The Case of the Hidden Flame

by Alison Golden

“As Christmas. Dinner is on you, Detective Inspector.”

  Graham nodded. He really wasn’t sure if Tomlinson’s findings were good news or bad. Part of him had been willing Sylvia Norquist’s untimely demise to be the result of an odd manifestation of natural causes. The idea that there was a murderer lurking in the White House Inn was unsettling, especially given the paucity of apparent motives. At least, so far.

  “What’s your best guess at present?” he asked, deliberately pressing Tomlinson.

  “A poison,” he said at once. “Something which causes the body to shut down, the heart and respiration to stop. But I can’t be sure. Could we ask the local doctors if they’ve prescribed anything which might cause an overdose? The kind of thing which wouldn’t show up on a toxicology screen?”

  “It’s a long shot,” Graham countered. “Most of that stuff is tied up in patient confidentiality. It could be weeks before we got a warrant to search any doctor’s records, even if we could identify the prescribing physician. And there must be dozens, even somewhere as small as Jersey.”

  “There are twenty-nine,” Tomlinson replied crisply. “I know most of them. I could put the word around, you know, see if anything comes up.”

  “Like what?” Graham asked, returning the folder.

  “Oh, you know, a ‘special request’ by a patient who presents themselves in the doctor’s office but without the appropriate symptoms, or one who seems to be faking it. They don’t just hand out potentially fatal doses of prescription medication like candy, you know.” Tomlinson returned the folder to his leather medic’s satchel and crossed his legs.

  “So, I’m assuming there was nothing untoward in Sylvia’s lunch?” Graham asked.

  “That fish,” Tomlinson confirmed with a flourish, “had not even a passing acquaintance with toxic substances. The food at the White House Inn isn’t exactly cordon bleu, but it needn’t be cordoned off, either.” Both men allowed themselves a quick chuckle at this dark humor.

  “Now, what about her hip pain?” Graham asked.

  Tomlinson frowned now. “Severe. Very painful. One look at her hip joints told me there’s no way she would voluntarily have navigated a long, stone staircase unless there was George Clooney at the other end.”

  “Was she on painkillers?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary,” Tomlinson answered.

  Graham changed tack. “What about the time of death? Were you able to narrow it down?”

  “Sorry, old chap. The answer to that little mystery set sail with the tide.”

  Graham sighed and thought aloud. “A woman is poisoned by something she eats or drinks. Doesn’t report it or ask for help. And manages to get down to the beach despite being half crippled, where she’s half buried in the sand.”

  “It’s a bugger, isn’t it?” Tomlinson offered, standing to leave.

  “Yes,” Graham answered, distracted. “It most certainly is.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Taylor was at pains to point out just how desperately she wanted to help. “But if my paying customers see policemen sniffing around in the kitchen,” she said with a worried frown, “they’ll head straight for the Bangkok Palace and never eat here again. It’s a full third of my income each year, that restaurant,” she explained.

  “Believe me, Mrs. Taylor,” Graham told her, “we’ll be as discreet as we possibly can. Just being thorough, you know.”

  They were escorted to the kitchens as though being secreted to the den of a reclusive cult. Mrs. Taylor even stopped at each turn to check the hallway ahead and, at one point, remarked that the “coast was clear.” Sergeant Harding found the whole thing highly amusing but hid her giggles behind her uniform sleeve. Her new boss didn’t seem to be a man for comedic trifles, nor was she keen to appear girlish and insensitive. Quite the reverse, in fact.

  “I’ll have the staff come back here to be interviewed,” Mrs. Taylor announced as they reached the cool, dry storeroom behind the kitchens. “There are serving hatches that give out onto the dining room from the kitchen, but in here you won’t be seen.”

  Graham recognized from the outset that he would have to indulge Mrs. Taylor’s rather paranoid fixation on the delicate sensibilities of her guests. He would admit that seeing uniformed officers snooping around a kitchen was hardly a resounding advertisement for the Inn’s culinary fare, but they were just doing their jobs.

  Marcella was there, in her late-afternoon role as a waitress and general kitchen helper, as well as five other staff members. Three were long-term employees, and the others had found summer work at the Inn. One had worked there for six holiday seasons in a row. “I like the island, and I like Mrs. Taylor,” the young sous-chef told them. “How can you beat sunshine, low taxes, and great beaches just down the steps?”

  “How, indeed,” Graham commented. “Do you keep records of the guests’ breakfast orders, by any chance?”

  “Oh, yeah,” the chef replied. “We have to, in case there’s a billing screw-up.” He was quickly able to find Sylvia’s order and read it out, as if ordering his staff to prepare it once more. “Muesli, the small fruit platter, toast and marmalade, a boiled egg, tea, and orange juice.” He looked up once more. “We squeeze it ourselves, each morning. Absolutely magic.”

  Graham wrote everything down as usual, the others waiting patiently while he inscribed the details. “And her lunch? Did you prepare that yourself?”

  He checked his order slips again, leafing through them. “She’s in room two-eleven, right?” He searched on. “Yeah, here she is. Erm… I was doing the vegetable quiche, actually. Her order would have been given to Santi, the other lunch chef. Good guy. His braised beef is the bomb.” Then the young chef noticed something else. “Hmm. This might be important.”

  Harding tilted her head to read the handwriting on the slip. “A glass of Chardonnay?” she asked. She turned the slip to show Graham, whose mind was quickly racing, aware that alcohol was as common a vector for poison as any other.

  He looked the chef squarely in the eye. "Who exactly was responsible for the bar at lunchtime?”

  * * *

  Marcella was trembling within a minute of sitting down in the storeroom. “Please understand,” Harding was telling her, “you’ve done nothing wrong. We just need to know about the wine you served to Sylvia. Tell us everything you can remember.”

  The slender Portuguese girl traced the events in her mind. “I received the order by phone and wrote everything down. I’m sorry for my handwriting,” she said with a shy smile. “Then I told the bar I wanted a glass of Chardonnay.”

  “Did they pour it straight away?” Graham asked, his pen hovering over the surface of the notepad in anticipation.

  “I can’t remember…” she said at first. “There’s always so much things happen. Is so busy and crazy during lunch.”

  “Take your time, and think back carefully,” Sergeant Harding advised her.

  Marcella’s eyes went misty as she tried to replay every detail. “It was just waiting on the bar top, as normal,” she said after a moment. “I put it on the tray with the food, and I think… yes, I walked upstairs because the elevator was so busy.”

  Graham walked her through those few moments like a hypnotist. “You walked to Sylvia’s door… Did you knock as normal?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, hearing the sound in her own mind. “She was maybe on the phone with someone. She said to leave the tray outside.”

  Sergeant Harding felt, for the first time, the human nature of this loss. A vivacious woman, well liked and romantically involved, simply taken from the world in a blink. “And then?” she asked Marcella.

  “I just left the tray and went on to the next delivery. Only a little later, maybe… an hour or two?” she asked, “there was the announcement to the kitchen staff from Mrs. Taylor. She say we should not deliver anything else to two-eleven and should stay away. I was worried,” she recalled. “Mrs. Taylor never say anything like this before.”

  “And that’
s when you knew something must be wrong?” Graham asked her.

  “Poor woman,” Marcella sniffed. “I so sorry for her.”

  Sergeant Harding was as keen as her boss to keep the interview on track. “What about the wine glass, Marcella? What happened to that?”

  The girl blinked a few times. “The glass?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t in the room,” Graham told her. “No sign of it.”

  “But… I deliver the glass of wine with the lunch tray,” Marcella insisted. “Was not there?”

  Both officers knew that no glass had been found, but Graham felt the need to be absolutely sure. He couldn’t risk such a vital piece of evidence being overlooked. “Sergeant, would you ask the forensics team to make a special effort to look for that glass?”

  Harding left quietly, and Graham finished up the interview on his own, hoping that being one-on-one with Marcella would neither scare her nor cause her to hide anything. “I need to know just one more thing. Who else had wine with lunch today?”

  Marcella brightened. “Oh, is easy. I check the bar receipts. They need to bill the guest, so they always right.” She returned thirty seconds later with a stack of slips similar to the restaurant orders the chef had so usefully kept. “Only one!” she reported, handing the slip to Graham.

  “Thank you, Marcella. This really is very helpful.” Graham took down a note: Glass of wine, lunchtime. Room two-nineteen. Alice Swift.”

  * * *

  “No sign of it, sir,” Harding reported to her boss in the Inn’s lobby. “The team leader says they’ve turned the place upside down. No wine glass.”

  “Bugger,” Graham breathed. “We need to find the other one. This is a real long shot now,” he said, glancing at his watch, “but we’ve got to try.” They headed to the kitchens and found the staff busily preparing for dinner. “Marcella?”

  Her face fell and brightened only slightly when she saw Sergeant Harding’s warm smile. “Is more problems? I told you everything about everything…”

  “Please,” Graham said. “You’re not in any trouble.”

  Harding said, “It’s about the wine glass, Marcella. The one you brought to Alice Swift’s room. Do you remember what happened to it?”

  She shrugged apologetically and motioned to the big double sink in the corner of the kitchen. “Is cleaned. Everything is cleaned every day before dinner. No mess for the guests to see,” she said, her hands sweeping away an imaginary table of dirty dishes. “Chef insists about it.”

  Harding sent Marcella back to work while Graham took a moment to stand in the corner of the kitchen and swear colorfully under his breath.

  “No break there, boss. Sorry,” she said, half a second from putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder but wisely thinking better of it.

  “No poison in the food,” he said, partly to her and partly to himself. “No glass from either room to confirm that was the source. And no witnesses.”

  Sergeant Harding tried to lift his mood. “You know what Sherlock Holmes would call this kind of case?”

  Graham cracked half of a smile, despite himself. “A ‘three pipe problem’?” he tried.

  “Maybe four. But we’ll get to the bottom of it, sir. Don’t you worry about that.”

  Graham took out his notebook and flicked through it, as though the meticulous recording of events might somehow transform themselves into new data. A new theory. A lead, of some sort - of any sort.

  “I need a cup of tea, Sergeant Harding. Will you join me?”

  Despite her initial hopes of seizing her chance to get to know Graham a little better, Harding soon found that this was to be a very quiet, thoughtful cup of tea indeed. Graham barely spoke, and then almost entirely to himself. She was there as a sounding board, her hopes of learning more about this surprisingly sophisticated man dashed almost as soon as they sat down.

  “Dead. On the beach. Couldn’t have walked there.” He took a sip of the tea, and an eyebrow raised in… what was it, recognition? Surprise? It was hard for the Sergeant to say, not knowing him very well. DI Graham put the cup down very carefully, almost soundlessly, and continued. “Hip replacement. Couldn’t have managed the steps… Hmm.”

  The notepad was out again. Harding watched him read and flick through his notes as she sipped her own tea. It seemed best to say nothing and simply let him think.

  “Sort of engaged to the Colonel. Strong chap. Military through and through. But genuinely upset. Wouldn’t you say, Janice?”

  Sergeant Harding was surprised both to be included in this monologue and to hear Graham call her by her first name. He seemed in another world, caught up in details of murder and suspicion, leads and evidence, people and their potential motives. “I think we can stick with our original thought,” she replied, “and rule out the Colonel. A man like him doesn’t show his emotions, but we saw enough to know his grief was absolutely real.”

  “Not a lot of murderers,” Graham continued in the same faraway tone, “report the body to the police. Not many at all. They tend to let someone else do that. No, he’s in the clear.”

  More notes, more tea, and more thoughts. “Pilkingtons. She was upset. Furious with him.”

  “I’m a Dutchman if I understood her reaction,” Harding offered.

  “Hmm. Dutchman.” He was away in a cloudy world of investigative thought.

  “Sir?” Sergeant Harding asked, willing this strange monologue to at least begin to make sense.

  “They had nothing against her, Harding. She cured the man’s cancer, for heaven’s sake. A bit of suspicion is one thing, but… do you remember the look on Mrs. Pilkington’s face?”

  “Again,” Harding told him, “that was a genuine reaction. I’m no mind reader, but…”

  “No, you’re right. They were both telling the truth.” His thoughts meandered silently for a long moment. “Alice. Barely knew her, right?”

  “Who, Sylvia?” Harding asked, trying to keep up.

  “Headed to London. Sits in her room all day. But had some wine.”

  “Drinking with lunch, eh?” Harding joked. “Typical creative type.”

  Graham ignored her, but not unkindly. He was fully occupied, bringing in every detail for this grand synthesis of all they had learned so far. “Where in the seven hells,” he said more strongly, “is the wine glass from Sylvia’s room?”

  Harding thought this over. “Maybe Sylvia’s glass was taken away and washed with the rest?” she tried.

  Graham finally looked straight at her. “But the tray was still in her room. We saw the tray, Sergeant. There was no glass. None.”

  Feeling foolish, Harding nodded. “I remember now.”

  “Bugger,” Graham said again. “Too many unknowns here. Too many. Except one.”

  “What’s that, Detective Inspector?” she asked, hoping the additional formality might bring him out of his reverie.

  “We’re officially in a murder inquiry. And,” he added with a quirky smile, “I’m not even jolly well unpacked yet. Who ever said that Jersey was some quiet little island?”

  Harding drove him back to the station, glancing over at her new boss with growing respect and something more, an admiration which came from watching a fine mind at work. By the time they arrived, she was fizzing with excitement.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE TWO CONSTABLES faced each other across the reception desk, each gesticulating, checking off points on their fingers, holding up a palm to ask for silence, but their clamorous discussion only became audible when Graham and Harding opened the main door to the station.

  “All I’m saying is…” Barnwell began.

  “If you’ll let me finish…” Roach interrupted.

  “You’re not giving me a chance to make my…”

  “Gentlemen,” Graham said in a stentorian tone. “Have I wandered, by chance, into the back room of a local pub, or am I, as it truly seems, actually in a… what’s it called again, Sergeant… A police station?”

  “Sorry, sir,” the two men
said together, eyes downcast like truant schoolboys.

  “But don’t let me stop you. I just trust that, should a member of the public need either of you, this discussion would be put on hold.” Barnwell gave the reception desk’s phone a guilty glance. “May I ask what’s got you both quite so riled up?”

  There was a moment of silence while the two men figured out who was going to speak. “It’s this case, sir, at the White House Inn,” Barnwell admitted. “We’ve been mulling it over a bit, that’s all.”

  “Mulling?” Graham replied. “Mulling, you say? Well, I love a good mull.” He pulled up a chair in the reception area and sat as though about to watch an engaging documentary. “Mull away, Constables.”

  Barnwell began. “So, here’s what I’ve been thinking, sir. We know she took some kind of poison, right?” Graham let the Constable continue, despite his stretching the truth from the outset. “She decides to herself, in the middle of doing it, ‘Well, I’m about to shuffle off this mortal coil, I may as well have a nice view of the ocean while I’m getting ready to meet my maker’. See?”

  “So, it’s suicide, you’re saying,” Graham clarified.

  “Yes, sir. She wanders down in a haze of depression and sadness and what-not, and then dies on the beach.” He dusted off his hands as though having solved the case at a stroke.

  “Constable Roach?” Graham asked. “Do you concur with your colleague?”

  Roach cleared his throat. “Begging your pardon sir, but that’s bollocks.”

  Barnwell spun round to confront the younger officer, but Graham cut him off. “Hang on, Barnwell. Let’s hear it,” he said, motioning to Roach. “But be a good chap and mind your language in front of the Sergeant.”

  “Sorry, Sarge,” Roach said genuinely. “Here’s what I’d like to know. How’s a lady who’s virtually crippled supposed to walk down those steps? Eh? Imagine your Nana trying to do that. She’d bloody well croak on the way down, before she even got to the beach. I don’t care what kind of painkillers or whatever it was she was on.”

  “Interesting point, Constable,” Graham said.