An Unholy Whiff of Death

by Joyce Cato

  ‘Oh no, I don’t mind,’ Graham said. ‘I want to do all I can to help. And please, Inspector, call me Graham.’

  Jason wasn’t so sure about that, but nodded briefly. ‘If you can just give me the gist of what you know, and some of the background,’ he asked, taking out a small, pocket-sized, hand-held recording device.

  As he made sure it was working, he half-turned to scan the crowd in the tent once more, and found Sir Hugh trying not to stare at them. Graham noticed as well, and had to hide a small smile, knowing that the ex-soldier was feeling extremely put out. No doubt Sir Hugh considered that the constabulary was wantonly ignoring him.

  ‘Well, I don’t know much,’ Graham began, trying to be succinct but not miss out anything important. ‘Every year there’s a flower show here, and James Davies, he’s the local vicar here, and the … er … deceased, is on the committee that organizes it. This year he volunteered Monica and me to be judges.’

  Jason nodded, his eyes still randomly sweeping the people he could see around them. Sometimes body language could give away many a secret.

  ‘The judging was supposed to begin at three, but I suppose it was more like a quarter past before everyone arrived and Sir Hugh gave his pep talk,’ Graham continued.

  ‘Can you remember when Mr … er … Reverend Davies entered the tent. Early? Late?’ Jason interrupted.

  Graham thought about it and shrugged. ‘Well he wasn’t the first in, but not the last either. He always tried to be punctual, when possible.’

  Jason nodded. ‘I see. Sorry, please carry on.’

  ‘Well, as I said, Sir Hugh gave us his pep talk, we collected the rosettes and such like, then returned to the tables to start the judging. James was judging the dahlias this year, and his wife … er … the asters, I think. But I’m not sure about that.’

  Jason ignored the politics of flower show judging. ‘And he seemed fine? He was acting as normal? He didn’t seem scared, or worried or distracted?’ he pressed.

  ‘No,’ Graham said firmly. ‘I’d seen him on and off all afternoon, and he seemed very much the same as always. Not ill or depressed, or anything unusual.’

  Jason sensed the pain in the other man’s voice, but the factual, no-nonsense statement was being a great help. He glanced up and met Graham’s level gaze. ‘Are you sure you want to carry on?’ he murmured.

  Graham straightened his shoulders. ‘I’m fine. Anyway, James went to his table and we went to ours. I didn’t see what happened, because I was doing my own judging – the lilies. But after a while, about ten minutes or so, I heard a kind of gasping, gurgling sound. I looked around, but it took me a few seconds to realize what it was, and that James had fallen onto the floor. Oh, yes, his wife called out his name, I think, which also made me look around.’

  His gaze moved across to his prone friend, then hastily away again. He wished the medical examiner would get here quickly so that the body could be taken away. Odd, that. Already James was ‘the body’. Of course, his soul had already gone… .

  ‘I see. And then what?’ Jason’s crisp, matter-of-fact voice rescued Graham from his painful thoughts and he dragged his mind firmly back to the task in hand.

  ‘I went over to him, along with several others. Someone, I think it was my wife, suggested that we get him some water. At that point, I think we all thought he’d just fainted, you know? Because of the heat. It’s been so very hot in here all afternoon – everyone’s commented on it.’

  Jason nodded. ‘And then?’

  ‘I bent down and turned him over. Yes, I know, sorry about that,’ he added hastily as Jason looked up sharply from his contemplation of a nervous-looking little man who had entered a fine array of shallots in the vegetable section. ‘But at the time I had no reason to suppose that he was dead. Or that it was in any way suspicious,’ Graham added quietly but firmly.

  Jason’s pale blue eyes narrowed slightly. ‘What made you first think it might be suspicious?’ he asked quickly.

  Graham looked vaguely troubled. ‘I’m not so sure. It was just the quickness of it, I suppose. The moment I saw his face, I could see that he was dead. And he was such a strange colour. Anyway, I closed his eyes and said a short prayer for him, as I know he would have wanted, and asked someone to go and get the local doctor and call the police. Everyone was very shocked and upset. James was well liked, Inspector,’ he said, once again in a firm voice. ‘Sir Hugh then ushered everyone else to the back of the tent.’

  Jason had not missed the firmness with which Graham had stressed how popular James was, and had received the message loud and clear. Muck-raking over the victim’s character or the circumstances of his life would not be appreciated. And Jason could only hope that there would be no muck to rake, but, in his experience, people didn’t get themselves murdered for nothing. Still, if he should come across any unsavoury facts about the dead man, he would certainly be very discreet about it.

  ‘I see,’ he murmured noncommittally. He had been remembering the case in Heyford Bassett with more and more clarity as Graham had talked, and with it, his growing recollection of this man’s cool but compassionate intelligence. His account of the past hour or so had been clear and to the point, and it was obvious that he’d carefully thought about everything he’d said before speaking, so that he didn’t let his own opinions and thoughts cloud his memory of the events. Like it or not, Jason thought, sighing heavily, it looked as if Graham’s presence was going to come in handy yet again. As a witness, he was a policeman’s dream.

  ‘And then?’ he prompted gently.

  ‘Then the doctor came – Dr Clarke. He’s resident in the village and had been attending the fete. Someone had gone to fetch him – I’m not sure who, sorry. Sir Hugh asked him if it was a heart attack. He didn’t commit himself to that, but I could tell that he wasn’t satisfied about the circumstances surrounding James’s collapse. Wendy, that’s James’s wife, left with some of the other ladies at that point, I think. And then Dr Clarke openly declared himself unhappy with things and asked if the police had been sent for. It was then decided that we should all stay more or less where we were until you arrived,’ Graham finished.

  ‘Who decided that?’ he asked sharply.

  Graham blinked, thought about it for a few moments, then frowned and shrugged. ‘Well, it was a more or less a joint decision, I think. Myself, Sir Hugh and the doctor all thought it best, under the, er, circumstances,’ Graham stumbled a little at the last. Even now he didn’t really want to think the impossible.

  The word ‘murder’ hung between them, unspoken but shouting louder than thunder.

  Jason nodded and switched off the recorder. ‘Thank you … Graham,’ he said stiffly. Then he very quickly jotted down a few notes. Well, the preliminary facts were certainly clear enough. Just then, Flora Glenn returned, with a four-man team dressed in white overalls. Some of them looked around the crowded tent in obvious surprise and disapproval.

  Jason beckoned to Brian Gilwiddy.

  ‘Sir?’ He approached smartly.

  ‘More help should have arrived by now, so chivvy them up,’ Jason said. ‘Get this crowd organized. I want them led outside, but cordoned off from the rest of the people in the field. Needless to say, I want them all interviewed and statements taken where appropriate.’

  ‘Sir.’

  As the constable began to shepherd them out, finding no unwillingness to co-operate since everyone was happy to get out in the fresh air, Sir Hugh and Monica both made moves towards Jason. Monica got there first. She saw Jason’s shoulders tense, just for a moment, as he watched her approach, but his pale electric-blue eyes were giving nothing away.

  She smiled tentatively. ‘Chief Inspector,’ she greeted him softly. Like Jason, she’d never expected to set eyes on him again, and found herself feeling, for some absurd reason, almost shy. Shoving aside such foolishness, she got straight to the point. ‘I’ve found something that I think you ought to see,’ she added determinedly. She wanted to get this over with.


  Jason’s eyes narrowed ominously. It had been Monica Noble who had all but handed the solution of the Heyford Bassett murder case to him on a plate. Which was just one more thing about her that he was never going to forget. And the fact that she was now mixed up in another crime scene didn’t exactly fill him with joy.

  He smiled briefly. ‘In that case, Mrs Noble, perhaps you’d better show me,’ he said simply. He couldn’t help but notice that her husband give her a quick glance, and felt – ridiculously – a quick shaft of pleasure that, whatever it was she’d found, she hadn’t thought to confide it to him.

  ‘It’s in here,’ Monica said, leading him to the table of roses and pointing out the display of Peace.

  Jason stared at the blooms blankly. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You have to look closely,’ Monica said. ‘I only just saw it myself. It was this rose that James was inspecting just before he died.’

  By his side, it was Flora now who was making notes in her notebook. At this statement, however, both of them looked up at her.

  ‘You saw him?’ Jason asked, surprised.

  Monica hesitated, looked a little abashed, and then finally shook her head. ‘No, but I’m sure it must have been this flower. Look inside and see for yourself.’

  If it had been anyone else, Jason might have suspected that he was having his leg pulled, but one quick glance at Monica’s earnest blue eyes had him peering down into the flower. Even so, it took him a few moments to spot it. When he did, he stiffened. ‘Flora, get a SOCO over here quickly,’ he said quietly.

  A short, dark-haired man in overalls came over, obviously intrigued by the leading officer’s interest in the rose. ‘Benson, get some tweezers and a bag,’ Jason said, and the lab-man produced them from a case he was carrying. Jason then stood a little to one side to allow the SOCO man to stand beside him. He pointed into the centre of the flower. ‘See it?’

  The man peered in, eyes squinting a little. ‘No. Oh yeah.’ He called over to a SOCO with a camera and had some pictures taken of it before carefully, and with perfectly steady hands, retrieving the tiny glass capsule from the rose. Both Graham, Flora, and Sir Hugh, who’d managed to sidle up unnoticed, peered at it with fascination.

  ‘What do you think it is?’ it was Flora who spoke first.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jason admitted grimly. But whatever it was, he doubted it had anything to do with improving the growing of roses.

  Benson looked across to one of the men scraping the grass around James Davies’s body and called calmly, ‘Hey, Frank, come and take a look at this.’ To Jason he added matter-of-factly, ‘Frank’s a bit of a boffin when it comes to stuff like this.’

  Jason watched the other man approach. He was tall, slightly stooped and grey-haired, with wire-rimmed spectacles and a rather ragged white moustache; he really did look like the archetypal absent-minded professor type. As the technician reached them, he pushed his gold-rimmed glasses a bit closer up the bridge of his nose. He peered at the proffered capsule for several seconds, his slightly myopic grey eyes widening as he did so.

  Then he let out a long, low, admiring whistle. ‘That’s some piece of equipment,’ he said at last.

  ‘It’s tiny,’ Flora said, apropos of nothing.

  ‘I know. That’s what makes it so interesting,’ Frank said. ‘State-of-the-art with a capital S.’

  ‘But what is it?’ Jason said impatiently.

  ‘It’s a capsule, and would have contained some kind of gas, I’d say. Perhaps liquid, but much more likely a gas. See the almost microscopic chip at the end there? At a guess, I’d say that was some kind of trigger, or release mechanism.’

  He reached into his own bag for a lens, and peered closer. ‘Yes, there’s a tiny little gizmo attached. It’s ruptured the seal on the end and, yes, the gas must have been compressed. When the seal broke, it would have ejected a tiny amount of gas from the capsule. Probably a gas that had been modified in some way – made more intense and therefore more toxic, would be my guess. Whoever made this little darlin’ certainly knew what he was doing, all right.’

  Jason stared at him, aware that his jaw was quite literally dropping, and quickly snapped his mouth shut. Even so, he felt as if he’d just wandered onto the set of some James Bond film.

  Tiny exploding gas capsules? Give him a break!

  ‘What activated it?’ he asked. ‘It surely wasn’t on a timer. Not a thing that size.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Frank said. ‘See the back of this chip? It’s got a tiny sponge on it. No bigger than a large pin head. My guess is that it was soaked in some kind of chemical.’

  Jason was lost and he knew it, but he had no choice but to show his ignorance if he wanted to get to the bottom of this. ‘And exactly what purpose would that serve?’ he asked, a touch acidly.

  The boffin shrugged. ‘Could be any number of things. But my guess is that it was put there so that it would react to another, very specific chemical signal, and thus trigger off the release mechanism.’

  Flora Glenn, sensing her chief’s discomfort, took over. ‘Can you put that into English for me?’ she asked sweetly.

  Monica saw Jason glance at her gratefully, and felt a tiny tug of jealousy, deep down in the pit of her stomach. It shocked her, and made her look quickly away.

  ‘Well, anything could have triggered it, of course, but my guess is that it’s rigged to respond to one of the chemicals present in human breath,’ Frank said matter-of-factly, as if discussing the weather or the winner of the two forty-five at Aintree.

  For a second, though, there was a stunned silence.

  Then Jason spoke. ‘Are you telling me that that thing was set off just because James Davies breathed on it?’

  ‘Could be. I can’t know for certain, of course, until I get it back to the lab and can run some tests on it. But this little beauty is easily capable of that kind of sophistication. Of course, to kill anyone, the gas itself would have to be a very potent one to begin with, even with some modification. The amount in a capsule this size would be tiny.’

  ‘How about cyanide?’ Jason suggested quietly.

  The boffin, showing no apparent sign of surprise, nodded and almost smiled in approval. ‘Yes, that would certainly do it. There are other possibilities, of course, but not many.’

  ‘But isn’t it rare?’ Flora asked. ‘Cyanide, I mean.’

  But already the boffin was shaking his head. ‘Not as rare as you might think. You’d be surprised just how much of it is still used commercially, even nowadays, especially in industry. And what with the internet and everything, almost anybody could, with a little due diligence, track down a source of it.’

  Jason leaned closer, and Frank discreetly, but firmly, put a hand against his chest. ‘Don’t get too close to it, sir. Even a whiff of cyanide can kill. My old professor at Durham wouldn’t let us med students near the stuff when … I say, Miss, are you all right?’ He broke off to look at Monica, who’d gone dead white and was swaying alarmingly.

  ‘Yes. No,’ Monica mumbled confusedly. ‘I … when I first found it, it felt as if I couldn’t breathe for a moment,’ she explained faintly, suddenly realizing that what she’d felt had had nothing to do with an anxiety attack after all. Some of the gas must still have been in the air near the rose. She might have died! For a second, the tent spun around her and she took a hasty step forward to try to regain her balance. Jason and Graham both moved abruptly towards her, Jason, at the last moment, pulling back to give her husband priority.

  Graham’s arms came around her, and she smiled up at him tremulously. ‘Sorry,’ she said, feeling ridiculous. ‘I’m just being a bit feeble.’

  Jason didn’t know it, but beside him, Flora Glenn was staring at him with wide, surprised eyes. Her boss looked unusually pale and grim-faced and she shot the vicar’s wife a rapid, thoughtful, and assessing gaze. What she saw was a slim-waisted woman, with dark curly hair, a 37-year-old face, and wide blue eyes. Attractive, if you liked mature women. But hardly a supermodel.


  ‘Do you need a doctor?’ Jason asked quickly, still looking at Monica with worried eyes.

  And, because he hadn’t been asked to leave with the others, John Clarke heard the sharp question and hurried forward. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked calmly.

  ‘No,’ Jason snapped. ‘Mrs Noble might have had a whiff of that damned cyanide gas.’

  The doctor moved at once to her side. With Graham supporting her on one side, and him on the other, she began to feel even more of a fool.

  ‘No, honestly, I’m all right now,’ she protested. ‘It was just the shock of thinking … that thing… .’ She stared at the innocuous piece of glass, still held innocently between Benson’s tweezers, and shuddered. ‘That I was so close to it so soon after it was activated. That I might have breathed in some of the poison too.’

  ‘I think you’ll be all right, Mrs Noble,’ John Clarke said bracingly. ‘If you were going to die, you’d have done it long before now,’ he added, with his usual tactless cheerfulness.

  Both Graham and Monica found themselves grinning at him in appreciation.

  Jason turned abruptly away. ‘OK, Benson, get that thing back to the labs,’ he said roughly. ‘And treat the damned thing with kid gloves – it might still be dangerous. I want a thorough analysis of it as soon as you can. At least it shouldn’t be hard to track it back to its origins. There can’t be many places, or people, with the know-how or ability to build such a thing. Right, Frank?’ he added, shooting the boffin a ‘don’t-you-dare-say-no’ look.

  But Frank was already shaking his head. ‘I should say not. There can’t be many men in this country who would be able to construct it, that’s for sure. He’d have to be a bit of a chemist, an engineer and a computer-chip technician all rolled into one. Mind you, having said that, it could have been made anywhere. Even abroad.’

  ‘But—’ It was Sir Hugh who spoke up, and then, finding all eyes were on him, wished heartily that he’d kept his big mouth shut.