An Unholy Whiff of Death

by Joyce Cato

  Flora sighed. ‘He had motive and opportunity, sir,’ she felt obliged to point out.

  ‘Yes, but did he have the means? Have we got a statement from anyone putting Malvin Cook and Gordon Trenning together?’

  ‘No sir. So far, the only people Dr Trenning seems to have talked to for any length of time were Melissa Ferris, a man with a beer crate beside the pavilion, and of course Sean Gregson during their little spat. But, if Carole Anne Clancy is to be believed, he also had that secret meeting with Sir Hugh around the back of the tea tent.’

  ‘Yes, and I think that it’s high time we tackled Sir Hugh about that,’ Jason mused. ‘He’s had enough time now to come forward and volunteer the information off his own bat, so it’s obvious that he’s not going to. Besides, it must have been worrying him all afternoon, wondering if we’d find out about it, so he should have been stewing nicely,’ Jason smiled wolfishly. ‘Yes. Let’s have the squire back again.’

  Flora smiled and left.

  When she returned with Sir Hugh a few minutes later, he walked stiffly to the chair in front of Jason and sat down, careful to pull on the crease in his trousers to keep them straight. ‘Chief Inspector?’ he raised one white eyebrow courteously.

  Jason, however, was not in the mood for social niceties. ‘Sir Hugh. You were seen following Dr Gordon Trenning behind the tea tent at some time between 2.30p.m and 2.50p.m. I want to know what that was all about,’ Jason demanded briskly.

  Sir Hugh went a little pale, then a little red, then coughed. He looked at Jason for a long time, then shrugged and reluctantly reached into his inside jacket pocket. From there, he pulled out a sheet of paper.

  ‘I suppose there’s no real harm in telling you. Though I wanted to keep it quiet in case certain people got to hear about it,’ Sir Hugh began morosely.

  ‘I can assure you I know the meaning of the word confidential, Sir Hugh,’ Jason said, a shade sardonically.

  Sir Hugh had the grace to look a little abashed. Then he took a deep breath. ‘Yes, well. You know about my lawsuit against Ferris Labs,’ he began, ‘about the loss of my fish stock?’ Jason nodded. ‘What you may not know,’ he carried on, ‘is that Gordon himself had had his troubles with that … man.’

  Jason held up a hand. ‘We know all about Dr Trenning’s invention, Sir Hugh, and the fact that he believes it was stolen from him by his employer,’ he said quickly. He wanted the old duffer to come straight to the point. He was tired of being given the runaround. It felt as if, all afternoon long, everyone, in some way or other, had been playing games with him. Perhaps he was becoming paranoid, he thought, forcing back a grim smile.

  Sir Hugh coughed. ‘Well, as you can imagine, when I approached Dr Trenning and asked him if he could keep an eye out for anything useful to me that he might discover, he was only too happy to act as my “spy” in the enemy camp, so to speak.’ The squire cleared his throat uncomfortably, but ploughed on. ‘Well, the thing is, he phoned me the day before the show, and told me that he’d managed to photocopy an incriminating memo that would help me in my lawsuit.’ He tapped the folded piece of paper on his knee, then hesitated for a moment as Jason held out his hand for it.

  Sir Hugh obliged and Jason quickly scanned it.

  It was indeed a photocopied memo, and one that Sir Hugh’s lawyers would no doubt be delighted to have, as it tacitly admitted that the financier had known about the industrial accident and seemed to be giving orders to cover it up. It would no doubt result in a hefty fine for Ferris – if Sir Hugh’s legal team could get it admitted into evidence, that is. He shrugged the thought aside. Such legal wrangles didn’t interest him.

  ‘I take it that Dr Trenning arranged to meet you in secret behind the tent and hand this over in person?’ Jason asked crisply.

  ‘Exactly,’ Sir Hugh confirmed. ‘It’s not as if he could have risked asking someone else to hand it over to me, is it? Not that there was anything in it for him, per se; he just wanted to make as much trouble for his boss as possible.’

  Jason sighed. It sounded reasonable. And Sir Hugh had probably promised the good doctor a little monetary bonus, once his court claim had been settled and he’d won substantial compensation from Ross Ferris.

  ‘I see. Tell me, Sir Hugh,’ he said, fixing the old soldier with a gimlet eye, ‘When you were both being so pally, did Dr Trenning happen to tell you about a clever little device that he’d just made? A tiny, exploding capsule containing concentrated and poisonous gas?’ he added sharply.

  Sir Hugh stiffened. ‘Certainly not. If he had, I’d have told him he’d be crazy to use it,’ the squire said firmly.

  Jason stared at him for a few minutes, trying to read the real emotion behind the outraged expression.

  Trenning might have handed the capsule over to Sir Hugh, along with the memo. If Sir Hugh had already suborned him into acting as his spy, why not also commission him to make a deadly weapon to get rid of the man that they both so bitterly hated and resented? Sir Hugh might have planted the capsule whilst sniffing his favourite rose. But there was no way, try as he might, that Jason could place Sir Hugh both in the flower show tent, and behind the tea tent murdering Gordon Trenning, at the same time. Which meant that someone else must have killed the scientist. And the idea that there might be three people in on it was just too much to swallow. Conspiracies were dicey with only two to keep the secret. Three was just asking for disaster.

  And yet – how else did it all make sense?

  ‘Very well, Sir Hugh,’ Jason said flatly. ‘That’ll be all. For the moment.’

  The two police officers watched him go, then Flora said quietly, ‘He’s really got to be our prime suspect, sir.’

  Jason sighed. ‘We still haven’t eliminated Malvin Cook,’ he reminded her. ‘I suppose we’d better have Pete Drummond back and see if he’d be willing to swear to—’ Yet again he was interrupted by a constable poking his head through the tent flap door.

  ‘Sir. We’ve caught Mrs Ferris trying to sneak out of the field,’ he said breathlessly. ‘She pretended to be with a man in a car, and was guiding him through the gate, but Faraday was suspicious and challenged her. The man in the car confirmed that he doesn’t know Mrs Ferris, except to nod to occasionally, and that she didn’t come in with him.’

  Jason smiled grimly. He turned to Flora. ‘It never rains but it pours,’ he muttered. ‘Send her in,’ Jason said wearily to the constable. After the time he was having of it, it would be interesting to see just what line the femme fatale in the case was going to take.

  Flora felt her hackles rise the moment Melissa Ferris walked into the room. She was so aggressively feminine, and everything about her was so clearly designed to attract male attention that it was all the policewoman could do to hold back a snort of scorn.

  Flora noticed, as she’d expected to, that Melissa’s eyes zeroed in on the good-looking Jason Dury like a guided missile.

  ‘Chief Inspector, is this really necessary?’ Melissa asked softly, sinking down onto the wooden foldaway chair as if it had been an armchair in a palace. ‘I know nothing about anything, I do assure you.’

  Join the club, Jason thought sourly. ‘Then this shouldn’t take long, should it?’ he smiled wolfishly.

  Melissa smiled dazzlingly back.

  ‘Do you know what class of flower your husband was judging this year, Mrs Ferris?’ he began briskly.

  Melissa looked blank. ‘Not the faintest. Sorry. Didn’t know, didn’t care,’ she said airily, waving red-painted nails about in a one-handed gesture of exaggerated indifference.

  ‘You’re in the middle of a divorce, I understand?’ he pressed.

  ‘That’s right.’ She reached into her bag to light a cigarette.

  Filthy habit, though Jason and Flora simultaneously, but Jason, at least, could enjoy the show. The genteel extraction of the cigarette, the single flick of the lighter, the long sultry look through the flame as she suggestively sucked on the cigarette and got it alight.

  When sh
e was finished, he said mildly, ‘Is it an amicable divorce, Mrs Ferris?’

  Melissa laughed harshly. ‘Hardly. You obviously don’t know my husband, Inspector, or you wouldn’t even ask that question. But my lawyers are more than holding their own,’ she lied casually.

  Jason said nothing for a moment. It was obvious that if Melissa had ever been in the flower show tent, everyone would have noticed her and commented ad infinitum. So she was out of it, at least as far as the planting of the capsule went. But what about as far as killing Trenning?

  ‘You were seen talking to Doctor Gordon Trenning fairly early on in the afternoon. Can you tell me what you talked about?’ he asked mildly.

  Melissa’s smile faltered. ‘Is it true he’s the one who’s dead?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘Reverend Davies is dead too,’ Jason pointed out grimly, and had the satisfaction of making her blush. He’d surmised, quite rightly, that she’d hardly given the dead clergyman a second thought.

  ‘Yes. Yes of course,’ she said hastily. ‘But I didn’t really know him very well. But Gordon—’

  ‘Yes?’ Jason said sharply.

  Melissa sighed. ‘Well, I knew Gordon. And he was rather sweet, in an odd kind of way. He was a bit of a mummy’s boy, you know. And then she died, and he came here and suddenly had all these village women chasing after him,’ she laughed. ‘It was really quite … touching in a way, to see the way he reacted to it all. Sort of bemused and pleased and terrified all at the same time. In fact, I rather teased him about it.’

  ‘And this afternoon, what did you talk about then?’ Jason persisted.

  ‘Oh, this and that. Nothing specific.’

  ‘Did you suspect that he had a deadly capsule filled with cyanide gas in his pocket?’ he couldn’t resist asking, and had the satisfaction of watching her jaw drop.

  ‘You’re kidding?’ she gasped, with, for the first time something approaching a genuine reaction apparent in her voice.

  Jason sighed. ‘No, I’m not. I believe he came here intending to kill your husband, Mrs Ferris.’

  Melissa flushed a dark ugly colour. ‘And he botched it,’ she said bitterly and with very real angst. ‘Damn. What a fool. Still, that’s just typical of Gordon, I’m afraid.’

  Jason almost laughed, her frustration was so palpable. ‘It’s all very annoying for you, of course,’ he murmured. She would have made such a very merry widow.

  Melissa looked at him quickly, sensing his antagonism and amusement, and, for the first time, her eyes widened with fear. ‘Hey! Look, I had nothing to do with any of this.’ She waved her cigarette around jerkily. ‘I don’t know anything about capsules, and Gordon dying, or anything else. But if you want to ask someone who does, you should see that pompous twit Sir Hugh.’

  Jason kept his face perfectly straight. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. I saw him, Gordon that is, hand some sort of package over to Sir Hugh earlier on.’ She wasn’t about to admit that she’d been so intrigued by Gordon’s manner that she’d been keeping a deliberate eye on him, even following him around at a discreet distance.

  ‘I see. Was it a small, even tiny package?’ He was interested to see if she’d lie.

  ‘No. No, it was a sort of envelope size,’ Melissa admitted reluctantly.

  ‘I see. Well, thank you, Mrs Ferris,’ Jason said smoothly. ‘Oh, and please don’t leave London without telling us, will you?’ he added sweetly.

  Melissa smiled enchantingly. ‘Of course not, Inspector,’ she cooed.

  The moment she stepped out of the tent, a wide, delighted smile crossed Melissa’s face. She had him! ‘Oh yes,’ she muttered excitedly to herself, ‘yes!’

  She quickly scanned the field.

  She had him now.

  In the tea tent, Monica straightened her shoulders and stepped forward. It was high time that she spoke to Wendy Davies. She was aware that the new widow had had her closest friends with her all afternoon, and that Her Ladyship at least could be counted on to keep the well meaning but curious, clear of her. But Monica knew that she would have a load of trouble with her conscience later if she put off expressing her condolences any longer.

  Vera and another little woman were sitting next to Wendy, trying to keep her mind off things. Vera Gant spotted Monica first. ‘Oh, hello, Mrs Noble.’

  Wendy glanced up, her vague, watery eyes seeming to look right through her.

  ‘Hello. Wendy, how are you doing?’ she asked gently. It was such an inadequate thing to say, Monica knew, but Wendy Davies smiled vaguely.

  ‘Oh, I’m all right,’ she insisted automatically.

  ‘Would you like another cup of tea, love?’ the little woman said, jumping up and going to the vast tea urns at the back. Vera walked a little bit away from Wendy, beckoning Monica to follow her. Wendy didn’t seem to notice, or mind. Monica suspected that she was probably used to being talked about by now, as if she weren’t even there.

  ‘She’s not doing all right at all, poor thing,’ Vera whispered. ‘And who can blame her? And she won’t go home. She seems to think it’s her duty to stay here. If you ask me, she’s done too much of her duty already. Everyone and their grandmother come to her with their problems, and her having enough of her own!’ Vera said angrily. ‘Even that chap who got murdered was pouring his woes into her ear earlier on. Well you should know, you were there. And now they tell us …’ she checked hastily to see if Wendy could hear, and lowered her voice even further, ‘… that he was the one who killed poor James. Wicked, I call it. Still, he got what he deserved,’ she sniffed.

  So, the favourite theory was that Gordon Trenning killed James, by mistake presumably, and then someone else as yet unidentified, killed the scientist, Monica mused. As a theory, it seemed to be as good as any.

  Just then, the magnificent figure of the countess came into the tent. She shot a sharp-eyed gaze at Monica, an admonishing one at Vera, then went tiredly over to Wendy.

  ‘Won’t you come home with me, Wendy, my dear?’ Daphne said, obviously not for the first time, but the wilted blonde head shook restlessly from side to side.

  The presence of the countess seemed to have an intimidating effect on the other two ladies, and Monica felt ashamed for leaving it all to them. Nevertheless she made murmuring noises to leave. As she stepped out of the tent, however, she found that the little woman had followed her. Monica wished she knew her name. Mrs Drinkwater, was it?

  ‘I’m so glad you came, Mrs Noble,’ the woman twittered. ‘What Wendy needs is another vicar’s wife to talk to. Her Ladyship tries hard, but … well.’ She shrugged graphically.

  Monica nodded. ‘It seems to me that Wendy is still in shock. I don’t know that I, or anyone else, can really help her until she’s had a chance to get some rest.’

  ‘Oh I know. The poor thing was shaking when we got her back in here. And, you know, she was sick as a dog too? Reaction, of course. Good thing the loos were back there,’ the little woman shrugged, her practicality and good sense bringing a much needed bracing effect into the conversation. ‘She only just made it in time, mind you, the poor thing. Can’t you get that good-looking policeman to let her go home?’ the little woman carried on, and once again, Monica felt herself flush. Why did everyone seem to think she had some sort of influence over Jason Dury?

  Suddenly, something started nibbling away at the back of her mind. It was a sensation that she’d only ever felt once before in her life – just before she’d realized the identity of the murderer amongst them back at Heyford Bassett last year, in fact.

  She shook her head, but it couldn’t be ignored. It was persistent and relentless. A sort of tingling sensation at the nape of her neck that told her she should know now who had killed James and Gordon. And why. She was sure she had all the necessary facts, but she just hadn’t arranged them in the right way. It was aggravating, and the little woman beside her was still chatting on a mile a minute, which was not helping her to think any.

  ‘Well, I’ll see what I can do, of co
urse,’ Monica said, trying to stop the woman in mid flow, ‘but most people are leaving now anyway,’ she said, gesturing around the now nearly empty field.

  Her eyes narrowed for a minute as she noticed Ross and Melissa Ferris over by the swings, talking angrily. From their vivid gestures and rigid body language they seemed to be in the middle of a knockdown, drag-out fight.

  ‘I’m sure Wendy will be allowed home shortly, if she wants to go,’ she reassured her companion vaguely and left the little woman sighing unhappily. For herself, she could quite understand why poor Wendy didn’t want to return to her empty house.

  Melissa put her hands on her hips and smiled up into her husband’s furious face. ‘But, Ross, you know that the newspapers pay such huge sums for interviews these days. Especially when the scandal is such a big juicy one, as this one is sure to be.’

  Ross swallowed back the bile in his throat. ‘And it would be just like you to hawk your story around all the dirtiest rags you could find, wouldn’t it?’ he snarled bitterly.

  Melissa smiled and shrugged. ‘But darling, what else can I do?’ her eyes glittered. ‘The divorce settlement you’re proposing is so paltry that I can hardly turn down serious money for an exclusive, now can I? And just think what I can tell them about Gordon,’ Melissa carried on dreamily.

  Melissa was enjoying herself enormously. The moment she’d stepped out of the tent after talking to that policeman, she knew that she had it made. It wasn’t often that Ross Ferris was bested, and she intended to make the most of it.

  Ross felt his hands itching to grab her throat. But he was in a bind, and he knew it. When the facts about the double murder here at Caulcott Green came out, it was going to be a PR nightmare. Putting on a brave front and presenting himself as the innocent victim was going to be vital.

  But Melissa was a loose cannon. He shuddered, imagining the kind of tripe the newspapers would get out of her: My life with ambitious-mad husband. He could almost see the humiliating headlines now.