But, wait. Mrs Sylvia Smythe at that tea shop? She doesn’t seem to fit. But clearly two others do, the people murdered in London and Nottingham. Marge Plummer in London was taking part, on a hot day, in a march of gays and lesbians, no doubt flaunting plenty of flesh, the way they always delight in doing in such circumstances. And at that pub in Nottingham on that warm Sunday evening, among a crowd of carefree students wouldn’t there have been plenty of female flesh on display too?
And yes, doesn’t the letter here say something at least about respectable, middle-aged Mrs Smythe with an e? Not that she was stark naked sitting in that prim tea shop, but something else. Yes, here. Here it is. A lady of mature years who yet flaunted scarlet lips and scarlet fingernails. Not much of a crime to have earned her an appalling death, but enough apparently to make the Schoolmaster claim she had deserved it.
But the pattern as a whole is surely clear enough. The Poisoner is set off by the sight of naked female flesh. Which, come to think of it, is not unlikely if he’s the sort of inadequate Peter Scholl pointed me to.
So where does this tell me the Poisoner could be found? Where you can see naked flesh in profusion. There are enough places in Birchester you can see that, if not out of doors now the weather’s changed. And, of course, something that won’t be so helpful, there are even more places elsewhere than in Birchester. If the Poisoner has operated in London and in Nottingham, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t, if he chooses, go anywhere: to Edinburgh, Cardiff, wherever.
Right, I must point this out to Pat. It may be the key to finding the man who put aconitine in my Campari soda, and into all those other drinks.
Then a hesitation.
Pat’s no believer in profilers. All right, he did go out of his way to tell Peter I’d like to see him. But that surely was out of simple kindness to me. No, Pat’s pretty unlikely to latch on to any theory that depends on something Peter said. And if I’m the one who passes on that theory, he’ll go back to thinking that, ill as I am, I’m not to be trusted.
But I believe it all hangs together. I do believe it. You can’t always resolve a case by relying on plain physical clues. You have to make assessments of what your criminal, your murderer, is likely to do, of the way that they think. And I’ve made my assessment, and I’m sticking by it.
I’m going to act on my belief, at least until some hard fact contradicts it.
Right, first step.
Yes, clear out of the way the Mentor red-herring. If I can prove, beyond doubt, that the Schoolmaster is a totally different person from the Poisoner, then perhaps Pat will take seriously the pattern I have detected in the Poisoner’s crimes.
Chapter Nineteen
So on Monday morning — a decently sunny day — Harriet, sensibly dressed in her oldish but still good lightweight eau-de-nil suit, set out in a taxi for the Majestic Sports and Social Club, place of work for the gardener who had apparently befriended bad-boy Godfrey Upchurch at St Aldred’s. And also, as she was fully aware, the scene of her own poisoning.
Her taxi made its way rapidly enough through the morning streets.
Not too far now, she murmured to herself. And at once a flutter of doubt set in.
That August bank holiday Monday. Me there, enjoying life with John. Nothing much going on among the city’s criminal fraternity. A quiet weekend in the seemingly unending heatwave. A good swim. Then, stretching out to benefit from the sun, well covered in sunscreen, sipping a deliciously cool, tangily herby Campari soda. And a second one. And John needing a pee. And my eyes closing. And then —
No. No, I can’t go there. I can’t.
‘Driver? Driver, can you just stop a moment?’
‘You all right?’
But what is it just? Just that I’m suddenly overcome by terror at the thought of going to a place I’ve been to dozens of times over the years? I can hardly tell him that.
No, I really must be perfectly well. It’s nonsense to think I’m not. I am all right, and I’ve got a task to carry out.
‘No, I’m sorry, it’s such a nice day for once that I think I’ll walk the rest of the way. Do me good.’
‘Whatever you like. But it’s quite a step to that Majestic Club place.’
‘Yes, I know. But I think I will walk it. How much do I owe you?’
And, once she had paid, with a somewhat larger tip than the short ride had warranted, she set out cheerfully enough, feeling she had made an unnecessary fuss.
Walking on at a good steady pace, she abruptly grinned.
All very well to say it’s a nice day for a walk, though it is, but the worst part of the Meads is hardly a delightful area for a stroll, however few people there are about at this time of day. The edge of my old B Division territory, where once the Hard Detective, then only a Chief Inspector, had her day of Stop the Rot glory. Narrow little houses packed in dull-faced terraces, and the pavement and roadway littered with rubbish of all sorts. To think, not really so long ago, I was on the way in this very area to putting an end to casual rubbish-dumping and vandalism.
And to truanting from school, too, she added, as she caught sight at the next comer of a lone small boy apparently playing some game involving a stubby iron pillar at the kerbside. For a moment or two she stood where she was — just by the Roxy cinema, castigated in Mentor’s letter in the Star.
And not undeservedly perhaps, she thought, looking up at a huge poster advertising, in a riot of long limbs, almost naked breasts and pert behinds, a film called Seven Swimsuits and One Murder.
But now, that boy there. Do I revert to the Hard Detective of old, go stamping down on that little fellow’s petty offence?
I would have done, once. But, no, I’m off-duty, on sick leave. Let the little bugger —
Then there came to her ears a sound she knew all too well. The noise of violent vomiting. And she saw that the boy had not been playing with the pillar but clutching it as a sudden feeling of sickness must have overtaken him.
And she ran.
Half of her told herself as she pounded down the street that she was being ridiculous. Small boys often overeat and are sick. But the other half of her could not thrust away remembrance of the sound she herself had made running with John to the loos at the Club that sun-broiling day.
Ladies or Gents, she thought absurdly as she ran. Can’t remember, can’t —
Then she was there at the pillar.
One look at the boy was enough to tell her that this was not a case of one ice-cream too many. He was deathly pale, and round his mouth the flesh was puffing up. Between jerks of vomiting his teeth briefly chattered in flurries of castanets.
This was aconitine poisoning. No possible doubt.
She slipped her mobile from her jacket pocket.
9-9-9
Thank God I decided to take this thing with me. I nearly didn’t, off-duty.
They’re answering.
‘Ambulance. This is a life-or-death emergency. Aconitine poisoning.’
She gave the location and her name, preceded unhesitatingly with her police rank. Anything to impress on the operator the need for speed, though with Birchester under siege from the Poisoner every phone operator should know how speed was necessary.
She turned back to the urchin clutching the pillar.
Did I come too late?
Christ, the vomiting’s ceased. He’s trying to wipe at his lips. The fiercely pricking tingling. I remember.
And I remember something else, too. John’s fingers probing deep into my throat, and the life-saving spasms of vomiting they produced.
She grabbed the boy’s mop of dirty blond hair, jerked his head back and then plunged the index and middle fingers of her right hand into his mouth, slimy with the vomit he had so far voided, and pushed and pushed.
It worked. The good old method.
Past her fingers she felt a new flush of vomit rushing up. She dropped to her knees — there was a can of Coke in the gutter there — and pulled the boy forward, twisting round to keep
her fingers pushing as deeply into his throat as she could get them.
How long she stayed like that, feeling the boy’s internal organs jerking and throbbing, she never knew. But it cannot have been very long before she heard the pan-pon pan-pon of an oncoming ambulance.
The paramedics, jumping out, were by her side in seconds.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘this is aconitine poisoning. I know. I was the Poisoner’s first victim. Go straight to St Oswald’s. Insist on him getting to Mr Hume Jones. Hume Jones. Man who saved my life. Hurry, hurry.’
*
Standing there, hand on the rounded top of the iron pillar to stop herself falling flat on the road, she found herself looking, as if at some interesting museum object, at her suit trousers bedaubed with sharp-smelling vomit.
Well, she thought idly, as though from a great distance, I thought this would be the last time this year I would wear this suit. I’d have probably taken it to the cleaners in any case.
Then a moment of blackness, only just aware that it was her hold on the pillar that was keeping her upright. Dimly from inside the surrounding dark she told herself that she must not faint.
Yes, there’s work to do. I am the Investigating Officer, the first officer on the scene of a crime. Right, I take control. She opened her eyes.
No one about, not that I’ve seen, but there may well have been people who were looking on, from further up the side street here, from a window, from anywhere. I’ll get to them in a moment. Next, preserve the scene. All I can do at present is stay where I am, shout out at anybody who comes by to keep well back. Route taken by offender, or offenders? One offender, the Poisoner. It must be him. Aconitine. It’s certainly not the
Schoolmaster. And there was no sign of anybody near when I first saw the boy. The Poisoner could have gone off in any direction.
Property left at scene?
God, yes, that Coke can.
She forced herself to look down for it. Yes, there, almost at my feet. And, of course, it’s been opened. Somebody — him, yes, the Poisoner — almost certainly offered the poor truanting kid a drink. A whole can of sweet fizzy Coke.
Prints? Possibly, though he’s always taken precautions up to now. What else? Yes, the vomit. In the gutter. On my trousers. No, they won’t be going to the cleaners after all. Bagged up, they’ll be going to Forensics. Shoe prints, clothing fibres? Scenes-of-Crime will have to see to them, so long as I’ve kept back any onlookers. And onlookers will come at any moment; nothing like a noisy ambulance for that.
Now, better ring Pat, if I can get hold of him. My call for the ambulance may not have been passed on elsewhere.
Awkwardly she wiped off most of the slime from her right hand on a cleanish patch of her jacket, and took out her mobile again. Wiping it too as much as she could, she pressed the digits.
But when she got through to Pat she learnt that the operator she had spoken to had done well.
We know,’ Pat said. ‘I wanted to come meself. Only you’re getting someone else.’
‘Rance?’
‘Of course. He’ll be with you any moment.’
*
Some little time passed, in fact, without Commander Rance arriving. Lost in the criss-crossing streets of this unfamiliar area, Harriet guessed, with a touch of malice.
In the meanwhile people had begun to gather on the far side of the road. So she had the opportunity to cross over and at least ask each of them whether they had seen anything of the boy while he had been clutching the pillar earlier. There one of the aproned mothers told her he was Jacob Welland, known as Jakey.
Nobody, it appeared, had seen him. Or, if they had, in this part of the city where police were mostly thought of as enemy, they were not going to say. So there had been nothing more to do than begin taking names with a view to further questioning. And even this was something of a humiliating complication when she realized that, of course, she had no official notebook with her. At last she had been reduced to using the back of a long-ago shopping list fished out of one of her jacket pockets, writing on it in painfully small letters.
One half-success she did have. Just before a mini-cavalcade of tyres-screaming police cars came in sight, she spotted a familiar figure sliding by at the rear of the small crowd.
‘Prodger,’ she called out. ‘Prodger, come here. I want you.’
Prodger, Prodger Matthews, was an old acquaintance. Arrested for dozens of different petty offences in her B Division days, he had never borne her much of a grudge.
At the edge of the little gathering he slowed his steps — never very brisk — and at a third Prodger!’ came to a total halt.
‘Right, I want a word with you. Did you see Jakey Welland here earlier on?’
Prodger made as if to walk away.
‘So you did. All right, what did you see?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all, honest.’
‘Honest. That always meant you were lying. So, come on, Prodger, just what did you see?’
‘Saw a bloke.’
‘Good. And what was he doing, this bloke?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No, Prodger. No.’
‘He was talking.’
‘Talking to Jakey, that it?’
‘Could of been.’
‘Did you hear what he was saying?’
‘Couldn’t, could I? From the comer there? Just saw him give the kid a can o’ Coke. Shouldn’t have done that.’
‘Why not, Prodger?’
‘If he was giving away drinks, could of given it ter me.’
‘You’re damn lucky he didn’t. But what did he look like, this mean fellow?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Oh, yes, you do. You know him by sight? Is that it? And you’re keeping your lip buttoned?’
‘Ain’t.’
‘All right then, what did he look like?’
Silent opposition.
For a moment.
‘Had a ‘tache. Big white one.’
‘A big white moustache. And what else?’
‘Cap.’
‘He had a cap on? What sort of a cap? What colour?’
‘Dunno.’
And now out of the first of the three brakes-squealing police cars there stepped Commander Rance. Harriet abandoned Prodger, who could always be picked up again when needed, and went over.
Rance was dressed in full white search-kit. Much of it, Harriet noted, a little too large for him, giving him a touch of the ridiculous. So, it had been equipping himself and his team in this way that had caused the delay in their arrival.
All the better, since it meant I spotted Prodger, who may yet give us a fuller description of that man in a cap with a white moustache. The cap at least links him with the man the Nottingham students chased in vain from the Trip to Jerusalem. So, is this the moment to tell Rance that the Poisoner is, in all probability, not his old woman but a white-moustached man?
But any to-and-fro doubts were chased from her mind by Rance himself.
‘So,’ he snapped out, ‘we have Detective Superintendent Martens getting herself involved once more.’
‘Yes, Commander, I am involved. If only by sheer chance. I happened to be walking through the street here, and I saw the boy — called Jakey Welland, by the way — being acutely sick just there where you can see the remains in the gutter. Luckily, from my own experience I guessed he might have been given aconitine, and I called an ambulance.’
Rance looked at her.
Abruptly she was conscious once more of the stains all down the front of her suit trousers.
‘So you happened to be on the spot,’ Rance said. ‘Hardly the sort of area, I should have thought, for an officer on sick leave to be taking a gentle stroll in.’
The sod, Harriet thought. He’s seen straight away that I wasn’t here doing what I ought to be, behaving in a thoroughly convalescent way. So he suspects, does he, that I’m still poking my nose into his case? Well, I am. Little though I want him to know it.
A qu
ick answer bubbled up.
‘Yes, sir, it must seem a bit odd,’ she said. ‘But in point of fact I was sitting there at home and I’d begun to cast my mind back to my earlier days in Birchester. And I thought I’d like to see if my old stamping ground, round about here, was in a better or worse state than when I left it.’
‘And is it better? Or worse?’
‘Rather worse, I’m sorry to say, sir.’
‘Yes. Well, let that be a lesson to you, Miss Martens. There’s no use in putting in hand startling new measures if you don’t stay with them and follow them through.’
‘No, sir. Though I did gain one benefit from my days here. I found that an old acquaintance of mine, one Prodger Matthews, habitual petty offender, saw someone offering to the boy Jakey that can of Coke I’ve left in situ there. There may be prints, and Matthews may be able to give you a fuller description than I had time to get out of him.’
‘May he indeed? And I suppose from whatever description a criminal of that sort produces we may be able to make an arrest. But in the meantime I’d like to be able to get on with my investigation into the circumstances here. So I suggest the best thing for you will be to put you in one of my cars and send you back home, where you can get on with the business of making yourself fit for duty.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’
Chapter Twenty
Commander Rance’s advice had, of course, the opposite effect to the one he had intended. By the time Harriet left the car that had taken her home — like a damn delinquent, she thought — she found her mental energy almost fizzing. It fizzed on for the rest of that day, producing at least one odd thought. Commander Rance, could he have known me by reputation before that unfortunate moment when Pat told him who I was and in an instant he sent me packing? Could he, even though we’d never met, have been obscurely jealous of this woman picked out for media attention as the Hard Detective? Most police officers, I know, were divided in what they thought of me in those days. Some, an encouragingly large number, applauded what I was doing. But almost as many believed I was too big for my boots, especially as I was wearing a woman’s thigh boots. And they expressed their belief as yellow-spitting jealousy.
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