Core of Evil

by Nigel McCrery

  He could tell from the deadening silence in the hall that the flat was unoccupied. He walked into the front room. There were possessions scattered around – a cardigan, a bowl of petals, a pile of local papers – but something about it made him think of a theatrical stage set, waiting for the actors to arrive. Whatever was there was a prop, ready to support a performance. It wasn’t real.

  Having quickly checked the flat over to make sure that Madeline Poel wasn’t asleep in the bedroom or out in the garden, Lapslie quickly searched the place without disturbing anything. Although he found some post addressed to Daisy Wilson he found nothing that mentioned Madeline Poel, and nothing that mentioned any of the previous victims. If Madeline – or Daisy, as she now was – kept trophies, or even just the kind of details she would need in order to keep twelve previous victims apparently alive, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, then she must have it all stashed away somewhere else. It certainly wasn’t in the flat.

  But he did find a pile of pamphlets advertising an arts and crafts centre on the outskirts of Leyston run by someone named Eunice Coleman. For some reason, Daisy Wilson was interested in it, and that gave him one more place to try if he wanted to locate her. Perhaps Eunice Coleman was her next victim. Perhaps, by now, Eunice Coleman was her.

  The arts and crafts centre was probably twenty minutes away, according to the satnav in his car. He pulled away from his parking spot and accelerated on down the road, back towards Leyston town centre.

  He found it along a muddy track. There were two buildings in sight: a sad, barn-like structure that was probably the centre itself and an impressive farmhouse built of red brick sat a hundred yards or so beyond.

  Lapslie turned his ignition off and got out of the car. The fan in the engine ran on for a few seconds, disturbing the silence of the countryside, then it fell silent. The only sounds were the ticks of his cooling engine and the singing of the birds.

  Eunice Coleman deserved to know that she was in danger, and she might know where Madeline Poel – now calling herself Daisy Wilson, of course – could be found. Daisy might even be there, and Lapslie was unable to think of any circumstances in which he couldn’t manage to arrest her without help. She was only an old woman, when all was said and done.

  He walked over to the barn. Mid-afternoon, and the arts and crafts centre should have been open, according to the times displayed on the door, but it was locked. He banged on the door, just in case, and peered through the smeared glass, but there was nobody about. He headed across to the house.

  Lapslie rang the doorbell, and waited. Just as he was about to ring it again, the door opened. A woman looked at him enquiringly. She was wearing a velvet waistcoat over a frilled blouse, and a purple skirt with a fringed hem that brushed the floor.

  ‘Mrs Coleman? Mrs Eunice Coleman?’

  She nodded. ‘None other,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’

  He waited for the taste of lychees, but there was nothing save a hint, perhaps just his imagination at work. Was this the same woman who had poured an invisible cup of tea for him in an interview room in Broadmoor? She had aged, and her hair was different. It might have been her, but it might also have been Eunice Coleman. He wasn’t sure.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Mark Lapslie,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to you. I’m looking for a woman named Daisy Wilson.’

  She smiled. ‘Daisy’s not here right now,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’d better come in. I’ve made a pot of coffee – would you like some?’

  Lapslie stepped inside the house. Shadows enfolded him. There was a smell of sickness wafting through the hall, but he didn’t know where it emanated from. Perhaps Eunice was lying upstairs, dying. Perhaps this was Eunice walking down the hall in front of him. He just didn’t know.

  She led him into a cluttered room in which sofas and armchairs fought for space with low tables and potted plants. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ she said. ‘I’ll just be a minute. Sorry if I’m a bit dozy, by the way – I had a strange nap this afternoon.’

  She vanished off towards what he assumed was the kitchen. He listened out for movements elsewhere in the house, but there was nothing. He still wasn’t sure, and he couldn’t afford to get this wrong.

  The woman calling herself Eunice Coleman came back into the room with a coffee jug and two cups on a tray. She seemed surprised to find him still standing. ‘You’re making me nervous,’ she said, putting the tray onto a side table and gesturing towards the sofa. He sat, and while she poured two cups of coffee he looked around the room. There were paintings of various kinds on the walls – some landscapes, some portraits and some abstracts – and all of the chairs were covered with embroidered throws. Obviously Eunice Coleman brought her work home with her.

  ‘Milk?’ Still, that maddening uncertainty. Did her voice taste of lychees, or was he hoping too hard that it would?

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Help yourself to sugar.’ She put the cup on another table within his reach, then sat down in one of the armchairs holding her own cup. ‘So, what can I do for you, Detective Chief Inspector Lapslie?’ she asked.

  ‘About Daisy Wilson …’ he said, watching the cup in her hands. It didn’t tremble.

  ‘Mad as a box of frogs, the dear thing,’ she said. ‘Yes, she’s been helping me out at the crafts centre. I think she’s gone to the pharmacy. What did you want her for?’

  ‘I need to ask her some questions.’ He raised his cup to his lips, then paused as he watched her face.

  ‘What kinds of questions?’

  ‘Questions about some women she might know.’

  ‘Perhaps I could help. Daisy doesn’t talk about her friends much, but she might have mentioned their names.’

  ‘Has she ever referred to Wendy Maltravers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Violet Chambers?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Don’t let your coffee get cold, by the way.’

  ‘Alice Connell, Rhona McIntyre, Deirdre Fincham, Kim Stothard …?’

  ‘I’m sure I would have remembered. They are very distinctive names.’

  He raised the cup to his mouth. The steam prickled against his skin. There was something spicy about it. His lips felt hot and swollen.

  Eunice Coleman was watching him intently. She hadn’t drunk any of her own coffee either.

  ‘And what about Madeline Poel?’ he said carefully, and watched as her hand twitched, sending coffee splashing across her lap.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The sudden flush of heat on Daisy’s leg shocked her, making her twitch again. The cup clattered in the saucer. ‘Oh dear,’ she said automatically, ‘Many a slip ’twixt cup and lip, as they say. I’ll just go and get a tea towel. I won’t be a moment.’

  She stood up, hesitating for a moment, then placed her cup and saucer down on the tray and walked off into the kitchen. ‘I don’t believe Daisy ever mentioned Madeline Poel,’ she called back to the police officer who was sitting in Eunice’s living room. ‘No, I don’t believe she mentioned her at all. Were they friends?’

  Once in the kitchen she leaned on one of the work surfaces for a few moments, trying to regain her composure. Whoever this policeman was – and he looked strangely familiar to her, as if they had met before under different circumstances – he knew too much. He knew names that Daisy herself thought she had forgotten.

  Including that of Madeline Poel.

  Patting herself down with a cloth, Daisy’s mind was frantically going over what he had said, looking for some explanation of how he had found her. The only possible way was if he’d discovered the pamphlets advertising the Arts and Crafts Centre in her flat, and that meant she had nowhere to retreat to. Her safe haven was compromised, contaminated. She could never go back there again. The only thing that was saving her from arrest now was that the policeman thought she was Eunice Coleman. Or perhaps he wasn’t sure whether she was Eunice or not and was trying to find out. Either way, she had to play along, and get out of Eunice’s hou
se as soon as she possibly could.

  But where would she go? Even her special place was lost to her now; her garden, with its beautiful scents and flowers. She had to assume the police knew about it, although she couldn’t think of any way they could have found out. And that meant they had also found her little tea party.

  All lost. All gone.

  Black despair threatened to engulf her. She leaned against the refrigerator as her legs threatened to give way. Her heart was racing, and she could feel her breath rasping in her chest. The complex web of bank accounts and building society accounts was of no use to her any more. All that money, all that security, all those identities were lost now, washed away by the tide of circumstance.

  She had to be strong. She had to move forward. She couldn’t have expected her luck to last forever: the pitcher goes so often to the well that it is broken at last, wasn’t that what they said? She’d started with nothing before; she could do it again. She would have to cut her coat according to her cloth; things would be hard for a while, but she would survive. After all, after a storm comes a calm.

  Concentrating on those old, familiar proverbs, Daisy felt her heart slow and her breathing return to something approaching normal. The policeman wouldn’t be a problem for long: the moment he had mentioned her name – well, Daisy Wilson’s name – she knew that she had to get him inside the house and get him to drink some of the coffee that she had so carefully prepared for Eunice. With luck, he would be comatose before he finished the cup and dead within the hour.

  Which reminded her – where was Eunice? Despite the way Daisy had dosed her with cyanide she wasn’t in the bedroom upstairs any more. When Daisy heard the doorbell ring she had been terrified that Eunice had staggered downstairs and was going to open the door in some kind of delirium, but there was no sign of her. Where could she have got to?

  That could wait. First things first: she had to rid herself of this policeman.

  Pulling open the cutlery drawer, she retrieved a butcher’s knife from the plastic tray where it sat: a grey triangle of metal that came to a razor-sharp point. She didn’t like the idea of using a knife, but it was a useful backup. Just in case.

  She emerged from the kitchen holding a tea towel behind which the knife sat, comfortable in her hand. ‘Clumsy of me,’ she said. ‘I do apologise.’

  The policeman was holding an empty cup. He looked at her with a slight frown, twin wrinkles forming between his eyebrows.

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said with exaggerated concern, ‘you do drink quickly. Would you like another cup?’

  ‘No … no thank you,’ he said. She noticed with pleasure that his hand was trembling slightly, and there was a mist of perspiration across his forehead. ‘The coffee’s a little … a little strong for me. I’m fine with just the one cup.’

  ‘As you wish,’ she said, sitting. One cup should be enough. She had proved that with Jasper the dog, and then again with Eunice – wherever she was. A man was a slightly unknown quantity – she had never poisoned anyone apart from women before – but she didn’t think the difference in size or sex would delay things by more than a few minutes. And if it did, well, there was always the knife.

  The policeman put his cup down on the table beside him. He misjudged the distance and fumbled slightly, banging the saucer hard on the varnished surface. ‘I think I should be … going …’ he said. ‘Perhaps I could come back when Daisy Wilson is here.’ He tried to stand, but he couldn’t seem to coordinate his movements. His hands slipped off the arms of the chair, pitching him sideways, and he straightened up slowly. ‘What’s happening?’ he said vaguely.

  ‘You are probably feeling your stomach twisting,’ Daisy said. She leaned back in her chair, resting the towel-wrapped knife on her lap. ‘That will be your digestive system hydrolysing the cyanogenic glycosides from the apricot kernels into hydrocyanic acid. Or cyanide, if you prefer. You will start to feel increasingly tired as the cyanide is carried through your body, and you may start to vomit, although I really hope not. It’s such a tedious business, clearing it up. That’s the trouble with poison, though – the body always seems to want to expel it, although it’s usually too late.’

  ‘Apricots?’ the policeman said.

  ‘Apricot kernels,’ she corrected. ‘I grated them up and mixed the powder with the ground coffee. I hoped that the bitterness of the coffee would cover any taste. Could you taste anything? I really would like to know. I may want to use this method again, at some stage. On another old woman.’

  He lurched forward in his chair, and Daisy allowed the tea towel to drop away to let the policeman see that she was holding the knife. The blade gleamed in the light. ‘I suggest you stay where you are while the poison gets to work. If you try to get up, I will have to stab you, and that would be a shame.’

  ‘Madeline,’ he said. ‘Madeline Poel.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head firmly. ‘There is no Madeline Poel. I am Daisy Wilson now, just as I was Violet Chambers before and I will be Eunice Coleman next. Madeline is long gone.’

  ‘You become these people. You take on their identities.’

  ‘I have always had a knack for imitation. I enjoy watching people, working out their little foibles and habits. And it has paid me dividends over the years.’

  ‘But you don’t do it for the money, do you?’

  ‘The money helps,’ she said, almost unwillingly. ‘It makes me comfortable.’ She leaned forward. ‘How are you feeling, by the way? Are your joints tingling yet? Can you feel the dryness in your mouth?’

  ‘But you aren’t rich, and you never will be. You choose old ladies who won’t be missed, but you also choose ones who have a small amount of money. Nothing too obvious.’

  ‘I so dislike ostentation,’ she said. ‘You must be feeling the discomfort in your bowels now. That will get worse. Much worse. Again, the clearing up will be wearisome, but it will be worth it for the effect.’

  ‘But the money isn’t that important,’ he pressed. ‘You do it for the comfort, of course, but you could have stopped at any stage. You could have stopped when you were Rhona, or Deirdre, or Kim, or Violet, or Daisy. What was it that kept you moving?’

  Daisy glanced away from him. His questions were disturbing her. She would much rather he died in silence, or at most with some groaning and gasping.

  ‘Habit, I suppose,’ she said eventually. ‘Your head will be throbbing, I think. I will enjoy watching you die.’

  ‘What were you running from?’

  ‘Nothing. I just wanted to be safe.’ She raised the knife and pointed it at him. ‘We have met before, haven’t we? A long time ago. I offered you tea then, as well.’

  ‘What were you running from?’

  She suddenly flung her arm out, knocking the small table over with the knife and sending her forgotten coffee splashing across the room. ‘My grandmother!’ she screamed, the words tumbling out of her in a rush, almost colliding with each other. ‘I was running from my grandmother, and what she did to me, and what she did to my sisters and my brothers, but she kept following me. Whenever I thought I’d got away from her I would turn around and see her reflection, or catch sight of her from the corner of my eye. I had to keep on running. I had to get away from her and what she did!’

  ‘And what you did,’ the policeman said. ‘You killed her. You poisoned her.’

  ‘She deserved it. She kept hurting us. And then … and then …’ Tears were suddenly coursing down her cheeks as she remembered back to the garden, and the heat, and the way little Kate screamed and screamed as the blades of the secateurs came together and her thumb fell away, trailing a ribbon of blood behind it.

  ‘And you ended up here. In Leyston, where it all started. Where Madeline was born.’

  ‘What goes around, comes around,’ she said slowly. ‘That’s what they say, isn’t it? I never really understood that before, but it’s true.’

  ‘And Eunice? The real Eunice Coleman? Did you kill her as well? Did you take out on her
this bizarre retribution you’ve been carrying out on your dead grandmother for all these years?’

  ‘She is upstairs somewhere: comatose, as you will be. She managed to stagger out of the bedroom. I assume she is in the bathroom, or the spare room. When I have finished with you I will go and check on her.’

  The policeman straightened in his chair. His face lost its slackness, its vacancy. ‘We found your house,’ he said. ‘We’re digging up your garden. The people at your tea party have all gone home, I’m afraid. It’s over, Madeline. And you are under arrest for the murders of Daisy Wilson, Wendy Maltravers, Rhona McIntyre, Violet Chambers, Alice Connell, Kim Stothard, Deirdre Fincham and six other as yet unidentified women, as well as the attempted murder of Eunice Coleman.’

  Daisy just gaped at the policeman. ‘But – the coffee? You drank it!’

  ‘I poured it away,’ he said impatiently, ‘into one of your potted plants. One of Eunice’s potted plants.’

  ‘No!’ she screamed, and leaped at him, knife raised. He caught her arm as her body crashed against him and pushed her backwards, holding onto the knife. She staggered back, the seat of the armchair catching her beneath her knees and forcing her to sit down suddenly. ‘No!’ she said again, the anger replaced with denial.

  ‘We’re going upstairs,’ he said. ‘Eunice Coleman might still be alive up there.’

  Grabbing her wrists, he hauled her up from the chair and pushed her ahead of him up the stairs to the first floor. She squirmed in his grip, but she had no strength left. She could feel her bones grinding together beneath his fingers. His rough masculinity overpowered her, rendering her helpless as he took the knife away from her and threw it across the hall. Everything she had, she had invested in other identities. There was nothing left to fight with.