different, about Sir Billy Bell’s death. Right. Well, just this afternoon Lady Bell told me what the post-mortem on Sir Billy had discovered. Something, incidentally, that Commander Rance did not think necessary to inform poor Pat about. It was this: that Sir Billy had drunk with his champagne, not aconitine, but something that simply caused violent vomiting. Vomiting that happened to give him a heart attack.’
John stood there thinking.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I really had guessed that from what I saw that night at the Club. But I simply couldn’t believe two poisoners were at work at the same time. But what you’re telling me now is that, because of the two different substances administered, there are two murderers ranging about Birchester? Not to speak of one of them going down to London and over to Nottingham?’
‘Yes, I am telling you that. Except that there are not two murderers. There’s one murderer, the person who put aconitine in my Campari soda, and there’s also a man who just set out to play a nasty trick on Sir Billy Bell.’
John, who had been standing in the doorway, came and sat down opposite.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I think perhaps you make out a reasonable case. So what is it you wanted me to tell you?’
A spark of pleasure flared in Harriet’s head.
So my mental processes aren’t as wonky as I feared.
‘I hope you’ll be able to tell me this,’ she said. ‘When I was at the Star editor’s office and read Mentor’s letter in its full, uncut version, something became clear to me. The person who wrote it is very likely a schoolmaster, and a retired one. There was a lot more Latin in it than they printed and other things that chimed in with that.’
‘If you say so. But what do you want to know?’
‘Right, there was something else I learnt by chance from Lady Bell, Kitty as I was asked to call her. And what a nice person she is, did you know?’
‘Never met her. But go on, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Sorry. What I learnt from her was that the Majestic Club now occupies the house and grounds of what used to be a private school of some sort called St Aldred’s.’
‘I know that. I haven’t worked for Majestic as long as I have without learning a bit of the history.’
‘Okay. Good. But have you thought how easy it would be for someone who was once a master at St Aldred’s to make his way secretly into the private presentation of prizes by Sir Billy Bell?’
‘No. No, I hadn’t. But I think you may be on to something there.’
Again Harriet felt a glow of satisfaction. My brain, one to trust again. Sometimes.
‘So how,’ she said, ‘do I get to know someone, anyone, who can remember that place? Perhaps even twenty years ago or more?�
�
John gave her a broad smile.
‘You’ve just hit the jackpot. I don’t think you’ve ever met a woman called Mrs Upchurch. No reason why you should have done. I knew her when I was at university here, largely because her son was a sort of friend of mine. A naughty lad, as a matter of fact. Into the modest drug scene of that time, and not above obtaining money on false pretences. His mother, who was already a widow, or at least without any evident husband, took to asking me to exercise my influence on him. Which, needless to say, I was quite unable to do. But — and this is what you’ll want to hear — Godfrey Upchurch was an ex-St Aldred’s pupil, and Ma, I gathered, had a lot of dealings with the school before her precious Godfrey was asked to leave.’
‘And she’s still here in Birchester? You know she is?’
‘I do. I see her about occasionally. We pass the time of day. Godfrey’s abroad somewhere, possibly a reformed character.’
‘Then I’m off to have a talk with Mrs Upchurch.’
‘All right. But not this evening. Too much excitement for one day. It’s early bed for you. But I will phone Mrs Upchurch — think I’ve still got the number somewhere — and I’ll tell her you’d like a chat some time tomorrow.’
He grinned.
‘Though I should warn you, she’s not the easiest of people.’
Chapter Eighteen
When Mrs Upchurch opened the door of her house, in a part of the Meads hovering between decline and former respectability, Harriet, confident in her oldish but still smart grey suit with the blue shirt she so liked, realized at once why John had said she was not the easiest of people. Mrs Upchurch stood blocking her doorway as if there were invaders to repel.
But mention of the meeting John had telephoned about brought something of a transformation.
A Detective at Death's Door Page 15
